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Carl Nielsen

Carl August Nielsen (Danish: [ˈkʰɑˀl ˈne̝lsn̩]; 9 June 1865 – 3 October 1931) was a Danish composer, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his country's most prominent composer.

For other uses, see Carl Nielsen (disambiguation).

Carl Nielsen

(1865-06-09)9 June 1865

3 October 1931(1931-10-03) (aged 66)

Copenhagen, Denmark

Brought up by poor yet musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age. 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 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 Danish Academy and continued to work there until his death.


Although his symphonies, concertos and choral music are now internationally acclaimed, Nielsen's career and personal life were marked by many difficulties, often reflected in his music. The works he composed between 1897 and 1904 are sometimes ascribed to his "psychological" period, resulting mainly from a turbulent marriage with the sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen. Nielsen is especially noted for his six symphonies, his Wind Quintet and his concertos for violin, flute and clarinet. In Denmark, his opera Maskarade and many of his songs have become an integral part of the national heritage. His early music was inspired by composers such as Brahms and Grieg, but he soon developed his own style, first experimenting with progressive tonality and later diverging even more radically from the standards of composition still common at the time. Nielsen's sixth and final symphony, Sinfonia semplice, was written in 1924–25. He died from a heart attack six years later, and is buried in Vestre Cemetery, Copenhagen.


Nielsen maintained the reputation of a musical outsider during his lifetime, both in his own country and internationally. It was only later that his works firmly entered the international repertoire, accelerating in popularity from the 1960s through Leonard Bernstein and others. In Denmark, Nielsen's reputation was sealed in 2006 when four of his works were listed by the Danish Ministry of Culture amongst the greatest pieces of Danish classical music. For many years, he appeared on the Danish hundred-kroner banknote. The Carl Nielsen Museum in Odense documents his life and that of his wife. Between 1994 and 2009 the Royal Danish Library, sponsored by the Danish government, completed the Carl Nielsen Edition, freely available online, containing background information and sheet music for all of Nielsen's works, many of which had not been previously published.

Reception[edit]

Unlike that of his contemporary, the Finn Jean Sibelius, Nielsen's reputation abroad did not start to evolve until after World War II. For some time, international interest was largely directed towards his symphonies while his other works, many of them highly popular in Denmark, have only recently started to become part of the world repertoire.[95] Even in Denmark, many of his compositions failed to impress. It was only in 1897 after the first performance of Hymnus amoris that he received support from the critics,[23] to be substantially reinforced in 1906 by their enthusiastic reception of Masquerade.[96]


Within two months of its successful premiere at the Odd Fellows Concert Hall in Copenhagen on 28 February 1912, the Third Symphony (Espansiva) was in the repertoire of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and by 1913 it had seen performances in Stuttgart, Stockholm and Helsinki. The symphony was the most popular of all Nielsen's works during his lifetime and was also played in Berlin, Hamburg, London and Gothenburg.[97][98] Other works caused some uncertainty, even in Denmark. After the premiere of the Fifth Symphony (1922) one critic wrote: "The treasure of Danish symphonies and Carl Nielsen's own output have been enriched by a strange and highly original work." Another, however, described it as a "bloody, clenched fist in the face of an unsuspecting snob audience", also qualifying it as "filthy music from trenches".[26]


At the end of the 1940s two major biographies of Nielsen appeared in Danish,[99] dominating opinion of the composer's life and work for several decades.[100] Robert Simpson's book Carl Nielsen, Symphonist (first edition 1952) was the earliest large-scale study in English.[101]


An international breakthrough came in 1962 when Leonard Bernstein recorded the Fifth Symphony with the New York Philharmonic for CBS. The recording helped Nielsen's music to achieve appreciation beyond his home country and is considered one of the finest recorded accounts of the symphony.[102][103] Nielsen's centenary in 1965 was widely celebrated, both in terms of performances and publications, and Bernstein was awarded the Sonning Prize for his recording of the Third Symphony.[104] In 1988 Nielsen's diaries and his letters to Anne Marie were published, and these, together with a 1991 biography by Jørgen Jensen using this new material, led to a revised objective assessment of the composer's personality.[105] Writing in The New York Times on the occasion of Nielsen's 125th anniversary in 1990, the music critic Andrew Pincus recalled that 25 years earlier Bernstein had believed the world was ready to accept the Dane as the equal of Jean Sibelius, speaking of "his rough charm, his swing, his drive, his rhythmic surprises, his strange power of harmonic and tonal relationships – and especially his constant unpredictability" (which Pincus believed was still a challenge for audiences).[106] Biographies and studies in English in the 1990s[107] helped to establish Nielsen's status worldwide,[108] to the point at which his music has become a regular feature of concert programming in Western countries.[109]


Writing in The New Yorker in 2008, the American music critic Alex Ross compares the "brute strength" of Nielsen's symphonies to Beethoven's Eroica and Fifth Symphony but explains that only now were the Americans slowly beginning to appreciate the Danish composer.[110]


Nielsen did not record any of his works.[111] However, three younger contemporary conductors who had worked with him, Thomas Jensen, Launy Grøndahl, and Erik Tuxen, did record his symphonies and other orchestral works with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra between 1946 and 1952. Jensen also made the first LP recording of the Fifth Symphony in 1954.[112] Work carried out by the recently published complete Carl Nielsen Edition has revealed that the scores used in these recordings often differ from the composer's original intentions and thus the supposed authenticity of these recordings is now debatable.[113]


There are now numerous recordings of all Nielsen's major works, including complete cycles of the symphonies conducted by, amongst others, Sir Colin Davis, Herbert Blomstedt and Sakari Oramo. Over 50 recordings have been made of Nielsen's Wind Quintet.[114]

. Musical America. 51 (15): 41. 10 October 1931. Retrieved 11 May 2020 – via RIPM.

"Carl Nielsen (Obituary)"

Lautrup, Charles (25 October 1931). . Musical America. 51 (16): 21. Retrieved 11 May 2020 – via RIPM.

"Art of Late Carl Nielsen Too Little Appriciated in America, says Compatriot (Tribute)"

Behrend, William (November 1931). . Die Musik (in German). 24 (2): 145. Retrieved 11 May 2020.

"Carl Nielsen †"

 – provides much detailed information on the composer and his works, including an overview of upcoming concerts

The Danish Carl Nielsen Society

at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)

Free scores by Carl Nielsen

in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)

Free scores by Carl Nielsen

. BBC Radio 3.

"Discovering Nielsen"

 – index page to introductory information on many of Nielsen's works from the Royal Danish Library

The Carl Nielsen Edition

at AllMusic

Carl Nielsen

at the Royal Danish Library

Carl Nielsen bibliography 1985–2008

Odense – "is a museum dedicated to the composer Carl Nielsen and to his wife, the sculptor Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen".

The Carl Nielsen Museum

Knud Jeppesen's 44 lectures, International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) (in Danish)

Carl Nielsen som symfoniker (1951–1954)