Carl Nielsen

Danish composer

• Born: July 9, 1865
• Birthplace: Sortelung, near Norre Lyndelse, Denmark
• Died: October 3, 1931
• Place of death: Copenhagen, Denmark

Nielsen revolutionized Danish music by integrating new techniques and fresh ideas from beyond the country’s borders into a personal and highly expressive style.

Early Life

Carl Nielsen (NEEL-suhn) was born in the Danish town of Sortelung. Because his family was poor, Nielsen was forced to begin working as a goose-herd before he was ten years old, yet his childhood experiences on the rural, gardenlike island nourished him throughout his life.

Inspired by his mother’s singing and his father’s participation in a rustic band, Nielsen learned to play the violin and to compose simple tunes at a very early age. In 1879 he joined a military orchestra as a trumpet player in Odense, and in 1881 started taking violin and piano lessons with a local teacher. With a recommendation from his high school principal, Nielsen traveled to the Danish capital of Copenhagen in 1883. After passing the examination of the Copenhagen Conservatory of Music and securing a scholarship, he began his formal studies the following year. He went on to graduate at the end of 1886, having performed satisfactorily but not outstandingly.

In 1889, Nielsen secured a seat in the second violin section of the Chapel Royal Orchestra of the Royal Theatre of Copenhagen, a position that he would hold for sixteen years. By this point in his life he had also written several chamber works, at least three of which had been performed in public.

Life’s Work

Nielsen regarded his Little Suite for Strings as his first work of any consequence, designating it his Opus 1. The suite was performed by the orchestra of Copenhagen’s Tivoli Concert Hall on September 8, 1888, and proved so popular with the audience that the orchestra repeated its second movement.

Nielsen was able to broaden his musical and artistic horizons in 1890 and 1891 thanks to a monetary award that allowed him to travel for the first time outside Denmark. In Germany he heard the operas of Richard Wagner, which made a tremendous impression on him, and met Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. In France he met again the talented Danish sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen, whom he had met briefly in 1888, and the two were married in Italy on May 10, 1891. Their relationship would undergo several crises, but Brodersen’s artistic and psychological insights proved invaluable to her husband’s development.

Nielsen’s Symphony no. 1 in G minor, which was also his first important large-scale work, was performed on March 14, 1894, by the Chapel Royal Orchestra the orchestra in which Nielsen himself played. Like the earlier Little Suite for Strings, the work was received enthusiastically. Nielsen followed the symphony with the cantata Hymnus Amoris (1897), which was inspired by a painting by Renaissance artist Titian that Nielsen and Brodersen had admired in Italy.

In light of Nielsen’s increasingly assured compositions, the Danish government awarded him a yearly stipend beginning in 1901. The following year saw the premiere of his first opera, Saul and David (1902), which Nielsen himself conducted throughout the 1902-1903 season of the Royal Theatre. By then he had also begun work on his Symphony no. 2, subtitled The Four Temperaments. The work received its premiere in December, 1902, again with Nielsen conducting, and was dedicated to Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni, whom Nielsen had recently met.

In 1903, Nielsen visited Greece, where he was inspired to write one of his most attractive works, Helios . This short concert overture describes the passage of the sun across the sky and was first performed in October, 1903. Another popular work, the opera Masquerade , premiered in November, 1906. Based on Norwegian-Danish writer Ludvig Holberg’s 1724 comedy of the same name, and with a libretto by Vilhelm Andersen, the work proved highly popular with Danish audiences, for whom the play had long been a favorite.

In 1908, Nielsen was invited to become one of two conductors of the Chapel Royal Orchestra, a post he held for six years. During this busy period he continued to compose large-scale works, completing his Symphony no. 3, known as the Sinfonia Espansiva, and his demanding Violin Concerto. The two were performed for the first time the same evening in February, 1912. Nielsen was particularly pleased with the symphony, which he went on to conduct in the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and Finland over the next few months.

