About this volume (4)
Between 1911 and 1913 the letters come thick and fast. We can often follow the doings of the main characters from day to day; but the denser the information and the closer we come to their actual lives, the more difficult it may be to follow the underlying patterns. However, if we need a heading for this period the choice is easy: Espansiva. The composer's Symphony no. 3, Sinfonia Espansiva [CNW 27] ,is not only reported as having been completed on 30 April 1911, but it rumbles throughout almost everything, either in the foreground or the background, during these years.
When, in January 1927, The Danish Broadcasting Corporation, barely two years old at the time, came to arrange its first major symphony concert, it was Carl Nielsen conducted his own works in the final part of the programme, and the principal work was, of course, the Symphony no. 3. This may have been partly because this was the symphony in which the first manager and programme director for The Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Emil Holm, and Carl Nielsen shared an interest. If anyone had been involved in promoting the symphony back in 1912 and 1913, it was Emil Holm, at the time chamber singer in Stuttgart. Another old friend who resurfaced from those early days was the soprano Johanne Karstens, who had already taken part in the first performance of the symphony in Berlin in December 1913 under the direction of Siegmund von Hausegger.
Now, in 1927, Carl Nielsen wrote a programme note in which he started by stating that Sinfonia Espansiva 'was the work that, conducted by the composer, established his name both at home and abroad, especially in Sweden, Finland, Germany and The Netherlands.' Samtid, no. 123. This volume allows us to experience and to follow closely from their beginnings the circumstances surrounding this major leap forward for Carl Nielsen as a creative artist and for the broader awareness of his art. We are not only allowed to witness the decisive victories but can experience the opposition that needed to be overcome, all the uncertainty that the process involved, and all set alongside the composer's life as second kapellmeister at The Royal Theatre and as a husband with all the consideration, renunciation and triumphs his wife's work brought with it, as a father of children growing up, and with friends and acquaintances and many other projects and activities that cannot be mentioned here. There is much that we are told, but it remains material that is open to interpretation and speculation about what might have been omitted.
In September 1911, Carl Nielsen musters a collection of friends and acquaintances and, with the help of the pianist Henrik Knudsen, introduces them to the new symphony. He notes in his diary that for most of them, the symphony created more astonishment than enthusiasm. The exception is one of his friends from the Rosenhoff days, the composer Hilda Sehested, who writes to him afterwards [4:105] that the evening had been 'of great and decisive significance' and that 'This magnificent last work of yours where mighty forces come to life, reined in by the hand of an even mightier will – that I am far too insignificant to talk to you about.' Hilda Sehested was the first of many significant people who admitted to being struck by the new power with which Carl Nielsen presented them in his Sinfonia Espansiva.
The first public performance of Sinfonia Espansiva was to have taken place at a memorial concert that The Royal Danish Orchestra wanted to arrange for Johan Svendsen's bereaved family. Johan Svendsen, who had been director of the orchestra from 1883 to 1908, had died on 14 June that summer, but the event became infected by intrigue and ended as a modest concert on 5 December 1911 with chamber music and songs. The only piece by Svendsen himself that was played was his string quartet and, instead of a new Danish symphony by the greatest Danish composer of the time who had being closely related to Svendsen both as man and as artist, the first kapellmeister, Frederik Rung, performed a new folk music arrangement with the Madrigal Choir of The St Cecilia Society [4:208].
To Emil Holm in Stuttgart, Carl Nielsen writes that he would like to be 'free of stuff and nonsense and lies and envy' and instead offers the symphony to the director of the orchestra in Stuttgart, Max von Schillings, both for its premiere and its first German performance. Schillings cannot, however, introduce a completely new symphony into the programme in the current season but ends up cancelling the planned performance of the Helios Overture [CNW 34] and offering to perform a larger work instead the following season.
