Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

4. Career from 1914.

In the second half of 1914 the strains of constant separation and dual careers came to a head. Anne Marie already knew of a child Nielsen had fathered in his student years and whom she had offered to adopt. But he had had more than one extra-marital affair since that time, and he had fathered at least one more illegitimate child of whom she may never have known. When the truth of his latest lapse came to light, involving a governess to the children, it precipitated a breach in the marriage which was only to be healed eight years later. During most of that time the couple lived apart. This hastened Nielsen's encounter with a creative crisis which had been long brewing and which was to enforce a profound self-reappraisal. It was at least as powerful an influence as World War I (in which Denmark was neutral) and developments in his professional life. These three factors impacted strongly on the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, arguably his greatest works.

The positive role of Anne Marie in Nielsen's developing outlook on life is not to be underestimated. She helped to define his central aesthetic preoccupations with movement, clarity, boldness and the essential drives of human nature, and it was precisely the multi-faceted strength of their bond which made its loosening so difficult to bear.

Cut off from the family and professional ties which had previously given him stability, Nielsen diversified his activities. In March 1915 he succeeded Franz Neruda as head of the Musikforening (‘Music Society’), where he was contracted to conduct three or four concert programmes a season from 1915 to 1927. Apart from that he appeared mainly in Sweden, as guest conductor for Stenhammar at the Göteborg Orchestral Society from October 1918. In later life as his health deteriorated he occasionally handed over the baton to his son-in-law Emil Telmányi.

Also in 1915 he succeeded Otto Malling on the governing body of the Copenhagen Conservatory, teaching theory and composition there from 1916 to 1919. He had taken violin pupils from his student days onwards, but it was not until October 1893 that he had begun to give private lessons in composition. He generally followed the principles he had received from Rosenhoff, involving exercises in strict counterpoint after Fux and Bellermann and composition following classical models. He encouraged the study of counterpoint ‘not in order to become learned and complicated, but on the contrary to achieve greater strength and simplicity’. Among his best-known pupils were Simonsen, Schierbeck, Jeppesen, Jørgen Bentzon, Høffding and Wöldike, all of whom would play a major role in propagating Nielsen's music and his aesthetic principles in the quarter-century after his death. Others such as Nancy Dalberg helped out occasionally as copyist and even co-orchestrator in projects such as the incidental music for Aladdin, composed reluctantly for the Royal Theatre in 1918. Shortly before his death he was appointed director of the Copenhagen Conservatory in succession to Anton Svendsen.

In 1925, when Nielsen was at the height of his fame, his 60th birthday was an occasion for national celebration. At this time he told a newspaper interviewer that he had never been able to make a secure living for himself as a composer. This apparently uncharacteristic comment caused widespread consternation and led to a break with his publishers, who had been under severe economic pressure since the war. In the longer term, however, it may well have contributed to an improvement in conditions for later generations of Danish composers.

The following year Nielsen had a serious attack of angina, a condition which had already forced him to slow down his activities early in 1922. Although not an orthodox believer – he had no belief in the afterlife and was criticized for presuming to write hymns without being a regular church-goer – he had a profound respect for religious texts, and often turned to them in times of crisis. This urge was related to his aesthetic commitment to purity and simplicity, and the two concerns bore fruit in late works such as the Three Motets and 29 Preludes for organ, culminating in the masterful Commotio for organ, modelled on the Baroque toccata. Nielsen's heart condition finally killed him on 3 October 1931. His funeral was an occasion for national mourning.

Nielsen, Carl

5. Posthumous reputation.

Until the 1950s the international public and critics tended to equate 20th-century Scandinavian music with Sibelius, to the virtual exclusion of Nielsen. It was only after World War II, with the visit of the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra to the Edinburgh Festival, the advent of the LP, and the appearance of Robert Simpson's classic book Carl Nielsen: Symphonist, that Nielsen's reputation began to take off in English-speaking countries. His centenary year in 1965, coupled with the advocacy of conductors such as Bernstein, gave him a further significant boost. With the growing disenchantment with a view of music history culminating in the Second Viennese School and the postwar avant garde, the way cleared for Nielsen to emerge as one of the most powerful and individual personalities demanding reassessment. Until the mid-1990s Germany and Austria still proved resistant, prompting the Danish government and artistic organizations to mount a concerted effort on behalf of Nielsen and others.

Nielsen, Carl

6. Scholarship.

Few in-depth commentaries on Nielsen's music appeared in his lifetime, those that did generally stemming from his pupils. Henrik Knudsen published a short guide to the Sinfonia espansiva (1913) which impressed the composer, but Povl Hamburger's article (translated in Miller, 1994) largely on the same work did not, since it dealt with technical details Nielsen had not been aware of in the process of composition. A landmark study was Simpson's book (1952, rev. 1979), which argued powerfully for the presence of ‘progressive tonality’ in Nielsen's major works. Simpson's aggressive championing of the composer, often at the expense of his contemporaries, influenced English-language commentaries for decades afterwards. Through the 1970s and 80s the leading Danish Nielsen scholar was Torben Schousboe, who published a series of invaluable documentary studies. More recently the American pianist and musicologist Mina Miller stimulated a new wave of English-language studies. Joint initiatives from the Carl Nielsens og Anne Marie Carl-Nielsens Mindelegat and the Danish Government led to the establishing of a Nielsen Museum in Odense in 1988 and to a new complete edition of the music from 1994, both of which have had a powerful and beneficial effect on Nielsen scholarship.

Nielsen, Carl