Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nelson, John (Wilton)

(b San José, Costa Rica, 6 Dec 1941). American conductor. He studied in Orlando, Florida, at Wheaton College, Illinois, and with Jean Morel at the Juilliard School, New York, where he won the Irving Berlin Award for conducting. He made his opera début in Carmen for New York City Opera in 1972, organized and conducted a complete concert version of Les Troyens at Carnegie Hall that year, and made his Metropolitan Opera début in that work in 1973. He was music director of the Indianapolis SO from 1976 to 1987, and of the Caramoor Festival from 1983 to 1990. His broad operatic repertory ranges from Monteverdi and Handel to Janáček and Britten, whose Owen Wingrave he conducted at Santa Fe in its first American production. In Europe he gained distinction as a Berlioz conductor at Lyons, especially in Benvenuto Cellini in 1989; he has also appeared frequently as an opera conductor in Geneva, Rome and Chicago. From 1981 to 1991 he was music director for the Opera Theatre of St Louis, where he added to the company’s reputation with conducting of dramatic flair and musical weight. Since 1991 he has continued his association with St Louis as principal guest conductor. Nelson has been much praised for his vital, stylish recordings of Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict and Handel’s Semele. He is also an enthusiastic advocate of Shostakovich and of contemporary composers including Takemitsu (of whose I Hear the Water Dreaming he conducted the première in 1987), Górecki and Paul Schoenfield.

MICHAEL WALSH, NOËL GOODWIN

Nelson, Sydney

(b London, 1 Jan 1800; d London, 7 April 1862). English composer and publisher. The son of Solomon Nelson, his early musical abilities led him to be adopted by a gentleman who ensured he received a good education, which included tuition from Sir George Smart. He sang at Philharmonic Society concerts in 1821 and 1822, but in the early years teaching was his main occupation. By the 1820s he was composing songs including the popular The Pilot, but his most prolific period dated from the 1830s, when he began an association with Charles Jefferys (1807–65), who wrote the words for many of Nelson's songs. These were predominantly drawing-room ballads in a Bellinian bel canto style; among the most popular were Mary of Argyle and The Rose of Allendale, and a good number also found favour in the USA. Nelson made occasional contributions to the stage, including music for the operetta The Middle Temple (1829), the burletta The Grenadier (c1830) and the afterpiece The Cadi's Daughter (1851); a full-scale opera Ulrica was rehearsed but never performed.

Jefferys started a music publishing business in about 1835, catering mostly for the drawing-room market (it lasted until 1904, having been continued after his death by his widow and others). He was in partnership with Nelson from about 1840 to 1843 as Jefferys & Nelson. The firm was one of the first to use lithographic illustration in both black-and-white and colour, and its most spectacular publication was the musical and poetic annual The Queen's Boudoir (1841–54). After the partnership was dissolved Nelson set up briefly on his own as a publisher, but was unsuccessful and gave it up in 1847. He then devised a musical and dramatic entertainment with which he toured the USA, Canada and Australia, before returning to England. He continued to compose songs until his death, claiming a lifelong total of around 800.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DNB (J.C. Hadden)

Humphries-SmithMP

D. Baptie: Musical Scotland (Paisley, 1894/R)

J.A. Parkinson: Victorian Music Publishers: an Annotated List (Warren, MI, 1990)

PETER WARD JONES

Nelson, Willie (Hugh)

(b Abbott, TX, 30 April 1933). American singer and songwriter. His mother bought him his first guitar when he was six and his grandparents nurtured his interest in music. At the age of seven, and inspired by what he heard on the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ radio show, he began writing his own songs. By the early 1950s, discharged from the US Air Force and out of the college where he had briefly studied agriculture, Nelson was playing in Texas clubs and bars. Two years later he began broadcasting and, like Waylon Jennings, also tried his hand as a DJ. It was not until 1960, however, that he arrived in Nashville with a portfolio of songs. His first songwriting success came a year later when his Crazy was a major hit for Patsy Cline, subsequently becoming a country classic. In 1962, he released his debut album, … And Then I Wrote (Liberty) but it took several further albums before he achieved a breakthrough with Shotgun Willie (from The Troublemaker, Atlantic, 1970). By then Nelson had left Nashville because ‘there are elements [there] I couldn’t combat, set ways I wanted to change’ (Music City News, 1973).

Jennings’s popular brand of ‘outlaw music’ inspired Nelson to record Red Headed Stranger (Columbia, 1975): with just voice, piano and guitar, it was totally against the Nashville grain but inaugurated a string of successful albums. Alert to a new trend, RCA teamed Nelson with Jennings on Wanted: the Outlaws (1975), the first of several collaborations which later also included Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash. Fearlessly eclectic, he has since worked with such diverse artists as Ray Charles, Emmylou Harris, George Jones and Julio Iglesias. Nelson’s 1993 album Across the Borderline, featured contributions from Paul Simon and Bob Dylan among others.

One of the most significant figures in modern country, Nelson has made few concessions to showbusiness, even as he played its Las Vegas stages, and was a catalyst in breaking the Nashville establishment’s hold over country music. A writer of often mournful ballads, he has noted that ‘the best songs come out of the hardest times’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Carr, ed.: The Illustrated History of Country Music (New York, 1980)

W. Nelson and B. Shrake: I Didn’t Come Here and I Ain’t Leavin’ (New York, 1988)

M. Capazzoli: ‘Return of the Red Headed Stranger’, Country Music International i/12 (1994), 42–4

M. Blake: ‘Still Crazy after all these Years’, Country Music International, i/10 (1995), 38–41

LIZ THOMSON