From his base in Stuttgart, the chamber singer Emil Holm has long been working to promote knowledge of Danish music and Danish art in Germany. Holm is an upright, vigorous and realistic man who can accept the fact that a partner, not least Max von Schillings, might have ulterior motives and that his word should not always be taken at face value. The correspondence between Copenhagen and Stuttgart involves Emil Holm and his wife Katarina sending drafts to Carl Nielsen of the letters he intends to write to Max von Schillings and is the largest single correspondence in this volume. For Carl Nielsen – and for the rest of us – it is a lesson in strategic thinking that tries to trap the opponent as though in a game of chess, to force him into a corner so that, in the end, he is unable to 'duck out' but is forced to stand by his word and perform the work. Emil Holm's perseverance is formidable and unselfish and is crowned with success, but for Carl Nielsen it is at times too much of a good thing.
Prior to the composition of Sinfonia Espansiva there had been a long period of incubation, as was the case with most of Carl Nielsen's major works. The exception is the violin concerto [CNW 41] that followed immediately after Sinfonia Espansiva. A start is already made on it the same summer during a visit to Nina Grieg at Troldhaugen. She has invited Carl Nielsen along with Julius Lehmann, who had been producer and director both of Saul and David [CNW 1] in 1903 and of Masquerade [CNW 2] in 1906. Like Carl Nielsen, Julius Lehmann's relations to The Royal Theatre are riddled with conflict and, as we see in this volume, he ends up leaving it. In Grieg's little composer's cabin, in its somewhat isolated situation down by the water, Carl Nielsen begins work on his violin concerto, relaxing during breaks by clearing the bushes and trees that have grown up around the cabin since Grieg's death and block the view. Work on the concerto continues during a subsequent stay at Damgaard, and he can finish it during the course of the autumn in Copenhagen.
When the first performance of the symphony at the commemorative concert for Johan Svendsen comes to nothing, there are plans for an even greater event. On 28 February 1912, Carl Nielsen conducts The Royal Danish Orchestra in a programme devoted exclusively to Carl Nielsen – two first performances supplemented by selected scenes from the opera Saul and David. The soloist for the violin concerto is Peder Møller, now returned from Paris. There is no indication in the sources that there was any collaboration between the composer and soloist, but they richly express the composer's enthusiasm for the soloist.
The two new works are received with gushing praise by the reviewers, even by Politiken's Charles Kjerulf, whom Carl Nielsen has been instrumental in removing from his powerful position in The Danish Musicians' Society, which Kjerulf himself had founded, and who not long before, after years of conflict in Copenhagen's musical life generated by that society, had been sentenced for defamation against one of his sharpest critics, the singing teacher Kaj Bendix, who had delivered the decisive thrusts in his articles and pamphlets. By this time, relations in Copenhagen music life had cooled down.
On the way to Troldhaugen, however, Carl Nielsen had met Charles Kjerulf on the boat to Norway. They fell into conversation as though nothing had happened, and this formed the basis for a letter subsequently written by Carl Nielsen to Kjerulf that has sadly not been preserved. What we do have is Kjerulf's reply [4:174], in which he speaks of his ambivalent relationship to Carl Nielsen and his music, and Nielsen's subsequent response to that [4:179].
Charles Kjerulf's enthusiastic volte-face in 1916 to a total endorsement of Carl Nielsen's music in the reviews he wrote after the first performance of the Symphony no. 4, The Inextinguishable [CNW 28], has been known to the Carl Nielsen literature the from the start; the rapprochement between the composer and the reviewer that took place as early as 1911 and for which the composer was the initiator is less well known, Cf. Børn igen pp. 284-290. Kjerulf was also given a special invitation to the dress rehearsal on 28 February 1912 and his review of the two new works in Politiken the following day is fulsome and already marked by a degree of conversion, at any rate by that of 'an elderly gardener who for many years has tended this garden [i.e. Danish music] with melancholy joy finally sees the fruit roll out before his foot.'
