1865–1931 · Denmark · Romantic
Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) was a Danish composer, violinist, conductor and music teacher, one of the leading figures of Danish culture. He wrote six symphonies, concertos for violin, flute and clarinet, two operas and chamber music. The site offers pianists his piece Canto Serioso, at an upper-intermediate level.
Carl Nielsen was born on 9 June 1865 into a poor peasant family on the island of Funen, south of Odense. He was the seventh of twelve children. His father, Niels Jørgensen, worked as a house painter and also played the fiddle and the cornet, and he was in demand at local celebrations. According to the composer's own recollections, his mother often sang folk songs to him in his childhood.
From the age of eight the boy studied the violin, and around that time he made his first attempts at composing. Later he told the story of his childhood in the autobiographical book My Childhood on Funen. His parents saw no future for him in music, and at fourteen he was apprenticed to a shopkeeper in a nearby village. By midsummer the shopkeeper had gone bankrupt, and the boy had to go back home.
Brass instruments came next. On 1 November 1879 Nielsen joined the band of the 16th Battalion in Odense as a bugler and alto trombonist, and he stayed with it for four years. The violin stayed part of his life: back home he played at dances with his father, and from 1881 Carl Larsen, a church official at Odense Cathedral, gave him private lessons.
In May 1883 he managed to visit Copenhagen and meet the leading musicians of the day, among them the composer Niels Gade. Gade spoke approvingly of the young man's compositions, a piano trio, a string quartet and a violin sonata, and advised him to apply to the Royal Academy of Music.
Nielsen attended the Academy from early 1884. Valdemar Tofte taught him the violin, and Niels Gade taught him theory and composition; Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann and Orla Rosenhoff also gave him instruction in theory. He was not an outstanding student and wrote little music then, but he gained a firm theoretical foundation and acquaintances among cultured families in Copenhagen, several of whom stayed his friends for life. He left the Academy in 1886.
His Suite for Strings, which he himself designated as Op. 1, was first performed in the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen on 8 September 1888. It was his first real success, and a month later Nielsen conducted it himself in Odense; it was the first of his pieces that he conducted.
Nielsen became a second violinist in the orchestra of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, where he stayed until 1905. There he took part in the Danish premieres of Verdi's Falstaff and Otello. The post sometimes frustrated him badly, but it brought a regular income. Within a year he won a scholarship of 1,800 kroner and spent several months travelling around Europe.
During his journeys through Germany, France and Austria he became acquainted with the music of Wagner and Richard Strauss, heard leading European orchestras and soloists, and met Brahms, Busoni and the painter Edvard Munch. His acquaintance with Ferruccio Busoni began in Leipzig in 1891, and the two corresponded for over three decades.
In Paris in early March 1891 Nielsen got to know Anne Marie Brodersen, a Danish sculptor who was also abroad on a scholarship. Together they travelled round Italy, and on 10 May 1891 they were married at the English church of St Mark in Florence. Anne Marie later became known under the name Carl-Nielsen.
Nielsen's first major works include the First Symphony in G minor, the cantata Hymnus Amoris, several string quartets and a number of piano pieces, which at first had little success. The First Symphony was first performed on 14 March 1894 under Johan Svendsen, and Nielsen himself sat in the second violins. When it was played in Berlin in 1896 it was a great success and contributed significantly to his reputation. The cantata Hymnus Amoris was first performed on 27 April 1897 at the Musikforeningen (Music Society) in Copenhagen.
A new creative period began in 1901 and brought his first opera, Saul and David, along with the Second Symphony, The Four Temperaments. Around then Nielsen began to receive a small state pension that topped up his violinist's pay. As a result he gave up private pupils and could devote more time to composing. From 1903 his chief publisher, Wilhelm Hansen Edition, also paid him a yearly retainer.
Family life was not easy. Anne Marie pursued her own career and spent months away from home in the 1890s and 1900s, while Nielsen was left with their three young children, composing and working at the theatre. In March 1905 he suggested a divorce, but despite long periods of separation the couple stayed married for the rest of his life.
