Front Page
DENMARK
───────────────────────────────────────
Introduction
Historically, Denmark has been a Scandinavian
country looking over its shoulder at the more dominant mainland
European cultures, usually Germany, but sometimes France. A
leading Danish Romantic composer was Johann Peter Emelius Hartmann
(1805-1900, not to be confused with the German Karl Hartmann),
who came from a family with a Danish tradition of composition
stretching back to the 18th century and continued by the related
Niels Bentzon (born 1919). Hartmann is best remembered
for his songs (often drawing on Old Norse literature) and his
operas, two of which had librettos by Hans Christian Andersen.
One of his most nationalist works was the folk ballet Et
Folkesagn, written in collaboration with his son-in-law,
the best-known of the 19th-century Danish composers, Niels Wilhelm
Gade (1817-1890). The foundation of Gade's output are eight
symphonies, now largely forgotten but quite widely admired in
their time, and Gade was an important teacher and influence
on the following generation of Danish composers. The dominant
figure of this generation was of Carl Nielsen (1865-1931),
who with Sibelius is the most important Scandinavian
composer of any age, and who provided a crucial link between
the symphonies of Brahms and Dvořák and the later
20th century. His contemporary August Enna (1859-1939) was once
widely known for his sentimental opera, based on Andersen, The
Little Match Girl (1897). The French influence appeared
in the next generation, notably in the vivacious music of Knudage
Riisåger (born in Estonia, 1897, died 1974), who studied
with Roussel, and admired the Gallic wit of `Les
Six'. He is best-known for his sparkling Concerto for Trumpet
and String Orchestra (1933) and his ballet music, including
Qarrtsiluni (1938), originally a purely orchestral score
but turned into a celebrated ballet in 1942; the work was inspired
by the writings of the Arctic explorer Knud Rassmussen, and
the title is an Inuit word referring to the silence of expectation
before the summer sun returns after the long night of the Arctic
winter. Jørgen Bentzon (1897-1951) looked more to Germany
and Hindemith, and was the first Danish modernist composer,
experimenting, largely in chamber music, with what he called
`character polyphony', exploiting the character of a particular
instrument by assigning material suited to that character, and
different (simultaneous) material suited to the character of
each other instrument, or group of instruments. The development
of this concept is to be found in a chamber series Racconto
(No.1, 1935), but he gradually mellowed this style and toned
down the experimentation, partly motivated by his democratic
political ideals, leading to such works as the Dickens Symphony
(1939). The most unusual composer of this generation, who has
recently received more attention, is the mystical maverick Rued
Langgaard (1893-1952).
The only one of this generation of composers
to receive more than a passing attention outside Denmark has
been Vagn Holmboe (born 1909), whose idiom recognisably
follows on from Nielsen, but who has forged an individual
voice in his symphonies and string quartets. Like Nielsen the
sense of northern light in his orchestration could have only
come from a Scandinavian country. Both assimilate Danish folk-song,
which has long been recognised as an important element of Danish
culture, folk-songs being collected and studied as far back
as the late 18th century.
Holmboe has continued to forge his own
individual idiom, but two of the better-known Danish composers
have embraced a more European outlook, influenced by the development
of the avant-garde. Niels Viggo Bentzon (born 1919) has
produced a vast, eclectic, and uneven output, while Per Nørgård
(born 1932) has developed a personal, static idiom. Danish 12-tone
composers have included Jan Maegaard (born 1926), and the first
Danish serial work was Elegy (1953) for organ by Poul
Rovsing Olsen (1922-1982), who was influenced by non-European
musics, especially the classical rāgs of northern India;
the nonet Patet (1966), for example, is based on Indonesian
music and Watusi rhythms. Among the younger composers, Poul
Ruders (born 1949) is beginning to attract some attention. His
two-movement String Quartet No.2 suggested a composer
of promise whose textures echoed a distant influence of the
minimalists, also apparent in his Violin Concerto No.1
(1981), a tribute to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. In his Concerto
for clarinet and twin orchestras (1985) the soloist represents
the voice of humanity squeezed in an orchestral grip, and among
his other works is a trilogy of concertos with dramatic intent,
Drama-Trilogy, the last the Cello Concerto `Polydrama'
(1988).
It must be said that, in contrast to the other
Scandinavian countries, Denmark has been singularly reticent
about disseminating its music, and Nielsen is still far
too little known, especially in North America. Vagn Holmboe,
while admittedly likely to appeal to a narrower audience, has
not received the kind of international attention and performance
that he deserves, and the lesser composers can be difficult
to encounter.
Danish Music Information Centre:
Dansk Musik Information Centre
Graabroedre Torv 16
DK-1154 Copenhagen K.
Denmark
tel: +45 33 112066
fax: +45 33 322016
───────────────────────────────────────
BENTZON
HOLMBOE
LANGGAARD
NIELSEN
NØRGÅRD
───────────────────────────────────────
BENTZON Niels Viggo
born 24th August, 1919 at Copenhagen
died 25th April, 2000 at Copenhagen
───────────────────────────────────────
Niels Viggo Bentzon (not to be confused with
his cousin, the composer Jorgen Bentzon, 1897-1951), has been
a colourful figure in Danish composition, and his huge, sometimes
provocative, and uneven output has drawn on a very wide variety
of influences and sources. His earliest music was influenced
by Hindemith, but his discovery of Schoenberg,
partly through his activities as a pianist, led to the use of
12-tone principles, and he wrote a treatise on the technique
in 1950; it eventually became only one element in his eclectic
palette. From the late 1940s he also adopted the technique of
`metamorphosis', the continuous development and evolution of
material (a technique already employed by Holmboe), and
this informs much of his more conventional work. From the 1960s
his music took two directions: a continuation of the more mainstream
style, often tonally based, and a more avant-garde approach
that has included the use of pop and jazz, `happenings', and
unconventional performance venues. This latter aspect has been
very difficult to encounter outside Denmark. The consistent
features of this eclectic output have been an improvisatory
feeling, contrasting moods, and an often Classical or Baroque
basis of structure, especially variation form. The neo-classical
strain was exemplified in the concerto grosso impetus to the
Chamber Concerto (1948) for eleven instruments, coloured
by the use of three pianos, or in such works as the Pezzi
sinfonici (Symphonic Pieces, 1956), a work whose
architectural clarity and vigour is more impressive than its
rather colourless overall effect.
