Tír Na HiFi

Following on from Claus’ recent thread on Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony which became a game breaker for me in terms of coming to a better understanding of that work I duly set myself a project of trying to come to grips with the elusive and enigmatic world of Nielsen’s Sixth Symphony. This is a work which I simply have never understood and it has always given me great difficulty. I do not think that I am alone in this!
Forever the optimist and having recent success with Nielsen 5 and Stravinsky to booth I strive onwards in my continued attempt to embrace the world of 20th century music and this work in particular. I have educated myself with knowledge from the internet and liner notes which I will lay before you below. My premise here is that a greater understanding of the music will come from knowing what was going on in Nielsen’s life at relevant times.


All comments, corrections and additional contributions will be gratefully received and accepted.

Carl Nielsen’s Life

Nielsen learned the violin and piano as a child and wrote his earliest compositions at the age of eight or nine: a lullaby, now lost, and a polka which the composer notated in his autobiography. He also learned how to play brass instruments, which led to a job as a bugler and alto trombonist in the 16th Battalion at nearby Odense. He studied violin, piano and theory at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen from the beginning of 1884 until December 1886. Though not an outstanding student there and composing little, he progressed well in violin under Valdemar Tofte and received a solid grounding in music theory from Orla Rosenhoff, who would remain a valued adviser during Nielsen's early years as a professional composer. The patchy education resulting from his country background left Nielsen insatiably curious about the arts, philosophy and aesthetics; it also left him, Faning writes, "with a highly personal, common man's point of view on those subjects".

Nielsen progressed well enough on the violin to gain a position with the orchestra of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen in September 1889, three years after his graduation from the conservatory. This position would sometimes cause Nielsen considerable frustration but he continued to play there until 1905. In between graduation and attaining this position, he gave violin lessons, made a modest income as a teacher and enjoyed continued support from patrons. Some of Nielsen's string chamber works were performed at this time; these included a Quartet in F which the composer considered his official debut as a professional composer. However he had a significant success with his Suite for Strings, which was performed at Tivoli Hall on 8 September 1888 which he designated his Opus 1.

After less than a year at the Royal Theatre, Nielsen won a scholarship allowing him the means to travel several months in Europe. During this time he discovered and abandoned Richard Wagner's music dramas, heard many of the leading orchestras and soloists in Europe and sharpened his opinions on both music and the visual arts. While revering the music of Bach and Mozart, he remained ambivalent about much 19th century music. In Paris he met the Danish sculptress Anne Marie Brodersen, who was also travelling on scholarship. They toured Italy together, marrying in Florence on 10 March 1891 before returning to Denmark.
"As well as being a love match," Fanning writes, "it was also a meeting of minds. Anne Marie was a gifted artist.... She was also a strong-willed and modern-minded woman, determined to forge her own career." This determination would strain the Nielsens' marriage, as Anne Marie would go for months on location during the 1890s and 1900s, leaving Carl to raise their three young children while fitting in his duties at the Royal Theatre and time to compose. While Carl suggested divorce in March 1905, the Nielsens remained married for the remainder of the composer's life. Carl sublimated his anger and frustration over his marriage in a number of musical works, most notably between 1897 and 1904, a period to which he sometimes referred as his "psychological" period.
At first, he did not gain enough recognition for his works to support him. During the concert which saw the premiere of his first symphony on 14 March 1894 conducted by Johan Svendsen, Nielsen played in the second violin section. However, the same symphony was a great success when played in Berlin in 1896, and from then his fame grew. Nielsen became increasingly in demand to write incidental music for the theatre and for cantatas to mark special occasions; these provided a welcome source of additional income.

Beginning in 1901, Nielsen received a modest state pension to augment his violinist's salary. This allowed him to stop taking private pupils and left more time to compose. From 1903 he also had an annual retainer from his principal publisher, Wilhelm Hansen Edition. Between 1905 and 1914 he served as second conductor at the Royal Theatre. From 1914-26, he conducted the orchestra of "Musikforeningen". In 1916 he took a post teaching at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and continued to work there until his death, in his last year as director of the institute.
Personally, the strain of dual careers and constant separation from his wife led to more than one extra-marital affair. When the last one came to light, between Nielsen and the governess of his children, the result was an eight-year breach in his marriage. During much of this time Carl and Anne Marie lived apart and the period led to a creative crisis for Nielsen, bringing about a powerful reappraisal of himself as a composer. This sense of conflict, always evident in his work, became intensified and along with World War I and professional developments in his life, would strongly influence his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, arguably his greatest works.