In Amsterdam, his friend from Fuglsang, Julius Röntgen, is working to enable a performance of Sinfonia Espansiva at the Concertgebouw. In March, he can already write to Copenhagen that a performance can probably take place in April. Two months to the day after the first performance in Copenhagen, Carl Nielsen conducts Willem Mengelberg's famous orchestra in the first foreign performance of the new symphony [4:318]. The vocal parts for the second movement, the Pastoral, were positioned in the foremost loges on each side, and in the one to the left, the soprano Miss Brandsma was joined by Julius Röntgen acting as assistant conductor in the relevant passage [4:318].
Carl Nielsen and Henrik Knudsen have managed to get the Russian conductor Vasily Safonov interested in the symphony. During his visit to Copenhagen in October 1911, they have played it for him in a version for four hands. Safonoff has become so excited by it that he now arrives unannounced in Amsterdam to attend the rehearsals of the symphony but unfortunately has to return before the concert takes place. He retains his contact with the composer with a view to performing it, but there is no record of this having taken place.
In Stuttgart, Emil Holm sits like a strategist and a general receiving reports of the progress in the battle before initiating his next offensive, and at the end of May he is able to tell the composer that he now has an assurance that Sinfonia Espansiva will be included in the programme in Stuttgart in the following season.
On the way home from Amsterdam it is, for once, the husband who alights from the train in Germany, while the wife has to continue alone to Copenhagen. Carl Nielsen has to visit northern Germany's most influential critic, Ferdinand Pfohl, in Hamburg who, as chance would have it, is married to the sister of Emil Holm's wife, Katarina. Holm has, of course, long since signalled this contact. At Pfohl's, Carl Nielsen plays the symphony through from the score, alone and with his not terribly pianistic hands, and Pfohl is alight with enthusiasm, playing and singing along whole-heartedly.
From Pfohl, Carl Nielsen is given an introductory letter to take to the conductor Siegmund von Hausegger, who also lives in Hamburg and whose name has gone down especially as the first performer of Bruckner's Symphony no. 9 in 1932 in its original version. Hausegger, too, is receptive and asks to see the score. The following spring he even travels with a friend to Copenhagen and visits Carl Nielsen, who once again arranges a performance of the symphony for four hands, this time with two proper pianists, Henrik Knudsen and Christian Christiansen. Hausegger subsequently performs the symphony both in Berlin [4:847] and in Hamburg (Vol. 5).
Nor are those in the composer's homeland unaffected by the symphony and, of course, by the interest it arouses. Even before Carl Nielsen's departure for Amsterdam, there have been plans at his workplace, The Royal Theatre, for yet another Danish performance of the symphony, not in the concert hall but at the Theatre – as an introduction to Molière's comedy The Miser. The orchestra has climbed out of the pit, and sits on the stage surrounded by the decor for Georg Høeberg's opera A Wedding in the Catacombs,Bryllup i Katakomberne. while the curtain that is drawn to reveal the orchestra has been recycled from a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The symphony concludes to prolonged applause.
The composer has had to hurry home from Germany to conduct this performance. Two weeks later, the success is already repeated, still as an introduction to Molière's comedy though, this time, the orchestra are allowed to remain in the pit since not everyone had been equally enthusiastic about sitting on the stage. On the other hand, the lights remain lit in the auditorium during the symphony. The following year, there is yet another repeat performance of Sinfonia Espansiva as part of a celebration with an international audience [4:616], this time as a prelude to the opera Pagliacci with Vilhelm Herold in the principal role and with Bournonville's Ballet The Flower Festival in Genzano as the conclusion of the evening. This time, the stage manager's records tell us that the vocal parts in the Pastoral were sung by Albert Høeberg from behind the front curtain and by Lilly Lamprecht 'from under the chandelier in the auditorium.'