The works currently most widely admired (and
most likely to be encountered) date from before 1960, especially
his symphonies and piano sonatas, which now number at least
15 and 22 respectively. The Symphony No.3 (1947) is impressively
built from its opening, pastoral material, transforming it into
a number of effective themes. The Symphony No.4 `Metamorfosen'
(1948) builds on three themes heard at the outset, and was the
work which brought him more international attention. By the
time of Kronik om René Descartes (Feature Article
on René Descartes, 1975), his orchestral style had
absorbed some of the mainstream European elements originating
in the avant-garde; the four movements of the work reflect different
aspects of Descartes' philosophy and philosophical life, and
the moods of the work are as diverse as the stylistic sources,
and include a touch of tongue-in-cheek humour through instrumental
effects and a fairly dreadful jazz passage. Again, while one
can admire the inventiveness, there is a lack of strong character
in the music, especially for such a potent subject; but it has
some fine moments, and it shows the composer's fluency as well
as his flaws. The piano sonatas have something of the mercurial
quality and pianistic brilliance of Prokofiev, an influence
that Bentzon has acknowledged. Of his other piano music, The
Tempered Piano (1964) is a gigantic (80 minute) series of
twenty-four preludes and fugues using metamorphosis techniques,
and is one of a number of works that reflect Bentzon's appreciation
of Bach, including the Fifteen Two-Part Inventions (1964)
and the Fifteen Three-Part Inventions (1964), both for
piano. His later piano writing includes works for prepared piano.
Bentzon taught at the Århus Conservatory
from 1945 to 1949, and then at the Copenhagen Conservatory.
He has been active as a painter, writer and poet, and critic
as well as a composer.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include (from a huge output of some 500
works):
- 15 symphonies (No.4 Metamorfosen, No.5
Ellipsis, No.7 The Three Versions); Chamber
Symphony for 17 instruments; Sinfonia concertante
for 6 accordions and orch.
- accordion concerto; cello concerto; flute concerto;
oboe concerto; 15 piano concertos; violin concerto; Concerto
per Archi; Concerto for Six Percussion Players; Triple
Concerto for flute, oboe, bassoon and orch.; 6 Copenhagen
Concertos; Chamber Concerto for 11 instruments
- Feature Article on René Descartes,
Five Mobiles, Intrada, Mutationen, Pezzi
sinfonici, Symphonic Variations, Variazioni breve
and other works for orch.
- sonata for solo cello; Variations for
solo flute; horn sonata; 7 violin sonatas; 10 string quartets
- 22 piano sonatas; The Tempered Piano,
Toccata, Traesnit (Woodcuts) and other
works for piano; Paganini-Variations for piano, four
hands
- Variations for organ
- song cycle Shelley Songs; cantata Bonjour
Max Ernst; Sagn (Legend) for tenor, male chorus,
and orch.
- ballets Døren (The Door),
Jenny von Westphalen, Jubilaeumsballet, Kurtisanen
(The Courtesan) and Metafor (Metaphor)
- operas Die Automaton and Faust III
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Feature Article on René Descartes
(1975) for orchestra
Symphony No.4 Metamorphosen (1948)
───────────────────────────────────────
HOLMBOE Vagn
born 20th December 1909 at Horsens
died 1st September 1996 at Ramløse
───────────────────────────────────────
Vagn Holmboe has been the leading Danish symphonist
after Nielsen, and his considerable achievement has received
less general recognition than its deserves. Largely unaffected
by changing trends around him, his music shows a continuous
development and refinement of a personal idiom, seeking tauter
and more concentrated means of expression within parameters
established fairly early in his career. This unflinching attitude
left him somewhat isolated in the rapidly developing experimentation
of the 1960s, and partly accounts for his relative neglect,
though his development of symphonic structures and content places
him in the mainstream, and he is not in any sense an overtly
conservative composer.
The second reason for his neglect is the element
of a studied dryness in his style. The emergence of the emotive
in his music sometimes feels consequential to the concentration
on form; the emotions arise, so to speak, from the subconscious,
as if it is the play of forms that allows their expression.
This is the antithesis of a composer such as Shostakovich,
where form often has to contain a welter of expression, and
the interplay of the cerebral and the expressive in Holmboe's
music is not so immediately appealing. Symphonies and string
quartets are at the core of Holmboe's output, and they share
similar qualities and techniques.
His earlier music was influenced by Nielsen,
whose clarity of orchestration Holmboe has continued to develop,
and by Bartók, furthered by studies of folk-music
that Holmboe made in Rumania in the 1930s (his wife was Rumanian).
The more obvious residue of these influences died out by the
early 1950s. The chief feature of his idiom is a very Scandinavian
clarity, best compared to the quality of light in Northern lands,
with the sharp outlines, lack of hazy shadows, a starkness,
at times a draining of colour in a clear whitening brilliance,
sometimes a luminescence, that will be familiar to anyone who
has lived in northern latitudes. This, so inherent in Holmboe's
output, seems a clear case of an environmental influence on
the cast of the musical content, just as the dry reticence reflects
one particular but often-noted characteristic of those living
in such a quality of light. It is this that makes Holmboe such
a quintessentially Scandinavian composer.
The guiding principal behind Holmboe's structures,
fully developed by the time of the sixth string quartet and
the sixth symphony, has been described by him as `metamorphosis':
the continuous evolution and development of material, often
subtle and complex, from a theme or idea expressed at the beginning
of a work; the obvious antecedent is to be found in Sibelius's
Symphony No.7. When combined with the emotional reticence,
this can produce a strange effect in Holmboe's music: the feeling
of satisfaction or fulfilment on the completion of a Holmboe
work is often much greater than the individual events would
seem to warrant, even allowing for the haunting passages Holmboe
often produces. The ear has been carried on an aural journey,
even though the recognition on the part of the listener may
be purely subconscious, and has arrived at a destination created
by Holmboe's mastery of this technique. The other features of
this style are a rhythmic vitality, sometimes almost nervous;
melodies shaped by modal scales, at times allowing a line to
follow the key in the minor, while the main body pursues the
major (or vice versa - all these techniques are traceable back
to Nielsen); precise, clear orchestration of lean textures,
often sharply differentiating between members of sections of
the orchestra; and moods of controlled tension, of a luminosity
that reflects the wide spaces of northern latitudes, and sometimes
a Danish sense of humour, occasionally slightly sardonic or
melancholy. The overall effect is to invite us in to survey
the prospect he is offering, not the presentation of emotions
we are expected to share.
