About this volume (3)
The trajectory for the year 1906 had its highpoint on 11 November, the day of the premiere at The Royal Theatre of Masquerade [CNW 2], Carl Nielsen and Vilhelm Andersen’s comic opera based on a comedy by Holberg.Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) was a writer, philosopher and playwright. He is best known for his comedies and is considered a founder of modern Danish literature. Apart from a small scene in the third act and the overture, which was written only at the last minute, the opera was composed and completed in 1905. Nevertheless, the run-up to it is busy and hectic, beginning as early as May with separate auditions with those singing the roles, interspersed with other tasks.
The poet Holger Drachmann has his 60th birthday the same year. In 1887, he had his greatest success with the fairy-tale play Once Upon a Time (Der var engang). with music by P.E. Lange-Müller. The Royal Theatre had now decided to spare no expense in the hope of being able to recreate that success with a new piece by Drachmann. Sir Oluf He Rides [CNW 7] takes place in the special crepuscular light of the Danish midsummer night with its capacity to arouse the awareness of everything behind, under and above the everyday life. Carl Nielsen was given the task of writing the music. Since resigning his post on 30 June 1905, he had had no links to The Royal Theatre. Now, he was there again as conductor both of his own opera and of the music for Holger Drachmann’s play.
In July and August, Carl Nielsen is working on the composition of Sir Oluf in Skagen, while the family are holidaying at Frøken Hansens Badepensionat ('Miss Hansen’s Seaside Guesthouse'). He sits working at a piano at the grocer’s, Jens Winther, on Oddevej. The process of composition can be followed through the correspondence with the manager of The Royal Theatre, Einar Christiansen, who is nervous about the timetable and concerned that the composer might give himself too much scope in the individual numbers, and in the correspondence with the pianist Henrik Knudsen, who copies the scores out as the sheets reach him. This is also the summer when the composer's two daughters, posed in red dresses, are immortalised by the painter Michael Ancher1849-1927. on a white bench in front of Ancher’s house.
In August, work continues on the music for Sir Oluf during a stay at Fuglsang on Lolland with Bodil and Viggo Neergaard. The Dutch composer Julius Röntgen and his large family are also frequent guests. Röntgen himself also gets involved in Sir Oluf, providing instrumentation for 'The Dance of the Elves', which can still be seen in his handwriting on the original manuscript. In this private setting, Carl Nielsen’s most recent String Quartet in F major [CNW 58], completed immediately before the summer holiday, is given its first performance on 9 August the same year. But it was only in 1923, after several revisions, that he allowed it to be published by C.F. Peters in Leipzig.
Far from the social scene, Carl Nielsen sits in the gardener’s house composing music to Drachmann’s play. 'He often worked until it was late and no one in the music room could understand why he didn't come,' his daughter Anne Marie writes in her memoirs. 'It was a dark August evening out in the park. Suddenly, he came in with an extraordinary, almost broken, expression on his face. He told us that on the way up to the castle he had taken a wrong turn and instead had gone into the woods that bordered the garden. Here it was completely dark. The branches broke around him, hit him in the eyes and he experienced a panicky fear, could not find his way, until at last he crawled on all fours, his heart hammering and the sweat pouring off him. He had been gripped by an extreme panic in the face of nature.' AMT p. 72.
Sir Oluf became one of Carl Nielsen’s most extensive scores, but Drachmann’s play met with little success. It was performed 10 times, and ever since most of the music has been locked away like a sleeping beauty.
Nevertheless, the autumn of 1906 brings something of a breakthrough for Carl Nielsen. In Chicago, where several of Carl Nielsen’s siblings had immigrated and started families, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performs his Symphony no. 1 [CNW 25] two days in a row with an audience of 5,000 each time. A few days before the premiere of Masquerade in Copenhagen, the composer receives a report of his American debut and success both from his sister Julie and from the Danish musician and composer Thorvald Otterström, who has the honour of introducing the conductor to Carl Nielsen's music.