The correspondence about the performance in Stuttgart continues. Until the last moment there are doubts about the date and fears that Max von Schillings will 'duck out'. On 9 January 1913, a telegram finally arrives from Schillings to say that the Sinfonia Espansiva is programmed to be performed on the 23rd of that month. Nothing is said about who is to conduct it. Holm and Nielsen play a fast one on Schillings to ensure it ends up being the composer – if that had not been the idea all along. On Holm's advice, Nielsen books into a hotel rather than moving into Holm's guest room, partly due to contact with the press, partly to avoid Schillings regarding the two Danes as conspirators. But Nielsen's winning ways allow him to get on easily with Schillings, the rehearsals progress well, and the performance is once again a success.
In his letters to Anne Marie, he has regularly expressed his longing to be with her, to travel abroad with her again. Now he is sitting the day before his big evening in Stuttgart, dining with Max von Schillings, and together the two of them write a postcard to Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen. It was at Schillings' suggestion, Carl writes in Danish, while Schillings in German writes an impersonal greeting to the wife of a colleague whom he has never met [4:536]. The day after his success, the composer sends the only letter to Marie Møller that seems to have been preserved, a postcard to her private address in Christianshavn. 'Dear beloved, sweet, eternal, wonderfully entrancing woman! Terrific success! 'Ich habe gesiegt'!'I have triumphed! [4:544]
On his return home, he is greeted with flowers and telegrams and is interviewed (Samtid, no. 37), for on 25 January 1913, he can celebrate the 25th anniversary of his first appearance as a composer with his string quartet [CNW 32] in The Private Chamber Music Society [4:548]. Whether he thinks it a suitable moment or whether his poor memory made him choose this date for his anniversary is not known, but the truth is that he had actually had his debut almost four months before in Tivoli with the Andante tranquillo e Scherzo for string orchestra [CNW 31] [1:5].
'I had indeed quite forgotten that it was my anniversary,' says this not entirely unknown composer to the papers, though he himself has allowed news of the event to leak out [4:531]. He may have learnt something from his correspondence with Emil Holm after all.
Another greeting that awaited him on his return was the letter congratulating him on his nomination to the Order of Dannebrog. At his departure, he had not yet received any official confirmation of the nomination, but Klaus Berntsen had told him unofficially and congratulated him in advance. There is, though, a fly in the ointment. A friend from his youth tells him how pleased he is that Carl Nielsen, unlike so many others, has been given due recognition. The anniversary has, however, made him think about three mazurkas that the composer had dedicated to him 25 years earlier. Carl Nielsen had borrowed them again to be copied but had never returned this gift [4:547]. His serious debut as a composer may have led him to overlook these little dances; they have yet to turn up.
Stockholm immediately shows great interest in the new symphony. His friends there, the director of the music conservatory, Bror Beckman, the music journalist Ture Rangström, and the director of The Royal Swedish Opera, Arnas Järnefelt, were all working to further his cause. Järnefelt was, in fact, the first person to ask to see the score with a view to a performance, but here, in his eagerness, Carl Nielsen himself manages to put a spanner in the works. In Copenhagen, he meets a Swedish businessman, Max Sievert, who holds out the prospect of financing the performance of Sinfonia Espansiva in Stockholm but then does nothing about it and so paralyses Järnefelt's initiative. The intervention of Bror Beckman allows the matter to be sorted out, though with significant delay, and in October 1913, the symphony can at last be performed in Stockholm, now alongside the violin concerto [CNW 41] with Peder Møller as soloist. On the same tour, Carl Nielsen first goes to Finland, where Robert Kajanus has invited him to conduct a complete concert with, among other works, his new symphony at The Helsinki Orchestral Society.