The Symphony No.1 (1935) uses chamber
forces, while the Symphony No.4 `Sinfonia sacra' is a
choral work, but the first of his symphonies to receive wider
attention was the three-movement Symphony No.5 (1944).
It exemplifies his clear, incisive lines, the forceful opening
movement sculpted with bold precision, especially in the compelling
climax. The slow movement, reminiscent of Nielsen, is
suffused with a noble quality, and includes a funeral march
with reiterated timpani strokes. The dark, polyphonic Symphony
No.6 (1947) developed Holmboe's technique of metamorphosis,
and is two taut movements, with a quote in the first movement
paying tribute to Nielsen's two-movement fifth symphony.
The Symphony No.7 (1950), again developing from the initial
germ material, is one of his finest. In one overall movement
divided into three sections, themselves linked by what Holmboe
called `intermedia', it opens with a section of penetrating
clarity and rhythmic vitality, including a suggestion of the
mawkish and moments of arresting delicacy, celesta and high
violins setting the atmosphere, woodwind carrying the progression.
The central slow section has touches of the limpid and the mysterious,
building up to the most luminous textures, and the final section
is forceful, arriving at what seems to be the climax of an ending.
The strings are held on from the climactic chord for a moment
of warmth, and then a marvellous equivalent to an epilogue emerges,
haunting, fragmented, and unforgettable. The much larger Symphony
No.8 `Sinfonia boreale' (1952) reverts to a more conventional
usage of thematic material, each of its four movements introducing
new themes, but within each movement using the principle of
thematic metamorphosis. The element of the mawkish or sardonic
again emerges in the second movement, the elegiac in the slow
movement. The three-movement Symphony No.10 (1970-1971)
is prefaced by quote from Walt Whitman referring to the mutability
of the universe, and the movements are separated by a general
pause rather than by breaks (a device Nielsen had also
used). Compared with the earlier symphonies, there is an added
texture, a layer of sound, from fluttering wind or strings,
replacing the silences between the orchestral sections, and
the symphony has something of the quality of contemplating the
stars suggested by its preface, with trumpet calls over long
dark lines and a weave of subdued patterns in the slow movement.
The typical nervous percussive tension is joined by a sense
of uplift and the expansive vista of the heavens in the last
movement. There is a new tone, too, in the warm textures of
the fine Symphony No.11 (1980), its opening (reminiscent
of Britten) setting a positive, unaggressive rhythmic
figure against the type of whirling textures found in the tenth
symphony. This rhythmic figure recurs in the symphony and is
devoid of the nervous tension found in earlier works. Slower
sections have a pastoral, almost bucolic, air, and the symphony
fades away with a mellow light not often found in Holmboe's
output.
Besides the symphonies, Holmboe has written a
number of other orchestral works, including a series of concertos
recalling the spirit of Bach's Brandenberg Concertos.
The restrained and thoughtful Cello Concerto (1974),
in five movements played without a break, is worth encountering.
Its dramatic opening, orchestral crashes against slow-spinning
figures led by the cello, belies the general mood, the lyrical
cello line weaving and often short-phrased; when the drama of
that opening does threaten to return, the cello, or at one point
dancing strings, usually lead it off into more ruminative or
light-hearted regions.
However, Holmboe's most important contribution
after the symphonies have been his string quartets, now numbering
twenty. They share the stylistic and procedural features of
the symphonies within the more intimate setting of the form,
and are characterized by the thoroughness with which they explore
their material. The String Quartet No.1 (1949) was influenced
by Bartók, and the String Quartet No.2
(1949) is lyrical, but Holmboe's individual voice emerged in
the concentrated String Quartet No.3 (1949), pitting
major triads against minor and with a chaconne at its centre,
and especially in the dark String Quartet No.4 (1953-1954,
revised 1956) and in the drive of the String Quartet No.5
(1954-1955). By the String Quartet No.6 (1961) Holmboe
had refined his technique of metamorphosis, and all the material
in its four movements is developed from the opening theme. The
next two string quartets are related. The String Quartet
No.7 (1964) shows a relaxation from its astringent predecessor
in its broader feel, with darker emotions in the adagio, while
the String Quartet No.8 (1965) returns to a five-movement
plan, with luminous clear textures, especially in the second
movement; Holmboe characterized the seventh as the stronger,
the eighth as the more lyrical and sturdy. Of the later quartets,
the String Quartet No.14 (1979), with its very stark
opening, occupies a refined, introspective and subdued world
analogous to that of the late quartets of Shostakovich.
Holmboe has also written a considerable body
of vocal music, including a series of works on biblical texts
written in the early 1950s under the collective title Liber
canticorum, of which the best known is the eight-part motet
Vanitas vanitatum (1953). While some are dry and austere,
others are warm and very beautiful, such as the luminous, undulating
polyphonic flow of Domine non superbit, or the folk-like
opening of Omnia flumina for six voices, a long line
over a drone conjuring the rivers of the title. Of his other
choral music, the spirited Three Inuit Songs (1956) for
the energetic combination of baritone, male chorus and timpani,
is worth discovering. The title refers more to the settings
of Eskimo poems than folk-music, for ethnomusicologically the
songs seem influenced more by North American native Indian music
than by Inuit music, but the combination of an earthy spontaneity
and Danish refinement is most effective.
Holmboe was music critic of Politiken
(1947-1955), and from 1950 taught at the Copenhagen Conservatory.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- 11 symphonies (No.3 Sinfonia rustica,
No.4 Sinfonia sacra, No.8 Sinfonia Boreale)
- cello concerto; 11 concertos for chamber orch.;
Concerto for Brass
- Epilogue, Epitaph, Monolith
and other works for orch.