Masquerade is also a success. It plays to full houses night after night, and the composer, tired after the release of tension and the hectic rehearsal schedule, does nothing for weeks but go to the theatre and conduct his work, resting on his laurels and enjoying social gatherings. His friend Henrik Knudsen comments acerbically in the letter that his setbacks are borne with greater dignity than his successes. There were neither CDs nor radio transmissions available, so many families would already have gone to Masquerade several times before Christmas to learn the catchy tunes. Between Christmas and New Year, Carl Nielsen also conducts extracts of Masquerade and Sir Oluf at a Palace Concert.Palækoncerterne ('The Palace Concerts') took place at Koncertpalæet ('The Concert Palace'), now known as the Odd Fellow Palace, in Copenhagen. They were founded in 1896 by the publisher Alfred Wilhelm Hansen and the conductor Joachim Andersen. These weekly concerts were an opportunity for repeated listening to the classical repertoire, which an era without mass media provided for the public of the time.
While Carl Nielsen’s relation to national issues had already been made clear at the beginning of the year with 'Sing, Danish man!' [CNW 295] even from the start, Masquerade [CNW 2] was on its way to achieving the status of a Danish national opera.
In January, Christian IX died, having been on the throne for more than 42 years. The proclamation of Frederik VIII as king on Amalienborg Palace Square revealed that Danes faced a problem with the absence of a national anthem. Some of the crowds gathered there broke into singing 'King Christian'' (Kong Christian)'. while others sang 'A fair and lovely land' (Der er et yndigt Land) This episode gives rise to a public debate about national songs. National issues are as a whole in the forefront at the time as, indeed, in various ways they have been since. The year before, Norway had become independent, the personal union with Sweden had been dissolved, and in both countries this provided the impetus for a build-up of nationalism. For the first time, at the end of May 1906, a Swedish music festival is held in Stockholm. Carl Nielsen is invited, stays with his friend Bror Beckman, arranged for coverage by the Danish press, writes an article about the festival himself for Politiken. Here for the first time, but not the last, he expresses his opinion about art and nationalism.
'The national element represents a danger for art, and the more this characteristic becomes conscious the greater the danger.
As soon as we abandon all propriety and begin to finger and fondle this delicate being, then we kiss goodbye to good and true art. The national element can warm, colour and breathe life into art, but should in no way become its alpha and omega.'
On the same occasion, he makes fun of a competition for a new Danish overture and provides the following recipe:
'You take a portion of andantino in six-eight time, a portion of minor key and a dollop of Danish stewed pears that have stood overnight, stir it all together thoroughly, put it over a low heat and let it cook for about 20 minutes etc. But joking apart, my view is as follows: Do not set store by false piety but by good art.' Samtid, no. 15.
Over the same days, he composes 'Sing, Danish man!' as a commission, though it can hardly be said to be for the money. As a national song, it has deeply ironic undertones that even at the time were quickly forgotten. The story is as follows: Holger Drachmann, with whom Carl Nielsen worked on Sir Oluf, was given the task of writing a song of the fatherland for a vaudeville at Tivoli and asked Carl Nielsen to write the melody. This he did, as far as we can tell, using a textual mock-up, the text being added later, and neither Drachmann nor Carl Nielsen featured on the poster. The authors only appeared in the press some days later and thereby ensured added press coverage for the vaudeville. Soon the song took on a life of its own, was published separately and quickly became standard repertoire for choral societies and wherever communal singing took place (Cf. Danske Mand).
Carl Nielsen was emerging as a composer for the people, writing directly for them, and it should be noted that the major music he wrote during this period of growth was inclining in the same direction. That spring, the military band in Nyborg played the overture to the second act of Saul and David [CNW 1] [3:16].
It was a year that was hard to follow, yet success continues in 1907 with frequent performances of Masquerade. Prominent people attend the performance and express their opinion, people like the sick and ailing Grieg, who comments on Masquerade both to Nielsen and privately in his diary five months before his death.
There is also progress for Anne Marie, with an exhibition in Berlin in 1906, while in February 1907 she wins first prize in a competition to create a monument to the physician and scientist Niels Finsen, who had been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903 for his work with the healing effects of light rays. However, the decision is made to create and erect the design proposed by her rather more monumental male colleague Rudolph Tegner. To this day, it still stands by The National Hospital at the corner of Tagensvej and Blegdamsvej.