The last major concert with the Espansiva in this volume is Siegmund von Hausegger's performance in Berlin with the Blüthner Orchestra on 8 December 1913. It had been touch and go whether the concert would take place; the high-profile performances of the symphony that had already taken place have allowed Carl Nielsen to look elsewhere for a publisher. As Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen puts it in a letter to their daughter, Irmelin: 'a major German publisher has asked him to let them take care of the printing of the symphony [and] he is at present negotiating with them about it. It is also a pretty strange situation that his music has to be locked away at the back of a cupboard for over 20 years, and when people write in for the scores for a concert, as they have done from Moscow and Chicago, there is no reply from Wilhelm Hansens.' [4:573]
However it may be, there is no real evidence in the sources for the claim that it was his publishers who sold Sinfonia Espansiva but rather his friends, acquaintances and connections. One publisher especially in the German publishing city par excellence, C.F. Kahnt Nachfolger in Leipzig, bought the symphony for 5,000 Deutschmarks and had it printed. According to the contract, the publishers were not permitted to hire out the scores but they should be bought by each individual orchestra wanting to play the symphony and after the sale of 20 copies the composer should have new royalties.
The young Blüthner Orchestra, however, cannot afford to buy but wishes to have the scores placed at their disposal on hire without charge ('kostenlos leihweise'), a request which the publisher cannot grant. It is even felt at the publishing company in Leipzig that Berlin does not have the same significance as other centres of music in Germany such as Munich, Dresden, Leipzig and the Rhineland, and since Siegmund von Hausegger is also wanting to perform the symphony in Hamburg, one performance of the symphony with this conductor can at least be attested [4:740].
We do not know what wheeling and dealing saved this concert. Ironically enough, the performance does not end up being reviewed as a success in Berlin either – as usual, we might say, with the performance of the Symphony no. 2 [CNW 26] of 1904 in mind [2:232] [2:318] [2:321]. But for the public and for friends and those familiar with it, who have travelled from far and wide to hear it, it was a success. The composer, his youngest daughter and Carl Bretton-Meyer from Copenhagen, the sculptress from Celle – even though she had complained shortly before that it was yet again interrupting her work and that her attendance was uncertain – and from Dresden Irmelin, who at the time is a pupil at the Jaques-Dalcroze School in Hellerau, who has been ill until recently and who is so strongly fixated on her father and his concert that she is afraid of not being able to make it.
The young composer Kurt Atterberg arrives from Sweden. Carl Nielsen has invited Niels W. Gade's grandchild to come from Leipzig to make his debut as a singer in the symphony's baritone part, and from the same musical city comes the organist at St Thomas' Church, Karl Straube, later to be the church's precentor, whom Siegmund von Hausegger has introduced to the Danish composer.
In October of that same year, Straube has given concerts in Copenhagen and this has provided the opportunity for the two men to meet. For the first time we have a statement from Nielsen about the organ and evidence of an incipient urge to compose for the organ, an urge that, as we know, is only translated into resonant music at the very end of his life.
In Copenhagen Karl Straube has, of course, also been introduced to the Sinfonia Espansiva for four hands, and has been 'powerfully moved by it. He said, for example, that it could never have been written by a German,' writes Carl Nielsen to his wife in Celle, 'and thought it was so idiosyncratic and powerfully personal. This is not something you can have an opinion about yourself. On the way to the station he said: "There is an extraordinary power in your symphony; there are several places where it almost provokes real fear."
Straube's emotional response was noted not only by the composer himself but also by the organist's pupil N.O. Raasted, who was present on the days in question:
'One evening out at Carl Nielsen's where some musicians were present, Chr. Christiansen and Henrik Knudsen played his 3rd symphony – Symfonia Espansiva – for four hands on the piano for Professor Straube – he and I sat following the orchestral score – and it made a powerful impression on me when Straube, who was really so much at home in the great music of his time – broke out: "We have no symphonic composer like this in Germany in our day!"'N.O. Raasted: Nogle Erindringer om Carl Nielsen. Fyns Tidende 10.10.1931. Raasted dates this wrongly, recalling the event alongside later occasions.