- sonata for solo cello; sonata for solo flute;
Triade for trumpet and organ; 20 string quartets; Primavera
for flute, violin, cello and piano; Quartetto Medico
for flute, oboe, clarinet and piano; brass quintet; Notturno
for wind quintet
- Suono da bardo for piano; 2 sonatas
and 5 Intermezzi for guitar; Fabula II for organ
- songs including song cycle Moya for
high voice and piano; cantata Requiem for Nietzsche;
series Liber Canticorum for various unaccompanied choral
forces; Three Inuit Songs for baritone, male chorus and
timpani; Yrkingar (Six Faroese Songs) and other
works for chorus
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Cello Concerto (1974)
the string quartets
Symphony No.5 (1944)
Symphony No.7 (1950)
Symphony No.10 (1970-1971)
Symphony No.11 (1980)
Three Inuit Songs (1956) for baritone,
male chorus and timpani
───────────────────────────────────────
LANGGAARD Rued
Immanuel
born 28th July, 1893 at Copenhagen
died 10th July, 1952 at Ribe
───────────────────────────────────────
An eccentric, something of a visionary or a little
crazed (depending on your point of view), composer and organist
Rued Langgaard has started to receive more attention in his
native Denmark, and now occupies a place analogous to Havergal
Brian in Britain. His early music was Romantic, including
the Symphony No.4, Lovfald (The Fall of the Leaf, 1916),
but by the end of World War I he had started experimenting with
such devices as dissonant polyphony, tone-clusters and static
bodies of sonority, mostly prompted by the cosmic scope of his
themes (especially the clash between Good and Evil), mingling
the experimental with the conventional. This period included
Sfaerernes Musik (Music for the Spheres, 1918) for soprano,
chorus and orchestra, which opens with a tone-cluster but shows
his limitations in the handling of large-scale forms, the busy
and climactic Symphony No.6 `Det Himmelrivende' (Heaven-Storming,
1919), and the first stages of his major work, the one-act Expressionist
opera-oratorio Antikrist (AntiChrist, 1914-1936), based
on Revelations. However, by the middle of the 1920s, apparently
disenchanted with neo-classicism, he revered to the late-Romantic
style of his earlier works, while retaining the apocalyptic
and religious themes. His five string quartets (numbered 2 to
6; the material of No.1, 1914, was reworked in Nos.
4 & 5) originally date from 1914 to 1925, and
show a considerable stylistic diversity, from the emulation
of a passing train in No.2 to the late-Romantic style
of the last three. His piano music includes the Insectarium,
a collection of unusual miniatures describing various insects.
His major organ work is the Messis (Mass, 1934-1937),
an `organ drama' showing French organ and Romantic Nordic influences,
intended to be played over three evenings.
Much of the dating of Langgaard's work is obscure
due to his habit of multiple revisions. His music appears to
be a mixture of moments or ideas of interest and a vision quite
beyond his technical means; like many such visionaries, he has
passionate adherents.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- 16 symphonies (No.1 Klippepastoraler, No.2
Vaarbrud, No.4 Lovfal [The Fall of the Leaf],
No.6 Det Himmelrivende [Heaven-Storming], No.11
Ixion, No.13 Undertro, No.16 Syndflod af sol)
- 2 violin sonatas, 5 string quartets, Variations,
and other works for string quartet and other chamber music
- 2 piano sonatas (No.1 Afrundsmusik,
No.2 Ex est.); Insectarium and other piano works
- organ-drama in three parts Messis and
other organ works
- songs; Sfaerernes Musik (Music for the Spheres)
for soprano, chorus and orch.; opera-oratorio Antikrist (AntiChrist)
───────────────────────────────────────recommended
works:
opera Antikrist (1916-1936)
Symphony No.6 Det Himmelrivende (Heaven-Storming)
(1919)
───────────────────────────────────────
NIELSEN Carl August
born 9th June 1865 at Norre-Lyndelse
died 3rd October 1931 at Copenhagen
───────────────────────────────────────
Nielsen is the one Danish composer of unquestionable
international reputation. While Mahler took the symphony
to its late-Romantic culmination, it was Nielsen and his exact
contemporary Sibelius who took the form of the symphony
and sought new procedures to mould it into a rejuvenated genre.
Nielsen's output is relatively small but of consistently high
quality, and at its core lie the six symphonies, which, spread
over his compositional life, exemplify his artistic development.
Nielsen stands on the cusp of Romanticism, and
he represents not so much a reaction against the full lushness
of the late-Romantic idiom, but an evolution out of it, influenced
in part by his admiration for the crisp precision of the Classical
period. That precision is the hallmark of Nielsen's writing;
he increasingly stripped away the accumulations of the late-Romantic
idiom, so that ideas are less encumbered by a wealth of colour
effects and thick-textured detail, and every facet of the orchestra
has a precision of purpose. Yet at the same time, and using
these means, he could produce an atmosphere that was the legacy
of the Scandinavian Romantic heritage, in a tone-poem, or in
the equivalent of seascape or landscape painting in the symphonies.
What propels this aesthetic evolution is Nielsen's underlying
philosophy, which informs his music: a return to a more direct
and simple (but never simplistic) view of the human condition,
cutting away the accumulation of internal angst that was the
heritage of the German late-Romantics. Implicit in this is a
sense of hope, of the potentially positive outcome of any situation,
even when a sense of menace, distress, and sometimes titanic
conflict enters his music during and after the First World War,
which affected him deeply. These new emotions broadened his
emotional range and impact, a response to an external crisis
rather than the response to an internal crisis usually expressed
by the late-Romantics.
However, stripping away the accumulation of effect
of the late-Romantic idiom left a void in terms of the power
of emotional expression, especially as Nielsen was continuing
a tradition, rather than forging new technical means. Nielsen's
response was to develop those aspects he had at hand, particular
the harmonic. In his symphonies he utilized the principle of
progressive tonality, where the whole work (or a movement) would
end in a different key to that in which it began (a technique
also explored by Mahler). This has two main effects,
first a sense of momentum established by the progression of
keys to a new goal while the work is in progress, and second
a different atmosphere from the traditional symphonic harmonic
layout after the work is finished; instead of arriving back
where we started harmonically, having experienced various musical
events and emotions on the way, we now use those experiences
to arrive at a new destination. In addition, he increasingly
used polytonality (the simultaneous use of two or more keys)
as an element of the progression but also for conflict and for
expressive effect, two emotions overlapping. A third harmonic
idiom is his use of church modes and the pentatonic scale; this
has the aural effect of maintaining the tonal system while often
leaving the sense of key hovering between the major and the
minor, and it also colours the shape of his melodies. At the
same time Nielsen developed his use of light, spacious and precise
textures (though again he was quite willing to launch into thicker-textured
turbulent or descriptively evocative passages), so that, for
example, the use of glockenspiel in the Symphony No.6
creates a lightness and delicacy of texture. He had an awareness
of the potential and power of silences, far removed from late-Romanticism
and not emulated until much later, and developed the use of
the percussion section, in particular the snare-drum (side-drum).