Anne Marie had only just been declared fit after a long period of being unable to work due to blood poisoning in one arm, when at the end of March 1907 she became seriously ill again. She is admitted to hospital and has four operations on her intestines over the next two months. In one of the recently discovered letters, [3:278] we are given for the first time an explanation for this mysterious illness: Anne Marie herself explains that a fish bone she has swallowed is the cause of this upset.
Carl Nielsen is in crisis due to Anne Marie’s illness and because he is having difficulty making a start on new compositions. It is during this period that he writes poems, and also now that he becomes involved in The Danish Musicians' Society, which had been founded in 1903 on the initiative of Charles Kjerulf, Politiken’s principal reviewer and the arbiter of musical fashion in Copenhagen. In his role as the society's secretary and the person taking the initiative in all things great and small, Kjerulf has mixed up his own interests and his private finances with the society’s. When the first board get bogged down in the Kjerulf problem, an opposition group is formed that puts Carl Nielsen forward as their candidate for chair with a programme to tidy up Kjerulf’s mess as elegantly as possible and to develop the society professionally. On 29 April 1907, Carl Nielsen and his board are elected as one, but the programme is only partially realised when fresh conflicts in the society lead to the departure of Carl Nielsen and his board two years later on 13 May 1909 (Cf. Børn igen).
In the autumn of 1909, the conflict in The Danish Musicians' Society spreads across musical life as a whole and becomes public under the term 'Wüllner-striden' ('The Wüllner Conflict'). The German singer Ludwig Wüllner was refusing to use Programmet ('The Programme'), the magazine funded by advertisements that Kjerulf had started, using his position in The Danish Musicians' Society, as the cover for his concert programmes in Copenhagen and thereby set up the decisive battle against Charles Kjerulf. Although no longer chair of the society, Carl Nielsen takes part in meetings and events, and converses with Kjerulf’s employer, the chief editor of Politiken, Henrik Cavling, with whom he maintains good relations over the years.
Finally, back in 1907, there is again success for the creative composer. A month after Anne Marie’s return from hospital, after many failed attempts, as he tells us many years later, he composes on 25 June the melody for Jeppe Aakjær’s John the Roadman [CNW 137].Jens Vejmand is one of Carl Nielsen's best known and most popular songs in Denmark. It was included in the Danish Culture Canon in 2006 along with, among other works, Masquerade and Symphony no. 4. Over the following days, he composes a number of melodies, including on the 28 June one of the songs, Good Night (Godnat) [CNW 141], from Johannes V. Jensen's The Fall of the King (Kongens Fald). The same afternoon, he is in the company of Jensen himself, with Ludvig Holstein and L.C. Nielsen, in Dyrehaven; the first two of these have their wives with them, but Anne Marie is working on an equestrian statue on the island of Falster. Jensen brings his camera with him, and two photographs have been preserved.
That was the end of composition for the time being. In mid-July, he travels south alone to meet his two colleagues in the production of Masquerade, the director Julius Lehmann and the librettist Vilhelm Andersen. Together, they walk from Italy over the Alps to Munich. Back in Copenhagen again in mid-August, there is a telegram from Kolding saying that Anne Marie and the rest of the family are lying ill at Lucie’s, Anne Marie’s sister. Married late, she was now a single mother with two boys, Broder and Jacob. After the sudden illness and death of her husband in February 1906, she had moved in February 1906 from the doctor’s consultation in Skærbæk back to Kolding, no longer as Lucie Brodersen but as the doctor’s wife, Mrs Petersen.
Carl immediately travels to Kolding and breathes some life into the company. The family continues north towards Skagen but, when they return to Copenhagen at the beginning of September, Anne Marie’s health forces her to enter Skodsborg Sanatorium.
In May, Carl has made an agreement with The Royal Theatre that in the coming season he would again make himself available. The idea that this may be the start of a permanent appointment as kapellmeister is in the air; Johan Svendsen is on the way out due to illness.
The autumn of 1907 is equally barren for the creative composer.