If we read this volume with an experience of the symphony at the back of our minds, we cannot fail to be struck by the sense that what he was bringing to his music was not everyday life, either his own or that of others. Sinfonia Espansiva is more in the nature of a clash with it. In his private life and in his workplace, The Royal Theatre, such power was not always able to find a release. The conflicts that had already made themselves felt when his appointment was under negotiation in 1908 are slowly but surely rising to the surface. Although Frederik Rung, their epicentre, is increasingly suffering from failing health and is more and more absent, and this might have been expected to mitigate the conflicts, precisely the opposite happens. Carl Nielsen is more and more frequently conducting performances that he has not himself rehearsed, and Rung interferes not only in his own performances, which Carl Nielsen has had to take on, but also in decisions for which the second kapellmeister has responsibility. Carl Nielsen insists on his rights and these are upheld – and in writing, too [4:32].
Peace never lasts for long, however, and when Frederik Rung returns after a prolonged period of sick leave, the situation comes to a head in October, during the very days leading up to Carl Nielsen's leave and his journey to Helsinki and Stockholm. Rung has contrived to get the management to appoint Georg Høeberg as his assistant, an 'Insurance assistant', the manager Otto Benzon calls it in a letter to the second kapellmeister [4:766]. Given the frequency of Rung's illnesses, this resembles in reality the nomination of a new first kapellmeister, and Carl Nielsen's view is clear: 'When the First Kapellmeister is ill, I step in, when I am ill, the next person steps in, when that next person is ill, the next person again steps in and so on and so forth. Then the Insurance is in the right order.' And 'In the event of the management deciding that Mr Høeberg should be Mr Rung's substitute in anything whatsoever relating to The Royal Theatre without my sanction, then I shall not only be seeking my resignation within the two hours I have said but I shall have it.'[4:765]
In his letter, Otto Benzon attempts to get Carl Nielsen to see the situation from the point of view of the management: The situation is anything but normal, and they need to respect the psychological state of the sick first kapellmeister, about which he has even submitted a doctor's statement. For Carl Nielsen, the critical issue is that the letter indicates that management has given Georg Høeberg a written undertaking to rehearse Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde; a Danish performance has been long awaited and, despite the distance between him and Wagner as a composer, Carl Nielsen cannot allow this musical challenge, which is just as significant as much of what he has already conducted, to pass him by.
In accordance with the declarations he has set out previously to the management, he reacts promptly. At 8 o'clock the next morning he makes a private telephone call to the manager, gets hold of his wife and explains to her that he is laying down his baton. Although some form of dialogue is established later in the day, he insists that he will not conduct that evening and in so doing causes the Theatre major embarrassment.
Over the following days, he also softens up a little and attends several meetings both with the manager and with the Theatre director, A.P. Weis. Eventually, some degree of understanding is achieved between the parties – minutes of these conversations at least are written [4:779] and signed by all three the same day that Carl Nielsen travels to Helsinki and Stockholm. There was uncertainty until the last minute whether he would be able to leave; at one point [4:749], he even offered not to go, which indicates that the management's stance towards Carl Nielsen was also coloured by uncertainty as a result of his growing success as a composer and his consequent need for leave of absence, and that signals from the management were also making it impossible for Nielsen to choose the theatre.
In the midst of it all, before his departure and in defiance of the agreement between the parties, Carl Nielsen submits his letter of resignation [4:775], but new negotiations result in the director putting it on hold, and this unresolved situation continues into the new year – the next volume – until, in February, Carl Nielsen asks to have his resignation expedited.
As part of this story, it is worth noting that Carl Nielsen, who at the beginning of his period as kapellmeister at the theatre had encountered considerable criticism for his conducting, is receiving significant recognition during these years both at the Theatre and in the concert hall as a practising musician. One example is The Royal Theatre concert comprising, amongst other works, Brahms' Symphony no. 2, which he conducted shortly after his return from his successes both as conductor and composer in Helsinki and Stockholm [4:826].