On the one hand this instrument could inject the underlying
menace already mentioned; on the other, it is an harmonically
neutral instrument (since it has no recognizable pitch), and
can thus act independently of the progressions of tonality,
most obviously in the Symphony No.5 or in the Clarinet
Concerto. It also allows strongly emphasized rhythmic elements,
another area of development for Nielsen, culminating in the
Symphony No.5 (where a section of the important snare-drum
part is left to the performer, and not notated), but also clear
in the structural momentum generated by changing rhythmic ideas
in passages of the Symphony No.6. By the end of his life
Nielsen had arrived at a fluidity and ease of flow, with an
almost instinctive sense of the progress of event, that has
been disconcerting to those used to more conventional structuring
of material, but which can in hindsight be seen as prophetic
of later developments in music: a kind of self-permission for
controlled freedom of the larger cast combined with the precision
of detail that has been taken for granted in the second half
of the century.
Nielsen's earliest music was heavily influenced
by Niles Gade and Edvard Grieg, the main Scandinavian proponents
of Romanticism, and shows the same sunny disposition, in the
Little Suite op.1 (1888) for strings, still a popular
work, and the first two string quartets (1888, revised 1890).
The forceful String Quartet No.3 (1897-1898) shows his
command of counterpoint, and the warm String Quartet No.4
(1906, revised 1923), subtitled Piacevolezza, the increasing
influence of a Classical precision. But it is in the short tone-poems
that the Scandinavian Romantic legacy never completely abandoned
by Nielsen is best displayed; they also represent the element
of Danish tone-painting in his music. The Helios Overture
op.17 (1903) is a short and beautiful descriptive work inspired
by a Greek holiday, best described in Nielsen's own words: "Silence
and darkness - then the sun rises with a joyous song of praise
- it wanders its golden way - and sinks quietly into the sea."
Saga Drøm op.39 (1908) was inspired a passage
from the famous Icelandic Njal's Saga, in which Gunner
rides home, sleeps, and recounts a prophetic dream in which
he was pursued by wolves and had to fight them off. After the
slow opening that sets the landscape, the story is closely followed,
but concentrates on nature tone-painting and a dreamy atmosphere;
lovers of Sibelius's tone poems will enjoy this work.
Andante Lamentoso, Ved en ung Kunstners Baare (At
the bier of a young artist, 1910) for strings (originally
string quartet) is a powerful funeral tribute to the young painter
Oluf Hartmann. The finest of these orchestral works is Pan
and Syrinx op.49 (1918) for orchestra, which Nielsen described
as a `nature scene for orchestra', though it is a fiercely dramatic
work; it deserves to stand alongside the best of his symphonies.
It tells the story (from Ovid's Metamorphoses) of how
Pan got his pipes, chasing the unwilling nymph Syrinx until
the gods, taking pity on her, turned her into a reed. The music
again follows the story closely (and with such effects as the
bleating of Pan), but by this stage of his career Nielsen's
command of contrast in orchestral ideas and their more fragmentary
placement was highly developed, and percussion plays an important
colour and structural role. If Pan and Syrinx is the
finest of these works, easily the most immediately evocative
is An Imaginary Trip to the Faroes (En Fantasirejse
til Faerøerne, 1927). It opens with the dark swelling
of the grey North Sea, woodwind joining in to scatter light
on the crest of the waves, building up to a climax joined by
a marching bass, with vivid orchestration. Horns announce a
noble Faroese folk-song (Easter bells chimed softly)
over shimmering upper strings, taken up by the whole orchestra
and sighing away to the tinkle of the triangle. Suddenly the
piece bursts into a Faroese dance (surely land has been sighted),
with its own polytonal moment, the earlier quieter material
weaving in and out and creating the quiet close. This little
nature picture deserves to stand alongside Sibelius's
better-known shorter tone-poems, and would make a show-stopper
of an orchestral encore. But these orchestral works are essentially
Nielsen in a more relaxed, Romantic mood; it is in the six symphonies
that his genius is to be found.
The Symphony No.1 op.7 (1890-1892) is
the most derivative, showing the influence of Brahms and Dvořák,
unmistakable at the end of the first movement. But it is constructed
with great surety, displaying a spacious freshness, clean textures,
joy and vivacity in the finale; in the pastoral third movement
there is entirely individual writing in the suggestion of a
sudden storm in the falling flutes. It also introduced progressive
tonality (the first symphony to use the principle): although
the symphony is in G minor, the opening chord is that of C major,
the key in which the symphony ends. The Symphony No.2
op.16 (1901-1902), titled The Four Temperaments, was
inspired by paintings in Zealand depicting the four `humours',
choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic and sanguine, respectively
the mood of each of the four movements; the tonality moves from
B minor to A major. From the big, expansive opening and the
feeling of vitality and energy, through the nobility of the
opening of the third movement, turning into a more pastoral
vein, to the boldness of the finale, there is an analogy with
the kind of sound that Elgar was producing in the same
period. The Symphony No.3 `Sinfonia espansiva' op. 27
(Expansive, 1910-1911) for orchestra with soprano and
tenor has a philosophical content, the title referring to the
expansion of the mind and thus of the appreciation of life;
the progressive tonality of the whole symphony is announced
in harmonic evolution of the first movement (from D minor to
A major). This has tremendous force and energy, including a
majestic waltz, with passages that suggest that Nielsen had
absorbed the idiom of Mahler. The slow movement, coming
second, is a beautiful and atmospheric evocation that includes
a wordless soprano and tenor to add colour and texture. The
third movement is a wonderful dancing praise of the joys of
life, propelling its assured self-confidence into our laps with
exuberant brass, while the finale, again with hints of the dance,
arrives at a moment when all this heady vitality almost overwhelms
itself, the woodwind dying away exhausted. Slowly the dancing,
delighted atmosphere picks itself up again and eventually arrives
at a climactic assertion of the overall mood. No-one in a 20th-century
symphony has managed to express such a powerful and untroubled
assertion of the explosive joy of life and nature with such
a complete absence of banality or cliché. In the Symphony
No.4 `Inextinguishable' op.29 (1914-1916) the spirit of
vitality triumphant comes under threat from far darker and more
menacing material (a reflection of the events in Europe) and
has to strive to emerge; but its does, and hence the title of
the work. Nielsen makes a further expressive evolution of the
form, linking the four movements so that they are played continuously.
