Carl Nielsen is now acknowledged as Denmark\u2019s most distinguished composer, and more than deserving to take his place with Grieg and Sibelius in the pantheon of Scandinavia\u2019s long-revered composers.\u00a0 It was not always so, of course, and it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that his music enjoyed broad admiration, study, and performance.\u00a0 Not that he ever languished in obscurity, for by his forties, he was regarded as Denmark\u2019s leading musician.\u00a0 He grew up in modest circumstances\u2014certainly not a prodigy\u2014studied assiduously, played in several unpretentious ensembles on various instruments, and began composing in small forms.\u00a0 He was intellectually curious, reading and pondering philosophy, history, and literature, and it must be said, was profoundly aided in his overall growth as a composer and in general intellectual sophistication by his long marriage to a remarkable woman.<\/p>\n
His wife, Anne Marie Brodersen, was a recognized major sculptor, a \u201cstrong-willed and modern-minded woman\u201d who was relentless in the pursuit of her own, very successful career as an artist.\u00a0\u00a0 Her independence\u2014and penchant for frequently leaving the family to pursue her own career\u2014impacted the tranquility of the marriage, without doubt. \u00a0But, she was a stimulating, strong partner that unquestionably aided in his development into an artist of spiritual depth and sophistication.<\/p>\n
Nielsen\u2019s reputation outside of Denmark is largely sustained by his six symphonies\u2014Leonard Bernstein was an influential international champion of them\u2014but he composed actively in almost all major genres.\u00a0 From song and choral music to chamber works, he left behind a rich musical legacy.\u00a0 His musical style, rooted early on in the model of Mozart and Beethoven, and later, Brahms, evolved with the times, as the nineteenth century yielded to the twentieth.\u00a0 By the nineteen-twenties his works explored many of the progressive harmonic and structural innovations of late-Romanticism and Neo-Classicism.\u00a0 But, it was only after the hegemony of Schoenberg and his disciples waned after World War II that his works began to be respected internationally, and not dismissed as hopeless examples of na\u00efve, of out-of-date musical style.<\/p>\n
Notwithstanding his reputation as a symphonist, he did write two operas, the second of which, Maskarade, <\/em>premi\u00e8red in 1906 in Copenhagen.\u00a0 It was a spectacular success, and to this day is more or less the national opera of Denmark, in similar fashion to The Bartered Bride<\/em> of Smetana in the Czech Republic.\u00a0 It\u2019s a comic opera of mistaken identities, and\u2014especially the first act\u2014is now regarded as one of the finest comic operas of the twentieth century in any country.\u00a0 The vivacious, scintillating overture is a perfect representation of the ingratiating music of the opera, and is now an audience favorite worldwide.<\/p>\n –Wm. E. Runyan<\/p>\n \u00a92019 William E. Runyan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"program_note_tax":[109],"class_list":["post-279","program_note","type-program_note","status-publish","hentry","program_note_tax-carlnielsen"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/program_note"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"program_note_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note_tax?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}