About this volume (1)
The first letters come from the period after Carl Nielsen has concluded his three-year course at the music conservatory in Copenhagen at the end of 1886. During the first six months of 1887, he moved to Slagelsegade 18 on Østerbro, where Jens Georg Nielsen, the wealthy merchant benefactor, and his wife Marie Demant Nielsen had moved so that they could take better care of him. The couple were among those who had made it possible for him financially to move to Copenhagen.
The following three years from 1887 to 1889 are dominated by his passionate love for the niece of his surrogate mother, the 14-year-old Emilie Demant Hansen, the grocer's daughter from the small town of Selde on the Limfjord. In his letters to her, we not only sense the relationship between these two but also get to share the young musician's life in Copenhagen, hear about the first performances of his works, about the audition that brings him into The Royal Danish Orchestra as a violinist, about his discussion with Niels W. Gade, about Christmas in his childhood home on Funen and much besides.
In the midst of this affair, which ends in the autumn of 1889 in an existential crisis for Carl Nielsen, he fathers a son in 1888, Carl August Hansen, who only makes an appearance directly in the letters in later volumes. The mother, Karen Marie Hansen, is employed as a chambermaid by a consul's wife in the flat beneath the one on Frederiksborggade 48 in which he lived himself before moving to Slagelsegade.
In December 1889, Carl Nielsen applies for a second time for the so-called Ancker Travel Grant and, this time, succeeds. In September 1890, he therefore sets out on his first major trip abroad. For the first five months, he stays in Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin and here he makes the acquaintance of older well-known musicians as well as many younger ones who, like him, are keen to learn. Here, he meets both the painter Edvard Munch and the composer Jean Sibelius for the first time and makes contact with the Italian composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni, who over subsequent years visits Denmark on a number of occasions and so allows their acquaintance to develop. During his travels, he completes one of his early masterpieces, the String Quartet in F minor, op. 5 [CNW 56], and plays it with some of his friends for the venerable and ageing violinist Josef Joachim in Berlin.
In his relations to the opposite sex, he goes from one extreme to the other, from love at first sight at a random visit to the opera, to a decision that he will not bother with that side of life for the whole year of his travels. When he left Denmark, he had also left behind a new and less platonic relationship than that he had enjoyed with the young Emilie, namely to Emilie's cousin Ottilie. Separation was to have been a test of their relationship, but they cannot live without each other and Ottilie comes to Berlin. Everything appears to be primed for an engagement and an ultimate 'I do' when Ottilie suddenly disappears out of the letters and the diaries to be replaced by new impressions and new kinds of women.
In March, his travels continue to Paris where he immediately meets the love of his life, the sculptress Anne Marie Brodersen. They hold a wedding party, continue their travels together to Italy to look at art, get married in Florence, and from then on we can already follow in the letters their preparations for their homecoming to Denmark and their meeting both with Carl Nielsen's 'foster-parents' on Østerbro in Copenhagen and with the two sets of biological parents, one on the large farm near Kolding and the other in the small farm labourer's cottage on mid-Funen. Here, now that their flock of children have flown the nest, the old fiddler and his wife Maren Kirstine are preparing to emigrate to the United States, where several of their children are trying to make a life for themselves in Chicago.The end of the American Civil War opened the floodgates for emigration from rural areas of Denmark especially. Between 1880 and 1900 around 100,000 Danes emigrated, and there were 10,000 Danes in Chicago.
Over the next couple of years, until the parents return home disappointed, we follow life on both sides of the Atlantic through the family letters and are given an insight into the close relations between them and Carl Nielsen, especially with his sister Julie. In Copenhagen, the couple grows into a family with three children, the girls Irmelin and Anne Marie, known as Søs, whom they would have preferred to have been a boy, and finally their son Hans Børge.
At the same time, we follow the work of the two artists and their attempts to bring their art before the public. For Carl Nielsen, the crucial events are the performance by The Royal Danish Orchestra of his Symphony no. 1 [CNW 25] in March 1894 and by The Music Society of Hymnus Amoris [CNW 100] in April 1897, while the Symphonic Suite for piano [CNW 82] and his Violin Sonata no. 1 [CNW 63] are regarded as difficult and laboured music.
In the autumn of 1894, Carl Nielsen leaves for his second journey abroad, this time primarily to help promote his work beyond the borders of Denmark. His travels take him to Germany and Austria, and his friend, the music publisher Alfred Wilhelm Hansen, accompanies him some of the way. In Munich, Carl Nielsen visits his contemporary Richard Strauss, but few words are exchanged between them, whereas his visit to the ageing Johannes Brahms in Vienna is a major experience and leaves us with priceless descriptions. On the journey home, he meets his wife and sister-in-law in Dresden and, with a letter of introduction from Georg BrandesGeorg Brandes (1842-1927) was a famous Danish critic and scholar and is considered the theorist behind the Modern Breakthrough., they visit Max Klinger in Leipzig, where he is working on his composer sculptures. As a result of the journey, in March 1896 he conducts his Symphony no. 1 [CNW 25] in Dresden at one of the famous Nicodé concerts.
It is not easy for the composer to be without a woman and not easy for the sculptress only to work in Copenhagen. In the years that follow, this is especially the case in late summer. As the theatre season approaches, Carl Nielsen has to interrupt his summer stay in the country and leave for Copenhagen to take part in rehearsals with The Royal Danish Orchestra, and he has to cope with living in an empty flat or with friends and acquaintances while his wife is busy modelling a stallion somewhere or other in Jutland. At times he even has to cope with finding a new apartment and preparing for the move. This gives rise to letters, misunderstandings and frustration. In October 1893, he suffers heart strain when he has to save a removal man who has got stuck under a grand piano, and over the weeks that follow we see the world from the perspective of his hospital bed at the district general hospital.
In January 1897, Carl Nielsen's mother, Maren Kirstine, dies. Prior to this, we have got to know her in a new way through some of her own letters. Anne Marie and Carl look after her during her final days, and for some time afterwards the correspondence with the brothers and sisters in the United States sheds new light on their common childhood and their relationship to their mother.
The year is also significant in that Anne Marie's parents now wish to retire from the farm, and she and Carl Nielsen, together with her sister Lucie, decide to attempt to carry on running it. All that summer, we get to know the composer as a practical farmer, who takes the lead when they work in the fields and who has to develop all his psychological skills to motivate the others. Lucie is the woman on the farm while Anne Marie sticks to a greater degree to her art.
This is also the summer in which contact is made between the Nielsen family and Marie Møller who will come to play a significant role in the house for many years. Her reception in Copenhagen takes place in the midst of what is now the habitual separation of husband and wife with his return to the city at the end of the summer.
In this volume we also meet some of his friends, such as the author Gustav Wied, the painter J.F. Willumsen, the composer Victor Bendix, the businessman Emil B. Sachs, his old teacher from the conservatory Orla Rosenhoff, the folklorist Axel Olrik, his colleagues at The Royal Danish Orchestra, Holger Møller and Anton Svendsen, the old painter Lorenz Frølich and his wife Benedicte. Last but not least, we see the start of the friendship with the Swedish composer Bror Beckman, who, living alone with his mother and as a homosexual, has very different problems with his love life than the husband and father Carl Nielsen, and we read the start of the lifelong correspondence in which they discuss both each other's works and musical and cultural life in their respective countries.