Commissions come in for music to L.C. Nielsen’s play, Willemoes [CNW 8] – which includes Seas surrounding Denmark [CNW 146]A famous song included in Højskolesangbogen – and for Ludvig Holstein’s Tove [CNW 10], which are to have their first performances at The People's Theatre in February and at Dagmar Theatre in March, respectively. There is also a commission for a new cantata for the university’s commemoration celebration but, as that will not be needed before October 1908, he does not have to think about it that much yet. The only composition that is completed is the new concert conclusion for the Masquerade Overture, which is to be used for one of Tor Aulin’s concerts in Stockholm at the end of November.
In October, Pablo Casals gives his first concert in Copenhagen. The social centre is made up of the Neergaard and Hartmann families, and the Nielsen daughters and Karen Hartmann are all in raptures about the virtuoso, who has also brought his Moorish girlfriend along. Back at Carl Nielsen’s, all four of his string quartets are performed, and Casals impresses them all by sight-reading the cello part.
Contact with Swedish musicians intensifies. At the end of September, the young genius Ture Rangström visits Carl Nielsen for the first time in Copenhagen. They hit it off immediately. Bror Beckman introduced Rangström and Nielsen to one another. Beckman, too, is instrumental in getting Rangström employed as a music journalist at Svenska Dagbladet to counterbalance the notorious critic at Dagens Nyheter and composer Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, whom Carl Nielsen has offended by not mentioning him in his article about the Swedish music festival in 1906.
Rangström’s debut as a journalist is a full-page article devoted to Carl Nielsen, in which he characterises Nielsen’s mission as being to point the way towards the necessary de-Romanticisation of music. This appears two days before Aulin introduces the Swedes to Nielsen’s orchestral music with three pieces from Masquerade. Earlier that same month, Olallo Morales has played the Helios Overture [CNW 34] in Gothenburg.
Carl Nielsen was himself supposed to have gone to Stockholm to conduct his music. There was lively correspondence about it, and both Beckman and Nielsen were excited at the prospect that they might now have the opportunity to spend a few days in discussion together. However, the planning goes awry, the length of the visit dwindles, and at the last moment Carl Nielsen has to cancel his journey altogether, take to his bed and allow Aulin to conduct his music. For the next three months he is plagued by neuralgia and bedridden most of the time.
His doctor does in the end permit him to go to the Odd Fellow Palace on 30 November to attend his own composition evening. Here, the new string quartet [CNW 58], which was played privately at Fuglsang, is given its first public performance. Squabbling in The Danish Musicians' Society has done nothing to improve the receptivity of Politiken’s reviewer, Charles Kjerulf, to Nielsen’s musical universe. He writes the following unforgettable words about the quartet:
'If what these four gentlemen sat up there and played is, in all earnest, to be considered beautiful and good music, well, then Messrs Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and associates – Wagner and Tchaikovsky along with them – the whole bunch, even headed by our own Hartmann and Gade – then they have all been having us on – yes, have been using false trade descriptions. And then sciatica becomes a musical delight. For that is also extremely unpleasant.'
The two songs from The Fall of the King [CNW 140] [CNW 141] were also among the works premiered that evening. The poet attended. Whether the music left him, too, with a headache, history does not relate, but during the quartet he couldn't control his yawns [3:428].
In February 1908, negotiations begin about Carl Nielsen’s appointment as kapellmeister at The Royal Theatre. They are protracted and difficult. Equal status for first and second kapellmeister comes under discussion along with the idea of abandoning these categories, but Frederik Rung, the former second kapellmeister, insists on taking the title of first kapellmeister. The departing Johan Svendsen gets involved by suggesting a 'right of arbitration' and even Julius Lehmann plays a role in supporting Carl Nielsen in negotiations with the theatre director. Carl Nielsen’s old friend and benefactor, the politician Klaus Berntsen, advises him to come to an understanding with the theatre director. As long as he gets inside the door, there is no doubt that he will get to the top, given his energy and his talent [3:463].
So, in the end, Carl Nielsen becomes second kapellmeister with some degree of equal rights to repertoire, and the basis is laid for the subsequent conflict between the two kapellmeisters, who until now have been associates, close acquaintances and good friends. In the midst of this process, half the theatre come to celebrate the 25th performance of Masquerade at Carl Nielsen’s apartment with a massive party, which Irmelin notes in her diary entries.