The menace is underlined by the use of timpani in the third
and fourth movements; in the last, the pair in the body of the
orchestra are joined by another at the side of the orchestra,
creating a stereophonic effect, and they have an important function
in the harmonic struggle, one of the earliest examples of percussion
being used for more than colour or effect. Technically, the
strife is characterized by the attempt to establish the key
of E major; expressively, the symphony moves from the statement
of a gentle pastoral theme in A major, heard near the beginning
of the first movement, to its triumphant full brilliance in
E major at the end of the work. In the journey is a reflective
slow movement, and two passages of great turbulence in the first
and last movements, both using fragments of themes already heard,
that display Nielsen's powers of precise control at their best.
The struggle inherent in the fourth symphony becomes palpable
in the Symphony No.5 op.50 (1921-1922); its entire cast
is a conflict between two ideas expressed musically in two tonal
centres, and indirectly by the construction in two massive movements.
Nielsen intended the opening, with violas repeating the interval
C - A, joined by pieces of the orchestra drifting in and out,
to express inertia or lack of purpose; what he actually produces
is a state of aimless anxiety, filled with insecurity and fears,
of which lassitude and inertia can be a psychological consequence;
this aspect of the symphony is centred around the key of F.
Its opposite, the energy of fulfilment, is centred on the key
of B (grating with F). That insecure opening is joined by martial
percussion, leading to a controlled menacing chaos, an emotionally
deadened world with the various sections of the orchestra at
odds with each other, both in terms of key and the fragments
of themes they use. That hollow world comes to a close as violas
infuse a warm, noble light over the frightened darkness, complete
with a fanfare. But the themes from the darkness return, building
up to a huge fantastical climax, a collage of minutely organized
material, the snare-drum, playing ad.lib., attempting to stop
the progress of the whole symphony. The snare-drum is silenced,
and this huge construction moves into a cathartic hymn, G major
triumphant, until, with mutters of the snare-drum, it moves
to an ending of calm but inconclusive clarity. That conclusion
is provided by the second movement, that opens with a joyous
and vital energy, though with discordant contributions from
the brass, builds in tension, and then relaxes into another
passage of uncertainty, the repeated notes of D recalling the
side-drum in the first movement. An inconclusive climax leads
to a fast fugue, itself inconclusive, which is swapped for the
slow, thoughtful, spare landscape of another fugue, moving the
symphony to its close, where the key of E flat major finally
triumphs in a great outpouring, silencing all the previous conflict.
In this marvellous symphony lies the primal opposition of the
20th century, between the propelling thrust to improve the lot
of humankind, and the forces of anger and anxiety that seek
to constrict it. The Symphony No.6 `Sinfonia semplice'
op.116 (1924-1925) is the culmination of this cycle. It is anything
but simple, except in the paring away of orchestral texture
and the remove at times to the most innocent of emotions, and
it has baffled many. However, it is first cousin to another
sixth symphony, that of Martinů, not in terms of
construction, but in terms of the instinctive exploration of
the conjunction and opposition of styles and material that the
composers had already assimilated in more conventional settings;
both composers originally gave their works sinfonia titles before
including them in their sequence of symphonies. The first movement,
opening with the sound of bells on the celesta, an idea that
will recur in the symphony when a calm is needed, is full of
lean textures (often only one or two instruments), passages
of almost deliberate naïveté, such as the march
at the opening, sections without any sense of key, or with clashes
of key, and a child-like atmosphere that suggests Nielsen might
have been remembering his childhood. Eventually it moves into
a disturbing, thick-textured climax resolved by the bell sounds,
only to return to the disturbing, polytonal mood. The extraordinary
second movement has no match in the literature of the symphony
until Shostakovich's fifteenth symphony, a world that
suggests the puppet theatre or the toy store. The third movement,
with its searching, anguished string ostinati, unfolds a seascape
of the grey sea seen from the flat Jutland shoreline with its
limitless sky, anticipating Britten's `Sea Interludes'
from Peter Grimes. This pre-echo is reinforced by the
woodwind opening of the last movement (an almost identical figure
is to be found at the opening of Britten's opera), and it is
as if, ushered by horn calls, we are moving inland, until a
furious passage recalls the previous movement. From this point
the symphony moves on to a new plane of expression, from a sardonic,
mawkish march to an atmosphere of disjointed ideas and points
of colour, together with moments of jovial rhythm, the theme
from the more furious passage, and textures of minute delicacy.
It is as if the ideas in the symphony had been taken apart into
fragments, and left with their essence, with a sense of logic
that is haunting and instinctively appropriate, the silence
between the fragments of crucial importance, as if we were being
let into a world whose emotions we are being offered, but whose
deepest significance remains with the composer.
Nielsen also wrote three concertos that have
hovered on the periphery of the repertoire. The Violin Concerto
op.33 (1911) shows Nielsen actually sitting on that cusp of
the emergence from late-Romanticism, for much of the writing
has a Romantic limpidity and beauty of line, reflecting Nielsen's
own prowess as a violinist. The first movement is preceded by
a slow introduction (where that Romantic atmosphere is prominent),
moving from G major to D minor (the progressive tonality of
the whole concerto); the body of the movement is attractive,
relatively conventional and, like the finale, not exceptionally
inspired. The slow movement is deliberately simple and lyrical,
with a Romantic sense of nostalgia, and acts as a slow introduction
to the linked finale. The Flute Concerto op.119 (1926)
is a lovely and straightforward work, with a refined delicacy
in the solo writing and a small orchestra to give clear textures.
Its generally pastoral air has a covering of a touch of the
martial and the more ruggedly emphatic; the grace of a classical
dance appears, ending up with a restrained humour, the trombone
prominent. The Clarinet Concerto op.57 (1928) combines
neo-classical orchestral writing with florid, bold solo writing,
with some extraordinary effects, such as the combination of
clarinet and snare-drum, which sometimes acts as a kind of counter-instrument
to the soloist, sometimes as a link between soloist and orchestra.
