$Unique_ID{bob00155} $Pretitle{} $Title{Denmark Carl Nielsen} $Subtitle{} $Author{Nils Schiorring} $Affiliation{Press and Cultural Relations} $Subject{carl nielsen music danish copenhagen symphony musical works first life} $Date{1988} $Log{} Title: Denmark Book: Fact Sheets on Denmark Author: Nils Schiorring Affiliation: Press and Cultural Relations Date: 1988 Carl Nielsen His life In autumn 1883 an 18-year old bandsman left Odense for Copenhagen in search of fame, precisely as Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark's renowned writer of fairytales, had done at age 14 half a century earlier. There is no way of telling whether Carl Nielsen, consciously or subconsciously, was inspired by the example of Hans Christian Andersen but somehow their destinies resembled each other. Hans Christian Andersen's naive but irrepressible aspirations were strangely successful in gaining the attention of influential people in Copenhagen. They organised his education and thus laid the foundation for his development. In similar manner, and directly on his arrival in Copenhagen Carl Nielsen introduced himself to the composer Niels W. Gade, prime mover of Danish music life, and, together with J. P. E. Hartmann, the greatest name of the Danish Romantic School in music and director of the Copenhagen Conservatoire. Carl Nielsen who despite his tender age possessed a respectable musical background showed some of his compositions to Gade and was immediately admitted to the Conservatory. During his three obligatory study years he matured into a talented violinist but he wanted above all to become a composer. He was born on June 9, 1865 in a small house in the village of Norre Lyndelse - today a museum for him - some ten kilometres south of Odense, and was, as it were, raised on music. His father, Niels the Painter, was a craftsman, mostly a housepainter as witness his nickname but he would derive his greatest satisfaction from music. He was the local fiddler but versed in much more than the traditional dance tunes with which he would delight young and old alike at weddings, christening parties and other gatherings in the countryside. The cornet was his principal instrument but he was a nimble fiddler as well. In the local music society he would join in the playing of both Haydn and Mozart whose music became enchanted and familiar to young Carl who early began to play his father's instruments. Already as a boy he would join his father on long and arduous evenings and nights to entertain the carousing peasants - even though he had a long day's work as a cowherd behind him. Music soon became Carl Nielsen's sole preoccupation but he had to do a brief stint as a grocer's apprentice before his father suggested that he devote himself to the wind instruments, which might open up a career for him as a military musician in Odense. He auditioned for the first vacancy and won, even though at 14 he was the youngest applicant. Carl Nielsen has himself written about this period of his life in his memoir My Childhood (1927) which is a worthy companion piece to Hans Christian Andersen's famous The Story of My Life. While in Odense he began playing the piano and composing profusely. At the tender age of 8 he had composed a couple of dance tunes and the musical talent he demonstrated in Odense was obvious enough to gain him the confidence of the circles which were to back him throughout his study period at the Conservatory. In Copenhagen the violin became his principal instrument although the lessons in theory and composition were what fascinated him most. Only a year and a half after leaving the Conservatory His Official opus 1 was performed in Tivoli Gardens in summer 1888. This was the lovely Suite for Strings which was critically acclaimed and has since become a regular item in the Danish concert repertory. Although he hoped to be able to make a living as a composer he saw the necessity of applying for a regular position and in 1889 auditioned for and won a place as a violinist in the Chapel Royal, opera and ballet orchestra of the Royal Theatre, where he remained until 1905. There he immediately sensed the pre-eminent musicality of the Theatre's conductor, Norwegian-born Johan Svendsen, in his capacity of both conductor of operas and composer. The operas performed at the Theatre in those years and new additions such as Othello, Falstaff and Carmen, greatly impressed the young people playing in the orchestra, and the earliest Nielsen compositions show traces of Svendsen's boldly unsentimental and national Romanticism of pure form, to wit the G minor string quartet and the G major string quintet (both 1888), the F minor string quartet (1890) and the first