For his son-in-law, the Hungarian violinist Dr. Emil Telmányi, Nielsen wrote his Violin Concerto, Op. 33 (1911). He also composed two operas and a number of orchestral works besides the symphonies and a clarinet concerto as well as choral works, songs, string quartets, a wind quintet and three violin sonatas and a small body of work for solo piano.

Nielsen suffered a serious heart attack in 1925 and from that time on he was forced to curtail much of his activity, although he continued to compose until his death. Also during this period he wrote a delightful memoir of his childhood called My Childhood on Funen (Min Fynske Barndom) (1927). He also produced a short book of essays entitled Living Music (1925). Both have been translated into English, and Min Fynske Barndom was made into a docudrama in 1994. Nielsen died in Copenhagen in 1931.

Nielsen’s Musical Language

As with Sibelius, Nielsen developed his own notions of structure and tonality that, as his work progressed, became more entirely individual and unorthodox.
Nielsen’s musical language is idiosyncratic and individual, essentially tonal, but covering an extended range of keys within a tonal system, with a cogent use of rhythms that adds impetus to an idiom that is, in some ways, a reaction against romanticism, while extending post-romantic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic vocabulary.

Nielsen's approach to sonata form, as seen in his six symphonies, is one of gradual abandonment. In considering the first movements of each symphony in turn, the first two reveal Nielsen working fairly comfortably within the confines of sonata form as later 19th century composers saw it; the middle two include certain high-level references to sonata form but little of the detail, and the last two inhabit a completely new world of Nielsen's own devising, wherein the structure of the movement can only be understood within the context of the material he is working with. By that point in his output there are no more parallels with any other forms or past traditions of musical construction. The subtitles Nielsen used are only very general signposts of intent, not indicating specific story-telling qualities. Nielsen always insisted that his music was not programmatic in the pictorial sense.

His post-war music feels like it suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. The energy is still there, but it’s hidden and transmuted in strange, quirky ways. His pre-war Second and Third Symphonies had built on the model of the First with increasing maturity. Then his Fourth of 1916 began to break up that optimistic mood, followed by the unforgettably manic-depressive Fifth, a picture of an orchestra in harmonic civil war and striving to find peace. Then, in 1924-1925, at the age of 59, Nielsen penned his final symphony, the Sixth.

Nielsen: Symphony No. 6 "Sinfonia semplice".

Carl Nielsen began working on a Sixth Symphony in August 1924 and it turned out to be his last symphony. The work was completed on 5th December, 1925 with its first performance given on December 11th and was conducted by Nielsen himself. The Copenhagen reviewers were apparently confused by the style of the new Symphony. Nielsen had called it Sinfonia semplice (Simple Symphony). Being very enigmatic and hard to grasp, it has remained the least performed of all six symphonies.


Instrumentation

• 2 flutes, 1st flute doubles piccolo
• 2 oboes
• 2 clarinets in A
• 2 bassoons
• 4 horns in F
• 2 trumpets in F
• 3 trombones (2 tenor, 1 bass)
• Tuba
• Timpani
• Glockenspiel
• Xylophone
• Triangle
• Cymbals
• Snare drum
• Bass drum
• Strings

Description of Symphony No. 6:

There are four movements in this work....
1. Tempo giusto
2. Humoreske: Allegretto
3. Proposta seria: Adagio
4. Tema con variazioni: Allegro

It is not as obviously dramatic as the previous two symphonies (Nos. 4 & 5) and in some ways it strikes listeners as strange. After an anything but "simple", in fact tragic first movement, the second is only scored for nine instruments of the orchestra (piccolo, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, trombone, and percussion) and represents Nielsen's commentary on trends in modern musical composition at the time (the mid-1920s). It is by far the most elusive of his symphonies to grasp, yet it’s very subtle architectural structure coupled with its enigmatic emotional tone makes it a challenging, fascinating, and ultimately rewarding listening experience.

According to Robert W. Simpson, from the second edition of his book on Nielsen, this work may be partially autobiographical; the composer had just experienced a tremendous success with his Fifth symphony, but had also suffered a series of heart attacks. He was to write several more works, but in the remaining six years of his life, the atmosphere of his works began to change.

