Carl Nielsen Free Sheet Music, recordings, program notes and biography

The Inextinguishable Spirit of Denmark

In the first movement of Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony, a serene and wandering theme in the orchestra is suddenly besieged. From the side of the stage, a snare drummer launches a furious assault. The composer’s instruction in the score is unprecedented: the drummer must improvise "as if at all costs to stop the progress of the orchestra." What follows is a visceral battle, a musical depiction of a malevolent, chaotic force trying to destroy the creative, life-affirming will of the ensemble. The orchestra struggles, but ultimately endures, absorbing the drummer’s rage and continuing on its path. This single, extraordinary moment encapsulates the essence of Carl Nielsen’s music and philosophy: a belief in the elemental power of life—what he called the "Music of Life Itself"—as an indomitable force that struggles against, and ultimately overcomes, the forces of chaos and destruction.

A Shepherd Boy from Funen

Unlike most great composers, Carl Nielsen was not born into a life of culture and privilege. His origins were strikingly humble. He was born in 1865 on the rural Danish island of Funen, the seventh of twelve children born to a house painter and amateur musician. His early life, which he beautifully chronicled in his autobiography Min Fynske Barndom (My Childhood on Funen), was one of poverty. He spent his childhood herding geese and dreaming of a world beyond his small village. His father taught him the violin, and his mother, who came from a family of sea captains, sang him folk songs. He received his first formal music lessons and quickly learned to play in his father's village band for local weddings and festivities. This deep connection to the rustic, unsentimental, and resilient spirit of the Danish countryside would remain the bedrock of his musical language for his entire life.

Copenhagen and the Path to Mastery

Nielsen's prodigious talent was his ticket out of poverty. After a brief stint as a military musician in Odense, his patrons raised enough money to send him to the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen. There, he studied violin and music theory, absorbing the classical traditions and the prevailing musical language of German Romanticism, particularly the influence of Johannes Brahms and Edvard Grieg. After graduating, he earned a position as a second violinist in the prestigious Royal Danish Orchestra, a job he would hold for 16 years. This gave him a steady income and, more importantly, an intimate, first-hand knowledge of the orchestra from the inside out. During these years, he began to compose in earnest, gradually moving away from the Brahmsian models of his youth to forge a style that was uniquely his own—more direct, more contrapuntally complex, and infused with the melodic and rhythmic character of his native Denmark.

The Symphonist: A Battle of Wills

It is in his six symphonies that Nielsen's genius is most fully realized. He became one of the 20th century’s greatest symphonists, alongside his Finnish contemporary Jean Sibelius. Nielsen’s symphonies are not merely collections of movements; they are powerful psychological dramas. His most important structural innovation was "progressive tonality," the idea that a work could begin in one key and, after a great struggle, end in another, representing a journey and a hard-won victory. His Symphony No. 1 is a work of youthful, Brahmsian energy, while his Second, "The Four Temperaments," is a brilliant character study of the choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic, and sanguine personality types. His Third, the "Sinfonia Espansiva," is a broad, life-embracing work famous for its idyllic slow movement featuring two wordless vocal soloists. The symphony that brought him international fame was his Fourth, "The Inextinguishable," composed during the chaos of World War I. A monumental depiction of the elemental "will to live," the symphony climaxes in a dramatic battle between two dueling sets of timpani, representing the forces of creation and destruction.

The Attack on Order: The Fifth and Sixth Symphonies

Nielsen’s post-war symphonies grew even more complex and daring. The Fifth Symphony (1922) is arguably his masterpiece. Composed in two vast movements, it depicts the struggle between order and chaos. The first movement builds from a state of near-stasis to the aforementioned violent conflict with the ad-libbing snare drum. The second movement is a titanic fugue, representing the reconstruction of civilization and the ultimate victory of the human spirit. His final symphony, the Sixth (1925), subtitled "Sinfonia Semplice," is his most enigmatic. It begins simply but devolves into movements of bizarre, almost comical chaos, including a theme and variations featuring sarcastic glissandos from the trombone. It is a strange, unsettling, and deeply ironic work, reflecting a more complex and perhaps pessimistic view of the modern world.

Beyond the Symphony: Concertos and Danish Song

While the symphonies form the core of his legacy, Nielsen was a master of many genres. His opera, Maskarade (1906), a sparkling comedy of manners based on a play by Ludvig Holberg, became Denmark’s undisputed national opera. His concertos for Flute (1926) and Clarinet (1928) are two of the most important and challenging works in the wind repertoire, written for specific members of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet. These works are spiky, humorous, and deeply individual character studies of the instruments themselves. Perhaps most important for his own country, Nielsen was a masterful composer of simple, strophic songs (sange). He wrote hundreds of melodies to texts by Danish poets that became so deeply ingrained in the national consciousness—sung in schools, homes, and at public gatherings—that many Danes consider them to be authentic folk songs. This made him, in the truest sense of the word, a national composer.

A National Treasure

In his later years, Carl Nielsen was a revered national figure, serving as the director of the Royal Danish Conservatory and conducting his own works across Europe to great acclaim. He died of a heart attack in 1931. He had transformed Danish music, giving it a powerful, modern, and internationally recognized voice that was, at the same time, profoundly rooted in the soil of his homeland. His music, with its rugged optimism and its depiction of life as a constant, "inextinguishable" struggle, continues to resonate with audiences worldwide.

Section 4: References and further reading

• Nielsen, Carl. My Childhood on Funen. Translated by John Fellow. Copenhagen: Wilhelm Hansen, 1953.

• Lawson, Jack. Carl Nielsen. London: Phaidon Press, 1997.

• Miller, Mina F., ed. The Carl Nielsen Companion. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1994.

• Simpson, Robert. Carl Nielsen, Symphonist. London: Kahn & Averill, 1979.