symphony in G minor (1892). No matter how finely tuned Carl Nielsen's inner musical world would become as years went by his music will always feature a line going back to something simple and serene even though in terms of rhythm and tonality he quickly developed a sense of greater differentiation. His preoccupation in particular with a tonality going beyond the major-minor modes must be linked to his studies during his relatively young years of the works of Palestrina which inspired him to emphasise the horizontal-linear structure rather than the vertical-harmonic movement. At an early age Carl Nielsen was awarded Det Anckerske Legat, at the time the most prestigious and most coveted fellowship for young Danish artists and authors wishing to study abroad. He first went to Germany where in Dresden he was spellbound by a performance of the entire Ring of the Nibelungen, then proceeded to France and Italy. Later extended tours took him to Germany and Austria, to Greece and then to Sweden - mostly to conduct his own works. In his mature years he would go to Germany again, as well as to England and France to conduct own works. 1908-14 he held the post of conductor at the Royal Theatre after Johan Svendsen, a job that would cause him several disappointments, and from 1915 conducted in The Society of Music. In 1916 he joined the board of the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music and was promoted to chairman in 1931, less than one year before his death. During the last 15 years of his life he thus had opportunity to live and work almost exclusively as a creative artist the way he had wanted it from his earliest youth. His last years were, however, marred by failing health and as an artist - despite all manner of official recognition - by the wholehearted appreciation by only a relatively modest part of Danish musical life whose members often found it difficult to understand his progressive, non-Romantic tonal language. Nor did he arouse the kind of attention abroad - except in Sweden - which his music has increasingly attracted after the Second World War. As late as his 60th birthday Carl Nielsen spoke poignantly of his bitterness about the social status of a creative artist. Not until after his death did he - undeniably Denmark's greatest composer since Buxtehude - win the recognition he so rightfully deserved. His work The oeuvre of Carl Nielsen the composer became very comprehensive and his creative capacity was astonishing even during the years when the theatre demanded so much of his time, first as a violinist, later as a conductor. It is amazing as well that within nearly all musical genres did he succeed in formulating new norms for what might be called the national genius in Danish music. He did not see himself as a revolutionary but in nearly all his works, large or small, does one discern his ability to give new life to the major musical forms of the past such as the symphony, opera and other vocal music, including the simple and unpretentious Danish song so rich in tradition. Romanticism was his point of departure, but Romanticism without excessive sentimentality. It was shaped very early as Romanticism with fresh features in terms of harmony with a twist towards modalism, in terms of melody with a distinct dislike for large melodic intervals, and above all with a predilection for equality among the parts which so many other composers had tended to ignore. In his young years he would try his hand first at the simpler forms, which does not imply that they are less exacting. His official opus 1, the Suite for Strings, is a case in point. Soon to follow were songs with piano accompaniment. It was typical of him to seek inspiration in contemporary poetry, in J.P. Jacobsen (opus 4 and opus 6, both 1891) which would serve as inspiration for foreign composers in the decades to come, among them Schonberg (Gurrelieder) and Delius (Fennimore and Gerda). Also young Danish lyricists such as Ludvig Holstein whose art was related to that of the French symbolists, stirred the musicality of Carl Nielsen (opus 10, 1894). In his later songs he was drawn towards a simplified expressiveness which was inspired by Lieder im Volkston by the German 18th century composer J.A.P. Schulz. Their object, "a touch of the familiar", in the same idealistic sense became the motto of his (and his contemporary colleague, Thomas Laub's) Twenty Danish Songs I-II (1915, 1917). They became the paragon of the Danish strophic song from 1915 to 1945 and set the standard in the renaissance of the Danish popular ballad. In major vocal forms as well Carl Nielsen was early to show his peculiarity. The great choral work Hymnus Amoris was born 1895-96. It