It is during these days that Anne Marie is told that her proposal has led to her winning the competition, which she had been invited to take part in at the end of September, to create a monument to commemorate Christian IX. Before it can go ahead, however, she has to sign a contract with the monument committee to complete a trial relief of part of the relief for the base, which for financial reasons is later omitted from the finished equestrian statue.
In the midst of all this tumult, Carl Nielsen manages to complete Saga Dream [CNW 35] a small, original work that stylistically looks to the future. It meets with no success at the concert at The Music Society on 6 April 1908. Kjerulf regards it as uninspired and thinks that Carl Nielsen ought to have allowed Gunnar from Njal's Saga to dream on in peace. It says something about the atmosphere among musical circles in Copenhagen at the time that when, in 1917, Kjerulf hears the piece again, he finds it a work of genius but is absolutely certain that he has never heard it before!
Financially, the Nielsen family are now on more solid ground than ever. They entertain thoughts of buying a summer house in Skagen, but these get no further, and about moving to larger accommodation, particularly to solve the sculptress’ atelier problem. She spends most of her time travelling, partly to conduct research and to seek inspiration for the royal monument, partly to carry out commissions that can further improve their finances, but the deadline for completing the principal task is also looming. At home, Carl Nielsen deals with most things as usual, finding the house with the required atelier and communicating by letter with the sculptress about it. In mid-October, the family moves into the first floor apartment of the villa on Vodroffsvej 53, where their friends Axel and Sofie Olrik are already living on the ground floor.
The second kapellmeister's debut at the beginning of the season in September 1908 is hectic. The new first kapellmeister is ill and, for a time, Carl Nielsen has to take on everything. That autumn also saw one significant new composition: the new university cantata [CNW 105] that he had composed during his summer stay at Damgaard near Fredericia. He had also been visited there by the 'court singer' Emil Holm and his wife, and had discussed with him coming plans and initiatives as regards The Royal Danish Opera. He sends the management of the theatre a letter with suggestions and ideas, virtually a first attempt at a programme for the institution of the Danish opera. Little comes of it.
The new musical tones of the university cantata make a deep impression on his circle of friends, but Niels Møller's text, which Carl Nielsen defends, is met with general hostility due to a style that does not exactly roll off the tongue, which gives the work the nickname 'the constipation cantata', and its positivist scientific message which provokes contradiction from the university's theologists. The result: yet another of Carl Nielsen's occasional works that has gone unnoticed.
At the beginning of December, Carl Nielsen was guest conductor in the Norwegian capital, Christiania. He conducts both his own music and has with him Henrik Knudsen as soloist in Victor Bendix's piano concerto. A Norwegian journalist provides the following testimonial for the new royal Danish kapellmeister:
'Carl Nielsen does not resemble any of the conductors I have seen previously. He is not one of those heavy, confident people who conduct with calm little movements of their hands, who direct more with their eyes than with their hands. Nor does he look like those elegant pirouette conductors or those whose restless pounding makes them look like foilsmen. Carl Nielsen is basically most reminiscent of an American bandmaster – in the best sense. He has that energetic manner in his movement, his hands, his head and body; since he is short of stature, he often needs to rise up on his toes and then beats slantwise down across the pulpit. Otherwise, he conducts high above his head, which is the result of him having conducted opera. He makes much use of his left hand but does not capture the notes tidily between thumb and forefinger but grasps them with his whole fist and flings them away from him with a swishing blow. It is hard to believe that before us stands a Danish conductor, and still harder that his music is created by a Danish man. There is in it an uncontrollable, steely rhythm that transports us far from the smooth undulations of the Danish landscape.' Samtid, no. 24.
The year 1909 is dominated by commissions. It is as though he cannot rid himself of them. The poet L.C. Nielsen is involved in several of them, writing the texts, and it may be more his finances than Carl Nielsen's that decide things. This applies to the Cantata for the Commemoration of the 250th Anniversary of the Storming of Copenhagen [CNW 106] and not least to the Cantata for the Opening Ceremony of the National Exhibition in Aarhus 1909 [CNW 107] which Carl Nielsen tries to get out of in a number of ways but nevertheless ends up composing with his pupil Emilius Bangert, and of which he directs the performance in Aarhus in May 1909.
