Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nielsen, Carl (August)

(b Sortelung, nr Nørre Lyndelse, Funen, 9 June 1865; d Copenhagen, 3 Oct 1931). Danish composer. One of the most important and free-spirited of the generation of composers who straddle the 19th and 20th centuries, his music covers a wide range of styles, from Brahmsian Romanticism at the outset to a high-principled, personal brand of neo-classicism in his last years. He composed in virtually all the main genres of the time, but he is best known for his six symphonies, which significantly contributed to the renewal of the genre in the 20th century. In Denmark he has been equally revered for his large output of popular strophic songs, which helped to redefine the national song tradition. His activities as conductor, teacher and writer made him the most prominent and influential Danish musician of his time, and although international recognition was sporadic in his lifetime, it has grown steadily since the 1950s, especially in Britain and the USA.

The outward defining points of Nielsen's career are his childhood on the island of Funen (1865–84), his studies and early freelance years in Copenhagen (1884–9), his post as second violin in the Royal Chapel (the opera orchestra resident at the Royal Theatre; 1889–1905), his conductorship of the same orchestra (1905–14; salaried from 1908), his years of marital crisis, renewed freelance activity and travel (1914–22), and his last decade (1922–31), when his creative activities were hampered by administrative duties and illness. The onset of the crisis years in 1914 is clearly reflected in his music. Until that time Nielsen's musical and philosophical horizons were steadily expanding; afterwards his continued explorations encountered increasingly inimical forces, leading to a more acerbic and concentrated style.

1. Early years.

2. Studies.

3. Career to 1914.

4. Career from 1914.

5. Posthumous reputation.

6. Scholarship.

7. Performance.

8. Chamber and solo instrumental music.

9. Orchestral music.

10. Songs.

11. Theatre and choral works.

WORKS

WRITINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DAVID FANNING

Nielsen, Carl

1. Early years.

Nielsen was the seventh of 12 children born to Niels Jørgensen (1835–1915), a house-painter and amateur musician, and his wife Maren Kirstine, née Johansen (1833–97), in a village 15 km south of Odense on Funen (Fyn). This flat island, with its mainly mild climate, is sometimes known as the Garden of Denmark. In later life Nielsen admitted that he often had the sights and sounds of Funen in front of him when he composed, and in his charming autobiography, Min fynske barndom (‘My childhood on Funen’), he tells of his formative musical impressions. Chief among these were the wistful songs his mother used to sing ‘as if she were longing for something far away beyond the farthest trees of the land’, and the wedding parties and festivities at which his father played violin and cornet, and in which the young Nielsen participated once he had sufficiently mastered the violin. Significantly, his earliest compositions, from about the age of eight or nine, were a lullaby (now lost) and a polka (notated in the autobiography). Alongside these fundamental contacts with song and dance, he developed a fascination with the underlying animating forces of nature and human character. These were to become constant sources of inspiration for his own music, as archetypal embodiments of oneness and conflict respectively.

His earliest encounter with classical music came through a local 12-piece amateur orchestra by the name of Braga (after a Nordic god of bards) founded around 1874. This gave him a special affection for the Viennese classics, which was to be another constant thread in his work.

Nielsen dictated his autobiography over a two-year period after his 60th birthday, and he made no claims for its detailed factual accuracy. Nevertheless, the essential outlines of his early life as he described them are undisputed. Following an unhappy three-month apprenticeship to a grocer in 1879, he joined a military orchestra in Odense, playing signal horn and alto trombone. From that time he received violin lessons from a local musician, played string quartets, and studied theory and the piano. He never became an accomplished pianist, but he composed at the instrument throughout his life.

Much down-played in My Childhood is the context of Denmark's social evolution. Following defeat in the 1863–4 war with Prussia, in which Nielsen's father was a conscripted soldier, territories in South Jutland were ceded (they were partially regained after World War I). The subsequent mood of wounded national pride was summed up in the slogan ‘what has been lost on the outside must be won on the inside’. This was put into practice in the literal sense of land reclamation in Jutland, but it also inspired a strengthening of the social fabric of the nation, building on reforms already set in train after the European revolutions of 1848. Communal activities, liberal institutions and young talent were now carefully fostered. Outside the main cities the country remained extremely poor, and several of Nielsen's brothers and sisters emigrated in the 1870s and 80s to Midwest America, as did his parents (albeit briefly, from 1891 to 1894). But Nielsen himself benefited materially from the spirit of national resurgence when he was talent-spotted by dignitaries in Odense and sent to Copenhagen, where he successfully auditioned for a place at the conservatory. His sponsors, who continued to support him during and after his studies, included the schoolteacher Klaus Berntsen, later to be Danish Prime Minister.

Nielsen, Carl