As with many other works by Nielsen starting as early as his first symphony, this symphony uses "progressive tonality", not only starting in one key — G, here — and ending in another (B-flat) but making the change part of the drama of the work.

Most reviews of the first performance of the work expressed reservations, mainly that the symphony was the weakest among Carl Nielsen’s symphonic works. Most positive were William Behrend in Berlingske Tidende and Hugo Seligmann in Politiken. Behrend was unreservedly enthusiastic, and like several of his colleagues he considered the instrumentation innovative. Seligmann too dwelled on the chamber-music-like and experimental use of the orchestra, at the same time describing the symphony as an odd work that was not all that easy to get to grips with. He called the composer “the stark modernist”, but otherwise praised him for his pure and beautiful sense of music and his genuine Danish humour. The unsigned review in Kristeligt Dagblad states that the symphony does not like its predecessors make up an organic unity, for the inserted Humoresque was a piece all its own, and B¿rsen considered the humoresque “more odd than beautiful”. Several of the other reviewers compared the humoresque to music by Igor Stravinsky, who had at that time just performed some of his own works in Copenhagen.
In an interview in Politiken of 3rd April 1925 the composer confirms that the symphony is an example of absolute music.

This is an excelent thread Fergus, well done. It is a great read. I must listen to the Blomstedt/SFSO Sixth in the next day or two.

Very interesting Fergus!

I've always found the 6th the hardest Nielsen symphony to relate to. The bassoon fart at the end always says to me "You haven't followed any of this, have you?" which isn't encouraging!

Thank you gentlemen. I am determined to make a serious effort to come to grips with this work and I must admit that I have indeed made some progress!

Tonight I listened to Nielsen's Sixth and when it had finished I listened to it a second time. From the very outset one is aware that this unusual work is a Nielsen composition as the haunting strings, the woodwinds and the clarinet call reveal his familiar signature. It is a discordant and unsettling symphony, I find it interesting and I do like it however, it will require repeated listening before I can become intimately familiar with it. That said, I have so many other recordings in my collection that I want to listen to that I expect I will not do so in the next month or two. I will persevere with it for the remainder of this week and over the weekend but November beckons. This is a bl@@dy fabulous performance by Blomstedt and the SFSO.



Carl Nielsen
Symphony No. 6
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
Herbert Blomstedt - conducting.

How is one to approach this work?

Carl Nielsen, having written, some would say, two of the greatest and most life-enhancing symphonies of the 20th century (No. 4-"The Inextinguishable" [1916] and No. 5 [1922]) now writes a very bitter and ironic work to finish his symphonic oeuvre. There may be reasons for this. He has suffered a series of heart problems in the 1920's and there were also his marital problems. Importantly, he feels betrayed by the relative lack of recognition he has received in Denmark and internationally compared to Sibelius who has been showered with honours and money. Although Nielsen's 60th birthday (1925) was well-celebrated in Denmark and his opera Maskerade is the Danish national opera, he writes in the late 1920's that he wishes that he had taken up another profession and that he has never been able to make a living from his compositions. Finally, in 1928, Nielsen writes the Clarinet Concerto which is a work of surpassing bitterness.

Symphony No. 6 is different from any of its predecessors: a little querulous, more than a little enigmatic, featuring a lot of winds clucking away in conversation. The second movement “Humoreske” — hardly a scherzo — is for winds and percussion only. There’s an alarming moment in the first movement (starting at around 8:00 depending on the recording) where the music dramatically suffers the composer’s recent heart attack. Melodies are cramped and angular, and whenever the music starts to get insouciant, something else will cut it off as if to say, “Be serious here.” The theme-and-variations finale, beginning with a long and not at all comic bassoon solo, played expressively, comes by its end to be at peace with itself — and to end with one final bassoon blat, a funny one this time.


On a personal note I think that this symphony definitely belies its title of “Simphonia semplece” as it is far from a simple symphony. Nielsen had told his daughter that this was going to be “of completely idyllic character”. It may have started out like that but I think that it very quickly turned out to be something of a very different nature than he originally intended. Perhaps it is a reflection of Life as he found it at that point in his life particularly reflecting his dismay at the losses during World War I and the sense of turmoil that must have followed afterwards as a new world emerged from the death of the old.