The solo line often has little sense of key, in contrast to
the orchestra; like the Symphony No.6, this is not an
easy work on first encounter, but a rewarding one. These last
two concertos deserve more prominence, especially as the repertoire
of flute and clarinet concertos is relatively limited.
Nielsen's two operas have both remained in the
Danish repertoire, but are less well-known outside Denmark.
Saul and David (1898-1901), whose libretto by Einar Christiansen
is based on the biblical story (with a bass for Saul), concentrates
on the psychological conflict between the two, and ends with
David's coronation. With a relatively taut four-act plot (the
Witch of Endor scene is notably dramatic), it contains fine
music in the idiom of the period of the second symphony, especially
in the choral writing, which has given it the unjustified reputation
of being more an oratorio than an opera. Its neglect stems in
part from the difficulties of exporting an opera in the Danish
language, and in part from its now-unfashionable biblical subject.
His three-act comic opera Maskarade (1904-1906)
to a libretto by Vihelm Andersen, has recently become much better
known. It is based on a classic Danish comedy by Ludvig Holberg
(1684-1754), and the opera itself has become a symbol of Danish
cultural nationalism, though it is no sense an opera of nationalist
sentiments. The opera is set in 1723, and opens with the hero
Leander discussing his love life with his valet Henrik. The
previous night Leander had fallen in love with an unknown woman
at the Masquerade (the delight of the younger generation, the
bane of the older), and they exchanged rings. However, Leander's
father has promised him to another, whose father reveals that
his daughter had a similar experience the previous evening.
In the quartet that ends the first Act, the two generations
quarrel over the Masquerade, which will continue that night.
The second Act introduces the swirl of all the different kinds
of people who are on their way to the Masquerade. Leander and
Henrik, who had been locked up by Leander's father to prevent
them attending the Masquerade, escape to join in the fun. In
the complex last Act, which includes the entertainments of the
Masquerade within the opera, the eventual unmaskings inevitably
reveal that the unknown woman is actually the person Leander
is slated to marry; but they also reveal the presence of his
father, and, unknown to either of them, his mother. In the music
for this zestful little comedy, Nielsen reverts to the spirit
of the Classical comic opera within the means of the early 20th
century, anticipating a similar inspiration for Strauss
and von Hoffmannsthal in Der Rosenkavalier. This inspiration
is immediately obvious from the overture and the orchestral
interludes, often heard on their own (though the lovely prelude
to Act II has its own antecedents in Scandinavian musical tone-painting),
while the role of Henrik has parallels with that of Figaro,
especially when he has to have the final word. Allied to this
was Nielsen's growing interest in folk-song, which indirectly
colours much of the vocal writing, overtly in such arias as
Jeronimus' `Fordum var der Fred paa Garden'. Those expecting
a similar style to the symphonies will be disappointed (the
Strauss-Hofmannsthal comedies perhaps provide the closest
parallel), but this opera is full of delights, the characters
drawn with warmth, humour and understanding, and only the absence
of the kind of deeper comic-tragedy that is found in Mozart
or Strauss prevents a more considerable achievement.
The attractive and unassuming little Aladdin Suite op.34,
drawn from Nielsen's incidental music (1918) to the play by
Adam Oehlenschlager (1779-1850), may also be encountered; it
has something of the grace, colour and dancing swirl of Tchaikovsky's
ballets, combined with many exotic touches in keeping with its
subject.
Of Nielsen's other music, his songs increasingly
moved away from the art song to an equivalent of folk-forms,
and many have become generally popular in Denmark. More serious
in content are the Three Motets op.55 (1929) for chorus,
Nielsen's last major work, which are settings of the Psalms
in Latin. There are also two major later piano works which show
how far Nielsen had travelled in the evolution of his idiom.
The Suite op.45 (1920) for piano, his finest piano work,
has six contrasting sections rather than the formal layout of
a conventional suite, and is harmonically restless and experimental,
while the Tre Klaverstykken op.59 (Three Piano Pieces,
1928) have been compared to Bartók in their suggestion
of atonality and the use of embryonic tone-clusters. His major
organ work, Commotio op.58 (Movement, 1931), is
an important contribution to the organ literature, in toccata
form. The genial Wind Quintet op.43 (1922) was written
for the Copenhagen Wind Quintet, and the variations that create
the finale reflect the different characters of the members of
the Quintet in the writing for their own instrument (the flute
and clarinet concertos were intended to be part of a series
of five for the same players). In the prelude to the finale
the cor anglais replaces the oboe, and the eleven variations
include discourse and argument between the instruments, as well
as two unaccompanied variations (for bassoon and for horn).
Nielsen's music is still woefully neglected outside
Scandinavia; he has suffered in the reaction against the post-Romantics
observable from the 1960s onwards (Sibelius has suffered
a similar neglect), and his innovations and his highly individual
voice in the late works have not yet been fully recognized.
Yet his influence has been more considerable that is suggested
by his current position, most directly on Shostakovich
(there are close connections between the last symphonies of
both composers), and on Britten: those familiar with
the latter's work will find many stylistic echoes in Nielsen's
later music. Similarly, the experience of Nielsen's fifth lies
behind Vaughan Williams's sixth symphony. Less directly,
Martinů extended the principle of progressive tonality,
with the same goal of the search for hope in any situation.
As the century draws to a close, it is becoming clear that Nielsen's
fifth and sixth symphonies join those from Mahler, Sibelius,
Vaughan Williams, Martinů and Shostakovich
in providing the core 20th-century works in which the combination
of technical fascination and an expression of the human condition
that is the goal of the form of the symphony have been most
fully realised.