After leaving the Chapel Royal Orchestra in 1914, Nielsen became conductor of the Music Society of Copenhagen, a position that paid less but which gave him more time to compose. It was in this capacity that he conducted the premiere of his Symphony no. 4 (1916), an organic and life-affirming work that he subtitled The Inextinguishable.

By now Nielsen was recognized as Denmark’s premier composer, and he had taken an additional teaching position with the Copenhagen Conservatory, but his private life was far from serene. He and Brodersen were finding themselves separated for long periods of time, and their unhappiness was exacerbated by Nielsen’s repeated infidelities. The two legally separated in September, 1919, but reconciled less than three years later. Significantly, the event coincided with Nielsen’s completion of his Symphony no. 5, a daring and initially controversial work. Although Nielsen had described his preceding symphony as a response to World War I, it is this later work that seems to dramatize the conflict more obviously. First performed in January, 1922, it has since been recognized as the composer’s masterpiece.

Nielsen conducted the premiere of his Symphony no. 6, deceptively subtitled Sinfonia Semplice (simple symphony), in December, 1925. He had suffered a heart attack three years before and was struck by another in 1926. The aging composer took an appointment as director of the Royal Danish Academy of Music in early 1931, but subsequently his health deteriorated, and he died on October 3.

Significance

Critics and music lovers regard Nielsen as the most significant Danish composer in the country’s history. He wrote in a variety of large and small forms vocal, choral, instrumental, chamber, and orchestral. Impatient with the insularity of the Danish musical world, he introduced a passion that had been lacking in the works of such earlier Danish composers as J. P. E. Hartmann and Niels Gade. Familiar with trends in musical development throughout the rest of Europe, he nevertheless subordinated those trends to his own spiritually expressive style, creating works that are supple and sonorous. Although tonally adventurous, he rejected the atonality of his German contemporary Arnold Schoenberg and what he regarded as the sterility of his Russian contemporary Igor Stravinsky.

Outside his native country Nielsen is known primarily for his six symphonies, with his fifth recognized as one of the great works of the twentieth century. However, later generations of Danish composers sometimes found his reputation and influence confining. In particular Rued Langgaard attacked Nielsen for his rejection of Gade and others of Gade’s generation.

Bibliography

Balger, Jürgen, ed. Carl Nielsen: Centenary Essays. London: Dobson, 1966. Collection covering all aspects of Nielsen’s oeuvre, as well as a personal reminiscence by a close friend. Illustrations, musical examples.

Eskildsen, Karsten. Carl Nielsen: Life and Music. Odense, Denmark: Odense City Museums and Odense University Press, 1999. Short, attractive introduction for the general reader. Illustrations.

Fanning, David. Nielsen, Symphony No. 5. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Detailed but accessible study of the symphony regarded as Nielsen’s most important. Draws heavily on Danish sources. Illustrations, discography, bibliography.

Lawson, Jack. Carl Nielsen. London: Phaidon Press, 1997. The most accessible critical biography of the composer available in English. Numerous illustrations, classified list of works, bibliography, selective discography.

Miller, Mina F. Carl Nielsen: A Guide to Research. New York: Garland, 1987. Comprehensive bibliography of material on the composer, now somewhat dated. Illustrations.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. The Nielsen Companion. Portland, Oreg.: Amadeus Press, 1995. Generous collection of essays treating various aspects of Nielsen’s music and career. Illustrations, bibliography.

Nielsen, Carl. My Childhood. Copenhagen: Wilhelm Hansen, 1972. English translation by Reginald Spink of Nielsen’s charming memoir of his early years. Illustrations.

Simpson, Robert Wilfred Levick. Carl Nielsen, Symphonist, 1865-1931. Rev. ed. New York: Taplinger, 1979. Updated edition of an idiosyncratic study by a fellow composer a key work in understanding Nielsen’s development as a composer. Illustrations, list of works, biographical appendix by Torben Meyer.