From the beginning of the twentieth century Nielsen began to conduct, and this work continued until the end of his life. In 1906 he conducted the first performance of his opera Maskarade, based on a comedy by Ludvig Holberg. From 1905 to 1914 he was second conductor at the Royal Theatre, and from 1914 to 1926 he conducted the orchestra of the Musikforeningen.
From the early 1910s his name became known in Europe thanks to the Third Symphony, Sinfonia Espansiva, and the Violin Concerto written in 1911. In these years he turned to folk and sacred music and made a number of folk-song arrangements. From 1916 Nielsen taught at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen and worked there until the end of his life.
The Fourth Symphony, The Inextinguishable (1916), and the Fifth (1922) were written under the impression of the First World War. The Fourth was first performed in Copenhagen in February 1916, two weeks after it was completed. In 1916–1922 Nielsen often lived on Funen and retreated to the Damgaard and Fuglsang estates. It was a period of creative crisis. In 1916 the couple began separation proceedings, and in 1919 they separated by mutual consent.
The last period of his work covers 1921–1931. It produced the Wind Quintet, the concertos for flute and clarinet, the Sixth Symphony, Sinfonia semplice, and choral and organ works; he wrote the Sixth in 1924–1925. In 1925 Nielsen suffered a serious heart attack and had to cut back on his concert appearances, but he went on composing. That year he turned sixty: the Swedish government decorated him, Copenhagen held a gala concert and reception, and in the same year he became a Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog.
He wrote prose as well: his book of critical essays, Living Music, came out in 1925, and the autobiographical My Childhood on Funen in 1927, which Erik Clausen filmed in 1994. The flute concerto (1926) and the clarinet concerto (1928) were his last large-scale orchestral works, and his very last composition was the organ work Commotio.
Following a series of heart attacks, Nielsen was taken to Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet on 1 October 1931, and at ten past midnight on 3 October he died there with his family around him. He lies in Vestre Cemetery in Copenhagen, and every piece of music heard at his funeral, hymns included, was his own. His wife, a sculptor, was buried next to him in 1945; the monument to Nielsen that she designed was unveiled in 1939.
The main concert hall in the Odense Concert Hall, the principal venue of the Odense Symphony Orchestra, is named in his memory. Since 1980 Odense has hosted the Carl Nielsen International Competition for young violinists, flautists, clarinettists and organists from different countries.
Nielsen's work is divided into periods. His first major works, the First Symphony, the cantata Hymnus Amoris, string quartets and piano pieces, date from the 1890s. A new period began in 1901 with operas, the Second Symphony and conducting work. From the early 1910s the composer became known across Europe, and the peaks of those years are considered to be the Fourth and Fifth symphonies. The last decade of his life, 1921 to 1931, brought the Wind Quintet, the flute and clarinet concertos and the Sixth Symphony.
Nielsen wrote more than 160 works. His main genre was the symphony: there are six of them, and the composer's style changes noticeably from one to the next. The First is in G minor, the Second is called The Four Temperaments, the Third is Sinfonia Espansiva, the Fourth is The Inextinguishable and the Sixth is Sinfonia semplice. The Fourth and the Fifth are the best known: both were written under the impression of the First World War, and the Fifth is regarded as one of Nielsen's most innovative works and a transition to his late period.
The concerto holds an important place in his work. The Violin Concerto of 1911 was written in his middle period, while the concertos for flute (1926) and clarinet (1928) with orchestra are popular and remain in musicians' repertoire to this day. The Wind Quintet also belongs to the late period. The violin was Nielsen's own instrument: he began learning it at the age of eight and later played in the orchestra of the Royal Theatre.
Nielsen wrote two operas. The first, Saul and David, belongs to the period that began in 1901, and Maskarade, based on a comedy by Ludvig Holberg, was first staged in 1906. He also created the cantata Hymnus Amoris, a number of folk-song arrangements and sacred music, and in his last years choral and organ works. He regarded Commotio, Op. 58, as one of his most important works.
Nielsen's chamber and vocal works are widely known in Denmark. For pianists the site currently has one of his pieces, Canto Serioso (FS 132) for solo piano, at the upper-intermediate level.