The end of the year sees the death of the painter P.S. Krøyer. The occasion is also marked by a celebration with a cantata by Carl Nielsen to a text by L.C. Nielsen [CNW 108]. He also manages to compose a couple of songs for Jeppe Aakjær's social realist play The Wolf's Son (Ulvens Søn) [CNW 11] . Nor is it the money that attracts him here; to avoid being paid too low a fee by Aarhus Theatre, he withdraws his songs on principle and donates them instead to Aakjær, who can then place them at the disposal of the theatre.
When, soon afterwards, Ellen Beck sings the two songs from The Wolf's Son at her evening recital in Copenhagen, Charles Kjerulf takes the opportunity to show that musical life in Copenhagen is about more than just music. Disputes about Kjerulf and his use and abuse of musical connections and of The Danish Musicians' Society were at their height in public awareness. 'In a way, the refrain,' writes Kjerulf, 'provided the wise and truthful words: "For we trample each other down in the mire". It could almost be heard through the music that Carl Nielsen had not really sensed their deeper significance – or in other words, made them his own.' Politiken 27.11.1909.
There had also been talk of the composer August Enna taking on the Aarhus Cantata [CNW 107], and he had even begun a composition without having received the final commission. When he found out that it had been given to Carl Nielsen, he complained to him but could do little when his objections were rejected by both Nielsen and the mayor of Aarhus. In January 1909, August Enna makes a public attack on Carl Nielsen as conductor and questions his ability. The criticism spreads in the press, and finally Enna also has a go at the composer Carl Nielsen, but the subject of his attack prefers not to respond and in this is supported by the theatre management. Carl Nielsen also hears that Lange-Müller is critical of his role as kapellmeister of The Royal Danish Orchestra, and when he asks Lange-Müller for a meeting so they can talk about the matter, he is met with a sharp rejection. Being second kapellmeister with ambitions for his art is proving to be a hot seat.
During the summer, the family in various combinations embarks on bicycle tours on Funen, to Østrupgaard, to Bryndum on western Jutland with Carl Nielsen's brother Valdemar, who has their father living there and their brother Anders visiting this year, whom Carl Nielsen has not seen since he emigrated to Chicago in the spring of 1886. Their tours end up around Skagen. From there, he is summoned to Aarhus to conduct Aarhus Orchestral Society's 25th birthday concert. He chooses to start with music by August Enna! The following year, he celebrates Lange-Müller's 60th birthday on 1 December with a celebratory article (Samtid, no. 32).
The year 1910 begins with tragedy. Bodil Neergaard's younger brother, the painter Oluf Hartmann, dies suddenly at the age of 31. This sparks the composition in only a few days of one of Carl Nielsen's small masterpieces, the piece for strings At the Bier of a Young Artist [CNW 36], which is performed at the funeral in its original version for string quartet. The composer does not, however, take part himself. The previous day, he has travelled to Jutland where his father has been taken ill. The sources do not tell us what has happened; later in the spring, his father himself talks about lying ill for 75 days.
While the origins of occasional works and commissions are usually well-documented in the correspondence, it is inevitable that that of the main works, which are not determined by external demands, can be more difficult to trace. It is, then, almost by chance that, in the midst of this period of high extrovert activity in all directions, we hear that Carl Nielsen is summoning his forces to compose one of his most significant works, his Symphony no. 3, Sinfonia Espansiva [CNW 27], as he notes in his diary on 13 April: 'finished the composition of the first allegro of my new symphony.' The second movement, the Pastoral, follows during a summer stay at Damgaard. The completion of the symphony will be delayed – until the next volume – but encouragement comes in the autumn to continue his production in the form of a letter from the Czech composer Max Brod, previously unknown to him, who on his own initiative has introduced his readers to Nielsen in the journal Der Merker, published in Vienna, the European metropolis of music. In response to this, the composer reports – once again – that the second movement of Espansiva has just been completed and in doing so demonstrates that old letters can give the reader a problem of interpretation for which there is not always a reliable solution.
That summer is busy with The Open Air Theatre. Since the previous spring, Carl Nielsen has been involved in attempts to establish an open air stage at Ulvedalene in Dyrehaven. The first performance there was Oehlenschläger's Hagbarth and Signe [CNW 12] with his own freshly composed music. The premiere is a few days before his 45th birthday in June 1910. Success is assured when people make the pilgrimage from Copenhagen and the newspapers publish lengthy reports.