Nielsen was conductor of the Copenhagen Royal
Orchestra from 1904-1914, assistant conductor at the Royal Opera
(1908-1914), and regularly conducted the Göteborg Symphony
Orchestra in Sweden between 1918 and 1922. He taught at the
Copenhagen Conservatory (1915-1919), having joined its governing
board in 1914.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- 6 symphonies (No.2 The Four Temperaments,
No.3 Sinfonia espansiva, No.4 The Inextinguishable,
No.6 Sinfonia semplice)
- clarinet concerto; flute concerto; violin concerto
- Andante lamentoso, Helios Overture,
rhapsody overture An Imaginary Trip to the Faroe Islands
(En Fantasirejse til Faerøerne), Pan and Syrinx,
Saga-Drøm (Gunnar's Dream) for orch.; Little
Suite for strings
- Prelude with Them and Variations and
Preludio e Presto for solo violin; Canto serioso
for horn and piano; Fantasy pieces for oboe and piano;
2 violin sonatas; 4 string quartets; string quintet; wind quintet;
Serenta in vano for three winds, cello and double-bass
- Chaconne, Five Piano Pieces (Fem
Klaverstykker), Humorous Bagatelles, Piano Music
for Young and Old (Klavermusik for små og store);
Suite, Symphonic Suite, Theme with Variations,
Three Piano Pieces (Tre Klaverstykken) for piano;
Festival Prelude for piano or organ
- many preludes and Commotio for organ
- song cycles Holstein Songs and Jacobsen
Songs; many other songs; Springtime on Funen (Fynsk
Forar) for soloists, chorus and orch.; Three Motets
for chorus and other choral works
- operas Maskarade and Saul and David;
incidental music to Aladdin and The Mother (Moderen)
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Clarinet Concerto op.57 (1928)
Commotio op.58 for organ
Flute Concerto op.119 (1926)
tone-poem An Imaginary Trip to the Faroe Islands
(1927)
tone-poem Pan and Syrinx op.49 (1918)
tone-poem Saga Drøm op.39 (1908)
String Quartet No.4 (1906, revised 1923)
Suite op.45 (1920) for piano
Symphony No.1 op.7 (1890-1892)
Symphony No.2 The Four Temperaments op.16
(1901-1902)
Symphony No.3 Sinfonia espansiva op.27
(1910-1911)
Symphony No.4 Inextinguishable op.29 (1914-1916)
Symphony No.5 op.50 (1921-1922)
Symphony No.6 Sinfonia semplice op.116
(1924-1925)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
R.Simpson Nielsen, 1979
───────────────────────────────────────
NØRGÅRD
Per
born 13th July, 1932 at Gentofte
───────────────────────────────────────
Per Nørgård has through his own
experimentation and through his teaching, particularly at Århus
Conservatory, established himself as the most important and
influential Danish composer of his generation. His early music
was in a Scandinavian nationalist style, influenced by Sibelius
(the choral Aftonland, op.10), and then included neo-classical
features (Triptychon op.19 for chorus and organ or wind
instruments, 1957). The culmination of this period is Konstellationer
op.22 (Constellations, 1958) for twelve string solo
instruments or twelve string groups, a three-movement concertante
work that still shows the influence of his teacher Vagn Holmboe,
but which is rhythmically organised by serial techniques.
However, he became increasingly aware of developments
elsewhere in Europe, and after a series of pieces entitled Fragmenter
(1959-1961) he gradually developed what might be described as
a Minimalist style. Most characteristic is the continual contrapuntal
and rhythmic transformation of short motifs that nonetheless
remain recognisable. There is a concentration on colour and
texture, flexible rhythms, and the creation of a sense of static
repetition. He had used overlapping layers of different tempi
in the otherwise conventional Clarinet Trio op.15 (1955).
By Inscape (1969) for string quartet, the preoccupation
with texture had been established, and contrasts are provided
by different flexible rhythms. He had also developed the notion
of what he has called `infinite series' - a method of establishing
hierarchical relationships within a chromatic palette, and which
remains the same for each work even though the motivic series
may vary. This usually results in the repetition of the harmonics
of a particular note, adding to the sense of minimalism and
creating resonances that are generally more consonant than dissonant.
The basis of the method is to have elements of the series, which
is capable of an infinite and prescribed number of transformations,
running in parallel at different tempi. The principle is demonstrated
in Voyage into the Golden Screen (1968) for chamber orchestra,
while in Arcana (1970, revised 1975) for electric guitar,
amplified accordion and percussion the emphasis is on the timbral
merger of the instruments. The equally Minimalist Symphony
No.2 (1970-1971) uses the `infinite series' principle, in
a single movement using the first 4096 notes of the infinity
row, while concentrating on colour and texture. The effect is
of a slowly undulating variation of material, gradually evolving
more incident, lyrical or interjectory; there is no sense of
traditional symphonic development other than by the continuous
transformation. The static Symphony No.3 (1972-1975)
for chorus and orchestra is as questionable a 'symphony' as
its predecessor, and also concentrates on textures, using the
'infinity series' as well as the Golden Section for rhythmic
values.
In the early 1980s Nørgård's music
underwent a further change, adding more violent and dramatic
elements, following his discovery of the works of the schizophrenic
Swiss artist and writer Adolf Wolfli. The major work to reflect
this change was the collage- and mirage-like Symphony No.4
(1980-1981, subtitled, after Wolfli, Indischer Roosen-Gaarten
und Chinesischer Hexensee). Violent, sometimes brutal juxtapositions
of various styles and borrowings (including bird-song) reflect
the subject matter. Among his other works of the early 1980s
is the unusual Plutonium Ode for soprano and cello, a
passionate setting of Ginsberg's poem against nuclear power,
with a virtuoso cello part.
Nørgård has also written works designed
for teaching, in which he attempts to combine modern musical
styles with ease of playing or singing. He was music critic
for the Copenhagen Politiken (1958-1962), and taught at the
Odense Conservatory (1958-1961) and the Copenhagen Conservatory
(1960-1965) before establishing himself at Århus.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- 4 symphonies (No.1 Sinfonia austera,
No.4 Indischer Roosen-Gaarten und Chineesischer Hexensee)
- cello concerto Between
- Iris, Fragmenter I-IV, Konstellationer
(Constellations), Luna, Metamorphoses,
Voyage into the Golden Screen and other works for orch.
- Lila; trio Spell; 3 string quartets
(No.1 Quartetto Brioso, No.2 In Three Spheres,
No.3 Inscape); wind quintet Whirl's World; Bølger
(Waves), Energy Free, I Ching and Rondo
for percussion
- 2 piano sonatas; Achilles, Four Fragments,
Four Sketches, Grooving, Nine Studies and
other works for piano; Canon for organ
- vocal The Disturbing Duckling, Orbit, Winter
Cantata and Frost Psalms
- ballets Le jeune homme à marier
and Gipsy Tango
- operas The Divine Tivoli, Gilgamesh, Labyrinten
(The Labyrinth), Siddharta
- electronic The Enchanted Forest
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Symphony No.2 (1970)
Symphony No.3 (1972-1975) for chorus and orchestra
Symphony No.4 (1980-1981)
───────────────────────────────────────