The substantial material in this volume points in many different directions, and there are more nuances, trails and detours than can be covered in a foreword. In many ways, the composer retraces his own footsteps during these years.
In the summer of 1912, for example, he is visited by his oldest brother, Peter, whom he has not seen since his emigration to Australia 34 years earlier. We hear the story of how this brother had made out in that foreign country and how he is returning to his family, a ruined man! Their brother Sophus, whom Carl has not seen for 31 years, also arrives from America. The three brothers go touring with their father, old Niels the Painter, around Funen, revisit old friends and places, stay at Damgaard and with the youngest brother, Valdemar, who is a school teacher in Bryndum in western Jutland.
A visit to the grave of their mother at Nørre Søby churchyard is obligatory; strong memories of their mother seem to have been common to all these siblings. Their brother Anders also visited her grave when he was home from the United States in July 1909, and it is in this volume that he remembers in a letter to Carl what it felt like standing at his mother's grave, and he talks about her significance to him in a foreign land [4:235].
In 1912, there are also visits to his old teacher Hans Jørgen Hansen from Stenløse, now living in retirement in Odense. He was the one to take the initiative way back for the creation of the Braga music society, which brought classical music into the fiddler's milieu on Funen and out to the rural population – and thereby gave the future composer his classical baptism (MfB s. 70).
The past revisits from the other side of the Atlantic in 1912 in yet another way. Carl Nielsen's first son, Carl August Hansen, shows up from New York – the boy who had been born in January 1888 as a result of Carl Nielsen lodging with customs officer Bauditz on Frederiksborggade. Carl Hansen, who has trained as an apothecary in New York, has decided at the advanced age of 24 that he wants to realise his dream to be a musician, and for that purpose, he has begun to write to his father to enlist his help to study at the music conservatory in Copenhagen.
His father, who has his own problems to deal with, hesitates for a long time before answering and, when he finally does so, tries to get his son's study moved to Stockholm or Berlin [4:415] [4:458], but the fact of the matter is that Carl August Hansen is in Denmark from December 1912 and in January 1913 starts his studies at the music conservatory. There can be no doubt that there was contact between father and son during this period even if there is nothing in the letters and diaries to prove it (Cf. Vil Herren pp. 99-128).
The sculptress continues working as usual and is often away from home, residing for the most part in Celle with all its stallions and horses enthusiasts, and in this the present volume is no different from others. She continues working on the major national royal monument, the equestrian statue of Christian IX, which is to be placed on the riding arena behind Christiansborg Palace, but this is also interspersed with other larger or smaller works. In this volume, we can follow her work on the Queen Dagmar monument, unveiled at the Riberhus castle ruin near Ribe at a major celebration on 24 August 1913. Carl Nielsen along with the rest of the family join her in Ribe on the day itself. Afterwards, he writes to Anne Marie: 'I was so sad that you were disturbed a couple of times because of me, much against my will. It was such a joy to be with you for these unique days, so it pains me doubly that I was not entirely able to put aside certain aspects of my nature.' [4:721]
The correspondence between man and wife continues to be marked by the deep solidarity they have constantly shown towards each other and their respective arts; Carl Nielsen also shows that he is still interested in his wife in another way. He is, apparently, no longer suffering so grievously from her absence, and a natural explanation can probably be found in MM, Marie Møller, whose role in the household is changing. This can also be registered in the letters written by the two daughters to each other now that they increasingly do not both live at home.
Since the national committee overseeing the royal monument approved Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen's mock-up in April 1909 and requested her to submit her artist's fee, she has been working without a contract. Although she is what is known as a free artist and does not have to suffer conditions of service in an institution, her situation is no less burdensome than Carl Nielsen's. In July 1912, the committee finally gets around to signing a contract with the sculptress [4:408]. According to this, the monument is now to be delivered and erected no later than the end of 1917; as we know, this did not happen until November 1927. As the saying goes, art is long but life is short – sometimes in more than one sense.