describes the ages of love and praises its power, with lyrics translated into Latin in order to elevate it above personal emotion. Without sacrificing one iota of human warmth Carl Nielsen has with his music lifted his work to the monumental-universal level by being clearly inspired by the great old works from the great age of vocal polyphony. In contrast to Hymnus Amoris his Three Motets from 1929, are composed for a capella choir to texts from the Psalms of David but like the work of his youth they are with their refined polyphony fresh and unequivocal evidence of their maker's lifelong preoccupation with the contrapuntists of the past. To Danish opera and opera lovers Carl Nielsen gave two of his major and most frequently performed works. They were innovations in both theme and musical form. The first, Saul and David, begun in 1898, was inspired by the Old Testament account of the power struggle between the first two kings of Israel. It opened in 1902 at the Royal Theatre. Although librettist Einar Christiansen wrote it as a psychological dramatic opera both text, music and the majestic chorus scenes give it the quality of an oratorio and in its tonal language it departs wholly from the verismo of the day and the latter's contrived effect and from the sensuously effective alteration harmony of late Romanticism. Carl Nielsen's second opera, Masquarade, which opened in 1906 is something else again with its predominant note of merriment. The plot is borrowed from the popular play of the same name by the great Danish writer of comedies, Ludvig Holberg, dubbed the Moli@ere of Denmark. It was therefore quite daring of librettist Vilh. Andersen and the composer to translate the story into an opera. But Masquarade has also as a musical comedy proved its vitality. The account in words and music of early 18th century Copenhagen bourgeoisie, its daily life and entertainment, the clash between happy and enamoured young people and stiff-necked old age is perceived with humour and sensitivity. From the extravagantly spirited overture to the frivolity of the dancing scenes of the last act the opera is pervaded by resilience and zest which together with the fine lyrical episodes have won the Carl Nielsen opera a greater following in our century than the Holberg comedy in the two centuries since it was published in 1748. Among the purely symphonic works Carl Nielsen's six symphonies and three concertos (for violin, 1911; for flute, 1927; for clarinet, 1928) deserve particular attention. The symphonies are the high points of his production and clearly show his development from early youth to old age. His first symphony (G minor, 1892) already showed maturity and personality. The Carl Nielsen predilection for modal traces in the melodic picture is already present. The treatment of dissonance is free and unusual and the harmonic structure is an obvious result of the independent movement of the parts. Carl Nielsen named his second symphony (1901-02) The Four Temperaments just as he would later give his symphonies a title descriptive of their spirit and content. Without being a piece of programme music as such the second symphony is a spiritual and precise interpretation through the musical medium of the choleric, the phlegmatic, the melancholy and the sanguine temperaments. In his third symphony, Sinfonia Espansiva (1910-11) he expressed - notably in the first movement - a musical thrust seeking its equal while the fourth symphony, The Inextinguishable (1914-16) under the motto: Music is life and as such inextinguishable, reinforces the huge musical tensions that are so characteristic of the third symphony. But both also have a noble lyrical tone which in the second theme groups and the slow movements is so distinctly Carl Nielsen. The fifth symphony (1920-22) bears no special title although its two mighty movements are in a way about the battle between musical motifs and - in a broader sense in the immediate post-World War One period - about the battle of humanity against its own doom. At its presentation the fifth symphony was perceived as recondite but after the Second World War when the name of Carl Nielsen was becoming known the world over it was one of the works which jointly with Sinfonia Espansiva and the fascinating, entirely unconventional clarinet concerto, would generate understanding for the strength and independence of his music. The fifth symphony, unlike its predecessors, may in its development from a tiny germ to enormous dimensions point to an inspiration from Carl Nielsen's friend and great Finnish colleague Jean Sibelius's symphonies which is also true in another sense of Carl Nielsen's grandiose violin concerto from 1911. But the