After three years delay, John the Roadman is about to turn into a national epidemic, and in accounts of his birthday this is what occupies the newspapers. It is published and recorded as a polka on lacquer discs and the organ grinders traipse it round the city.
In October, Anne Marie accompanies their daughter Anne Marie to a hostel in London; she has long since started to paint and needs to get away from home and to see major art collections in a large metropolis. Carl joins them after a few days delay, and he, too, sees London for the first time, looks at art, goes to a concert in Queen's Hall and meets the conductor Henry Wood. Father and mother travel home together, the father travelling on to Copenhagen while the mother stays in Celle to conduct research at the large German stud farm for her king's monument. When she returns home, she does so prematurely with a sprained foot following an excursion to the Blocksberg.
The household has begun to thin out; after several changes of school, Hans Børge has now been sent to Trunderup School on Funen, where Thorvald Aagaard's sister Inger is one of the teachers and sends progress reports to Copenhagen on this strange, gifted and at the same time disabled boy.
According to Torben Schousboe, Hans Børge had 'at the age of four suffered an attack of epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis, whereby his cranium closed prematurely leaving him plagued for the rest of his life by, for example, chronic headaches. The musical and intellectual abilities that had early been noted were thereby not permitted to develop freely but could only express themselves spiritually in periods of better health. It was like a heavy cloud lifting.' (TS p. 368).
The sources say nothing of all this and it is not easy to integrate this information with the way Hans Børge appears as a child in these letters. Subsequent volumes will provide examples to show that Hans Børge is a fascinating, special and not entirely normal person.
Letters between the Nielsen couple that autumn [3:891] [3:896] indicate that there has once again been friction in the marriage. Torben Schousboe tells us that Carl Nielsen had fathered a daughter outside the marriage – Rachel Siegmann, whom he registers as having been born on 12 December 1912 and whose mother is said to have been 'a Jewish lady employed at The Royal Theatre' (TS p. 389). Rachel Siegmann was, however, not born in 1912 but, according to the parish clerk's register, in 1910, and, if Rachel Siegmann is indeed Carl Nielsen's daughter, then it is here in 1910 that her story and that of Carl Nielsen's affair with her mother belong. Torben Schousboe's information is, at best, imprecise.
No evidence has been found confirming that Carl Nielsen was father to Rachel Siegmann such as exists for him having fathered Carl August Hansen in 1888 (See: Vil Herren). Nor does it seem that Carl Nielsen visited Rachel Siegmann at her foster mother's at the address at H.C. Ørstedvej 39, as Schousboe tells us. There is nothing to suggest that Rachel Siegmann lived at this address in Carl Nielsen's lifetime. On the other hand, curiously enough, Rachel Siegmann does live at this very address with her biological mother for some years after 1937. The mother appears in the directory as a ladies' dressmaker and the daughter as a music theorist. In 1937, Rachel Siegmann appears in the handbook Vor Tids Danske Musikere og Tonekunstnere ('Danish Musicians and Composers of Our Time') under the title of 'Lieder composer', which mentions a number of her works and notes that she studied under (Carl Nielsen's pupil) Knud Jeppesen.
Rachel Siegmann, as she called herself, was born in The National Hospital on 12 October 1910, in other words while Carl Nielsen was staying in London, and on 26 December 1910 she was baptised Edith Ragnhild Hansen at St John's Church in Copenhagen. Her parents are cited as the confectioner Herman Hansen and his wife Nancy Amanda Theresia Siegmann, born 12 October 1880. The couple had entered a civil marriage on 17 September 1909, a few months prior to the mother's pregnancy. In the national census of 1940, the mother is registered as a widow. On 12 September 1923, the daughter had royal permission to change her name to Edith Ragnhild Hansen Siegmann and on 30 December 1931 she withdraws from membership of the state church. She died 11 September 1969.Our thanks to Claus Ahnfeldt-Mollerup who has provided this information.
More could be said about Rachel Siegmann's story, but whether more can be said about her father's identity is a different matter.