Background
He was born on June 9, 1865, in Nørre-Lyndelse Norre-Lyndelse on the island of Fyn, the son of a house painter who supplemented his meager income by playing the fiddle and cornet.
(Nielsen's Fourth Symphony is one of the most vital and ex...)
Nielsen's Fourth Symphony is one of the most vital and exciting pieces of music composed this century. The finale, in which two sets of timpani battle from opposite sides of the stage (or your speakers), ought to lift you out of your seat, but most conductors wimp out on the piece and make it sound way too timid. Alexander Gibson encourages his drummers to really slam away, and Chandos captures the duel in spectacularly vivid sound. For this and other reasons-- Gibson's perfect sense of the proper tempo in particular--this is the best performance of the Inextinguishable available at the moment. The couplings are all very well-done, and appropriate. --David Hurwitz
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000000A8G/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00119VSFK/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000027ERW/?tag=2022091-20
He was born on June 9, 1865, in Nørre-Lyndelse Norre-Lyndelse on the island of Fyn, the son of a house painter who supplemented his meager income by playing the fiddle and cornet.
He initially played in a military band before attending the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen from 1884 until December 1886.
He premiered his Op. 1, Suite for Strings, in 1888, at the age of 23. The following year, Nielsen began a 16-year stint as a second violinist in the prestigious Royal Danish Orchestra under the conductor Johan Svendsen, during which he played in Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff and Otello at their Danish premieres. In 1916, he took a post teaching at the Royal Academy and continued to work there until his death.
Growing interest in music and composition led to scholarship study at the Copenhagen Conservatory (1884 - 1886).
Nielsen won his first public success with Little Suite for Strings, Opus 1 (1888), and the following year he acquired a steady job as a second violinist of the Royal Orchestra.
Though Nielsen's prestige mounted at home and brought him at the end of his life the conservatory's director-ship, the international fame he desired still eluded him.
The first signs of the heart trouble that would kill him seem to have added to the unusual mood that produced his Sixth Symphony (Sinfonia semplice, 1924-1925), which enigmatically combines tender poetry with grimly sardonic whimsy.
Notwithstanding the wide-ranging development of his style, from the romanticism of his youth to the "modernism" of his later years, Nielsen's enduring directness of personality and his patriotism found regular expression in his output of Danish song.
His tuneful, folksy choral work Springtime on Fünen (1922) is a loving tribute to his home island; and his lifelong production of simple, melodious songs contributed many a popular classic to the Danish heritage.
Their marriage inspired his First Symphony (premiered1894) and his choral work on the varieties of love, the Hymnus amoris (1896).
The next decade witnessed the appearance of two operas, the majestically tragic Saul and David (produced 1902) and the deliciously comic Masquerade (produced 1906) after Holberg's play, and two of his most appealing orchestral works, the Second Symphony (The Four Temperaments, 1901) and the concert overture Helios (1903), the latter inspired by the Athenian sun during a visit to Greece. In 1908 Nielsen became the conductor of the Royal Theater.
Though he met with some criticism and public resistance for his continued departure from the traditions of romanticism in such works as his Third Symphony (Sinfonia espansiva, 1910-1911) and his Violin Concerto (1911), he was emerging to undeniable predominance in Danish music.
However, he completed only two: one for the flute (1926) and the other for the clarinet (1929).
His exploration of new possibilities continued, as exemplified in his austere, Palestrina-like Three Motets (1929) and monumental organ work Commotio (1931).
His works include six symphonies, three concertos (violin, flute, and clarinet), two operas (Saul og David and Maskarade), a large quantity of chamber and instrumental music, and a great number of songs.
His symphonies, especially the Fourth, "The Inextinguishable" (1916), and the Fifth (1922), are among the more notable works of this century and stamp him as a composer of conspicuous grandeur and originality. Nielsen showed a profoundly new attitude toward tonality.
His tonal method produces a powerful dramatic sense and sometimes, as in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, climaxes of incandescent intensity.
He is the more significant because he found fresh possibilities in tonality at a time when many of his contemporaries felt it was exhausted.
(Nielsen's Fourth Symphony is one of the most vital and ex...)
Quotations:
Nielsen gave an account of his introduction to music: "I had heard music before, heard father play the violin and cornet, heard mother singing, and, when in bed with the measles, I had tried myself out on the little violin"
In an article in Politiken on 9 November 1925 he wrote:
If I could live my life again, I would chase any thoughts of Art out of my head and be apprenticed to a merchant or pursue some other useful trade the results of which could be visible in the end . .. What use is it to me that the whole world acknowledges me, but hurries away and leaves me alone with my wares until everything breaks down and I discover to my disgrace that I have lived as a foolish dreamer and believed that the more I worked and exerted myself in my art, the better position I would achieve. No, it is no enviable fate to be an artist.
He wrote to the Dutch composer Julius Röntgen in 1909 "I am surprised by the technical skills of the Germans nowadays, and I cannot help thinking that all this delight in complication must exhaust itself. I foresee a completely new art of pure archaic virtue. What do you think about songs sung in unison? We must go back . .. to the pure and the clear. "
The composer himself wrote "The intervals, as I see it, are the elements which first arouse a deeper interest in music . .. [I]t is intervals which surprise and delight us anew every time we hear the cuckoo in spring. Its appeal would be less if its call were all on one note. "
Quotes from others about the person
The musicologist Niels Krabbe describes the popular image of Nielsen in Denmark as being like "the ugly duckling syndrome" – a reference to the tale of the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen – whereby "a poor boy . .. passing through adversity and frugality . .. marches into Copenhagen and . .. comes to conquer the position as the uncrowned King".
In his Lives of the Great Composers, the music critic Harold Schonberg emphasizes the breadth of Nielsen's compositions, his energetic rhythms, generous orchestration and his individuality.
In comparing him with Jean Sibelius, he considers he had "just as much sweep, even more power, and a more universal message".
The Oxford University music professor Daniel Grimley qualifies Nielsen as "one of the most playful, life-affirming, and awkward voices in twentieth-century music" thanks to the "melodic richness and harmonic vitality" of his work.
After his death, his wife was commissioned to sculpt a monument to him, to be erected in central Copenhagen. She wrote: "I wanted to take the winged horse, eternal symbol of poetry, and place a musician on its back. He was to sit there between the rushing wings blowing a reed pipe out over Copenhagen. "
After arriving in Paris in early March 1891 Nielsen met the Danish sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen, who was also travelling on a scholarship. They toured Italy together and married in St Mark's English Church, Florence, on 10 May 1891 before returning to Denmark.
Nielsen had five children, two of them illegitimate. He had already fathered a son, Carl August Nielsen, in January 1888, before he met Anne Marie.
In 1912, an illegitimate daughter was born – Rachel Siegmann, about whom Anne Marie never learned.
With his wife Nielsen had two daughters and a son. Irmelin, the elder daughter, studied music theory with her father and in December 1919 married Eggert Møller (1893–1978), a medical doctor who became a professor at the University of Copenhagen and director of the polyclinic at the National Hospital.