spirit of his sixth, and last, symphony (1925) is totally dissimilar to that of the Sibelius works and once again Carl Nielsen proves to us that in everything he created he was profoundly original but also open to the currents in contemporary music. He named his last symphony Sinfonia Semplice. It shows that he was preoccupied with what was going on in European music after the First World War whose new currents he became acquainted with while conducting own works in Berlin in 1922, London in 1923, Paris in 1926, Frankfurt a.M. in 1927 (when Furtwangler conducted the fifth symphony at the annual music festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music). At this time, at age 60, Carl Nielsen demonstrated in his instrumentation with many chamber-musical features, hints of dodecaphony, something resembling a mosaic in his structure and in a pronounced freedom of tonality that he was still open and receptive. The production of Carl Nielsen is so comprehensive that it has been possible to discuss only a few of his major works. But mention must also be made of his piano works, an area in which he was as innovative in Danish music as in all others. His Symphonic Suite from 1892 is still reminiscent of Brahms and his compatriot J.P.E. Hartmann. But later works such as Chaconne and Theme and Variations (both from 1916-17) and Suite from 1919 reveal entirely independent features unknown to the European music of the day and resembling the fourth and fifth symphonies while Three Piano Pieces (1928) contain expressionist and dodecaphonic traits. The 1920s represented an incredibly rich artistic period in the life of Carl Nielsen in which he demonstrated an irrepressible urge to include new trends in his art. The wind quintet (1922) is a case in point, which its classically pure features, today a regular item in the repertory of windplayers the world over. An even more pronounced example is the clarinet concerto from 1928 which seeks totally new avenues in the treatment of the solo instrument and belongs in the programme of all great clarinet players. Also Commotio, the mighty organ work from 1930-31, proves Carl Nielsen's urge to seek out his own directions while still being inspired by the past. Around 1930, with the nascent reorientation in organ building and organ playing and with a historically more correct view of how to perform Baroque music gaining ground, the 65-year-old composer succeeded in raising with Commotio a resounding monument to these endeavours. Its foundation is the organ style of the period of Bach but its visible and audible superstructure is an unequivocal expression of his own spirit and will. At a time when Romanticism was viewed as obsolete Carl Nielsen ushered in a renaissance that would remain strong for a long time to come. He was firmly anchored in the past, a past predating Romanticism. In it he sought clarity and purity, giving it his own voice. He created a firm and energetic tonal language, but one that held mild tones as well. The strengthen and mildness of his own psyche are reflected in his music and thus he was able to strengthen Danish music in a time of decline. He created new values in Danish music. Bibliography Carl Nielsen: Kompositioner (Compositions. In Danish only). A bibliography compiled by Dan Fog with Torben Schousboe. Nyt Nordisk Forlag - Arnold Busck, Copenhagen 1965. Carl Nielsen: Levende musik. Martins Forlag, Copenhagen, 1927. Living Music, English translation by R. Spink. Wilh. Hansen, Copenhagen, undated. Carl Nielsen: Min fynske barndom, Martins Forlag, Copenhagen, 1927. My Childhood, English translation by R. Spink. Wilh. Hansen, Copenhagen, undated. Carl Nielsen: Dagboger og brevveksling med Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen (Diaries and correspondence with Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen. In Danish only). Edited by Torben Schousboe, Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 1983. Torben Meyer & Frede Schandorf Petersen: Carl Nielsen, kunstneren og mennesket (Carl Nielsen as an artist and individual. In Danish only). Vols. I-II. Nyt Nordisk Forlag - Arnold Busck, Copenhagen, 1947. Ludvig Dolleris: Carl Nielsen (in Danish only). Fyns Boghandels Forlag - Viggo Madsen, Odense, 1949. Robert Simpson: Carl Nielsen, Symphonist, 1865-1931. J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1952. 2nd rev. ed. 1980. Jurgen Balzer (editor): Carl Nielsen Centenary Essays. Nyt Nordisk Forlag - Arnold Busck, Copenhagen, 1965. Johannes Fabricius: Carl Nielsen 1865-1931 (in Danish only). A pictorial biography. Berlingske Forlag, Copenhagen, 1965. John C. G. Waterhouse: Nielsen Reconsidered. The Musical Times, London, June-August 1965.