Transcript Scan 6
Sounding North: Music in Scandinavia 1865-1931 DANIEL GRIMLEY [email protected] Carl Nielsen, Modernist? Hepokoski: ‘generation of 1860s’ Modernism vs avant-garde? Key Dates 1914 1916 1922 1924 1925 1927 1928 Resigns from Royal Theatre. Collaboration with Thomas Laub, En snes Danske Viser (Danish songs) Fourth Symphony. Carl and Anne Marie begin separation proceedings Fifth Symphony. High School Songbook. Heart problems begin. Controversial performance of Fifth Symphony in Stockholm Sixtieth birthday celebrations. Sixth Symphony. Wilhelm Furtwängler conducts Fifth Symphony at ISCM Programme includes premiere of Bartók First Piano Concerto 3 Piano Pieces; Clarinet Concerto. Nielsen and the inextinguishable Composed 1914-16. Premiered 14 Jan 1916, cond. CN. Det Uudslukkelige [‘the inextinguishable’] 4 movements: cyclic structure CN to AMCN, 3 May 1914: I have an idea for a new work which has no programme, but which is to express what we understand by Life Urge or Life Expression — that is, everything that moves, that has the will to life, that cannot be called either bad or good, high or low, large or small, but simply ‘That which is life’ or ‘That which has the will to life’ — you understand, no particular idea of anything ‘magnificent’ or anything ‘fine and delicate’ or warm or cold (violent perhaps) but just life and motion, yet different, very different, but in a context, and sort of constantly flowing, in one great movement in one flow. I must have a word or a short title that says this; that will be enough. The Fifth Symphony 1 Composed 1920-22, premiered 24 Jan 1922, cond. CN Victor Bendix to CN, 25 January 1922 I came from your Sunday rehearsal drugged and melancholy, I came from the concert yesterday evening and ranted and raved over this filmatique symphony, this unclean trench-music, this brazen deception, this clenched fist in the face of a worthless, conservative and over-excited public, the proletariat en masse, that subserviently licks the hand coloured with the blood of its own nose! Stockholm Performance, 2 Jan 1924 [Nielsen’s] depiction of modern life with all is confusion, hatred, and conflict, all the uncontrolled cries of pain and ignorance—and the side drum’s martial rhythm in the background as the only source of discipline—gained, as the audience fled, a touch of almost diabolical humour. The Fifth Symphony 2 2 Parts Opening section (Tempo giusto) Sidedrum cadenza ‘Drøm og Daad’ [Dream and Deeds] Dunkle, hvilende kræfter, vaagne Kræfter [dark, resting forces, alert forces] War reference Free improvisation Organicism Second Part: destructive vs restorative fugues Finale rhetoric Sinfonia Semplice Composed 1925, 60th birthday celebrations First movement performed, Stockholm, 1 November Premiered 11 December, Copenhagen, cond. CN Meets Schoenberg, Nice, February Hears Stravinsky cond. Petrushka, Copenhagen, Jan 1925 4 movements: Tempo giusto Humoreske Proposta seria Theme and Variations Sinfonia Semplice: the ‘Humoreske’ CN in National Tidende, 9 Dec 1925: NT: What have you depicted in your new symphony? CN: Only purely musical problems. For the first time in my compositional career I have created a humoresque in a symphony. [It] begins with the three small percussion instruments, which gather together to wake the other, bigger instruments that lie asleep. These three small characters aren’t very smart, rather they are very childish, sweet and innocently small, and they begin with their blimme-limme-bim and then their bom-bom-bom … they become keener and keener, and finally rouse the others to play … the clarinets, the piccolo and the bassoons. But the small innocent instruments have no time at all for this modern music – they pound away to themselves: hold on, hold on, they say … and so they quickly do away with the modern music. But now the clarinet begins to play a little childlike melody, and the small instruments shut up and listen. The trombone, that great instrument, yawns and says: Baah, child’s food! The other instruments fall in again, there is a tussle in the music, which sounds briefly wrong and confused – and eventually the whole thing drifts away into nothingness again. That is the symphony’s humoresque. NT: What else does it contain? CN: In the first and third movements there are completely different musical thoughts, but in the finale they return in a theme and variations … at first it is completely simple, then increasingly animated, weightier – finally utterly baroque. Simpson vs Simpson (Carl Nielsen: Symphonist) First edition (1952): … thus ends Carl Nielsen’s last symphony, and it is, taken as a whole, bitterly disappointing in more senses than one. But perhaps it is so only in one sense after all, for its artistic shortcomings are so clearly the result of its emotional origin that even in its disjointedness it demonstrates Nielsen’s instinct to identify form with content. [p. 122] Second edition (1979): Whatever interpretation we may put on this symphony, it is of unique originality and consistency, with a power of organisation normally found only in the greatest composers. The heroism of its finale is less like that of the Eroica than it is like that of the second finale of the B flat quartet, op. 130 … If this symphony is no kind of summing up, it is deeply conclusive in its own terms. [pp. 135-6.] Commotio and the Idea of Late Style CN on Commotio (1931): The latin word, ‘Commotio’, fundamentally applies to all music, but the word is used especially here as an expression for self-objectification. Poul Hamburger’s analysis (1932): ‘Commotio’ means ‘with movement’, a title that would appear to be directed not towards tempo or performance, but rather towards the character of the inner content itself. The work does indeed appear in an almost completely free form[. … Its] fantasy never allows itself to be bound by any one single thematic train of thought for any length of time, so that the piece feels almost like a mighty mosaic of diverse formelements: flowing passages and powerful chord sequences alternate with cantabile or fugal episodes—movement, changeability, from first note till last.