Carl Nielsen - Biography
Carl Nielsen the great Danish Symphonist was born in Sortelung Denmark near Odense as the seventh of twelve children to a poor family on July 9th 1865 and died in Copenhagen on October 3rd 1931. Nielsen’s father was a house painter and an amateur musician with whom he took lessons from on both the violin and coronet. He served in an Odense Denmark military band during his teenage years from 1879 to 1883.In Odense he composed his first works a String Quartet and some small piano pieces. This impressed some local patrons to raise financial aid so Nielsen could attend the Royal Music Conservatory in Copenhagen with the well known composers J.P.E. Hartmann and Niels Gade. Upon graduation his main source of income was as a second violinist in the Royal Orchestra of Copenhagen a position he held for sixteen years (1889-1905). His first important composition was the Little Suite for String Orchestra. In 1892 he wrote his First Symphony a work where the influence of Brahms is strong but still has a strong individual sound. During his years as an orchestral player his ability to compose was hampered and he was only able to compose some piano music and another String Quartet. In 1901 he was given a state pension which enabled him to compose his first opera Saul and David. In 1891 Nielsen married the Danish sculptress Anna Marie Brodersen with whom he was to have a stormy relationship with during their forty years together.
Sometimes composers look their music and Nielsen is one of those composers; he looked like a Dakota’s farmer with a blond crew cut and light blue eyes music as honest looking and natural as his music. Along with the pension Nielsen now became a conductor of the Royal Theatre of Copenhagen this along with his pension gave Nielsen a degree of financial independence. His next symphony the Second subtitled Four Temperaments is more adventurous then the First Symphony particularly the long slow movement with examples of the daring use of harmony that would become a Nielsen trademark.. With his new found freedom a whole host of works were created during the first decade of the 20th Century including his second opera Maskarade (which has the status of a national opera in Denmark), many choral pieces including the Cantata Sleep, and various commemorative Cantatas for schools and patriotic organizations, the Helios Overture and the Tone Poem Saga Dream, String Quartet #4 and the quintet At the Bier of a Young Artist.
The year 1911 would see the composition of two major works the Violin Concerto written for his son in law the Hungarian violinist Emil Temanyi and the Third Symphony Sinfonia Espansiva a very big heroic and optimistic work with a lovely pastoral slow movement for two solo voices reminiscent of a similar passage in Vaughan Williams Third Symphony. Nielsen also wrote a considerable amount of incidental music for theatrical productions the best known of which is for a play Aladdin. The First World War had traumatic effect on Nielsen even though Denmark was not militarily involved. The result was his great Symphony # 4 Inextinguishable. While not actually programmatic the last movement with a dueling set of tympani chaotically overwhelming the orchestra and is eventually itself overwhelmed with the hymn like motto theme that ends the Symphony triumphantly. Nielsen by this time earned enough from his pension and his music to no longer have to pursue a career as a performing musician. Other works from this period include the tone poem Pan and Syrinix and the Theme and Variations for piano. Nielsen’s next symphony his Fifth is probably his masterpiece. A two movement work it starts out with an ominous march punctuated by percussion that leads into a beautiful hymn like passage that is interrupted by a snare dream that is directed to violently stop the progress of the orchestra the hymn theme overcomes it but the movement ends with the snare drum retreating under a wailing clarinet solo seemingly surveying a battlefield. The second movement number has two massive fugues the first violent the second quiet and radiant before the symphony ends in triumphant defiance. Nielsen was to suffer a heart attack in 1925. His music started to take on a bitter sardonic tone. The chief work from this period is the Sixth Symphony subtitled Sinfonia Semplice but the title must be ironic because the work is often sarcastic and full of biter humor with a battery of percussion dominating all of the movements except the short elegiac slow movement. This symphony is very reminiscent of Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Symphony that was written a half century later. Shortly afterwards he wrote concertos for the Flute and Clarinet that are similar in character to the Sixth Symphony. He was to end his career with a set of variations for piano and a monumental work for organ Commotio completed in 1931 the year of his death.
Nielsen at the time of his death was just beginning to develop a reputation outside of Scandinavia particularly in Germany(The chauvinistic attitude of the Third Reich put a stop to that). After the Second World War a remarkable series of recordings made by English HMV and Decca after the war of the Symphonies and Concertos conducted by men who knew Nielsen, Thomas Jensen, Erik Tuxen and Launie Grondahl created a small but influential cult around Nielsen in England. Amongst those influenced was a young composer Robert Simpson a BBC writer who became the foremost Nielsen scholar. In America the path was slower, but Leonard Bernstein’s advocacy and recordings in the 1960’s and 1970’s helped along with the writings of critic David Hall and conductor Eugene Ormandy. In Europe remarkable performances came from cult conductor Jascha Horenstein and the Swede Herbert Blomstedt recorded all the orchestral music in Denmark for Emi and later on recorded definitive performance of the Symphonies with the San Francisco Symphony . Recently Esa Pekka Salonen and Nemi Jarvi have made successful recordings. The works of Nielsen has a far way to go to reach general popularity. This elevated and noble music of what seems to have been a truly decent man needs to be heard.
