Composer
Carl Nielsen
Denmark's great symphonist, whose music celebrates the unstoppable force of life.
Carl Nielsen is Denmark's greatest composer and one of the most individual symphonists of the 20th century. His six symphonies are full of energy, conflict, and sheer vitality, and in Denmark his songs are known by everyone. He and his near-contemporary Sibelius were the two great Nordic voices of their time.
Life in brief
Nielsen was born in 1865 on the Danish island of Funen, the seventh of twelve children in a poor family. His father was a house painter who played the fiddle at village dances, and young Carl joined him. At fourteen he became a bugler and trombonist in a military band in Odense, and with the help of local patrons he entered the Copenhagen Conservatory in 1884.
For sixteen years he earned his living as a second violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra, composing in his spare time, and he later became one of its conductors. In 1891 he married the sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen, a strong artist in her own right; their marriage was passionate but stormy. Gradually he became a national figure, and by his sixtieth birthday he was celebrated throughout Denmark. He became director of the Royal Danish Academy of Music shortly before his death in Copenhagen in 1931.
Music and style
Nielsen's music is direct, vigorous, and often surprising. He favored strong, clear melodies, bracing harmony that moves boldly between keys, and a sense of struggle and growth: many of his symphonies end in a different key from the one they began in, as if they had traveled somewhere. He loved wind instruments and wrote for them with rare understanding, and his songs, simple and heartfelt, became part of Danish everyday life.
Key works
- Symphony No. 4, "The Inextinguishable" (1916) - written during the First World War about the unquenchable will to live, with a famous duel between two sets of timpani in the finale.
- Symphony No. 5 (1922) - in which a snare drummer is instructed to improvise wildly, as if trying to destroy the music. See symphony.
- Symphony No. 3, "Sinfonia espansiva" (1911) - expansive and joyful, with wordless voices in its pastoral slow movement.
- Maskarade (1906) - a comic opera, Denmark's national opera, with a sparkling overture.
- Wind Quintet (1922) - a warm, witty classic for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. See chamber music.
- Clarinet Concerto (1928) - a turbulent late work, with an aggressive snare drum part. See clarinet.
Legacy
Nielsen's symphonies were little known outside Scandinavia until the 1950s, when recordings and conductors such as Leonard Bernstein championed them. Today they are a regular part of the international repertoire. See also the 20th century.
Where to start listening: the finale of Symphony No. 4, with its battling timpani, then the overture to Maskarade.