About this volume (5)
The source material in this volume makes it clear that the four years it deals with were not easy to manage for the main characters involved. As editors or readers trying to do the same almost a century on, we can scarcely avoid feeling that we are in the same boat. Carl Nielsen's Symphony no. 4, The Inextinguishable [CNW 28], was composed, given its premiere and performed several times during this period, and in the public arena it marked the final breakthrough for the composer, who from this moment and for the rest of his life remained pretty much unquestioned as Denmark's most important composer. The symphony can be seen as the eruption of a volcano sending material shooting into the sky that takes a while to fall to earth, tumbles about and slowly cools down to the point where we can begin to speculate about what happened and what that cloud actually contained. In reality, his working life, world history, his private life and art were all being blown to smithereens and gradually descending in bits and pieces and slowly coming together to create new meaning here and there.
These various layers all have their roots long before, but they appear to have exerted a parallel and simultaneous pressure that resulted in a situation that demanded release. Carl Nielsen's workplace, The Royal Theatre, is the first of these to make itself felt. Ever since his letter of resignation was sent on 15 October 1913, and since it was put on the back burner by the theatre director, the day of reckoning has been approaching. Even though, from the start, the composer himself has been most inclined to believe that it would end with him leaving, he has nevertheless nurtured the hope that something would change at the theatre and its management so that he would be able to remain and be allowed truly to develop his abilities in an attempt to renew the repertoire as he and others had imagined they would, when they joined in 1908. Cf. Samtid, 240.
On 22 January 1914, the first kapellmeister, so frequently ill, dies at the age of 59. Until the end, he has been a thorn in Carl Nielsen's flesh, interfering in his business. Even though management has more recently sided with the second kapellmeister, they immediately nominate Georg Høeberg – the man who, in Frederik Rung's own words to Carl Nielsen 'has so often sat at my bedside' and learnt the ropes there – to be kapellmeister without a rank, whereupon, after some delay, they tell Carl Nielsen that the designations of first and second kapellmeister have been abolished and that, from now on, the two kapellmeisters are on an equal footing.
Carl Nielsen has, in fact, himself advocated an arrangement of this kind in private conversations, with Johannes Nielsen, for example, who has been selected to be the new theatre director from 1 July 1914 and who, as the nominee not yet in office, takes part in discussions with the theatre management and the ministry and there passes on Carl Nielsen's earlier, private views while at the same time asserting his neutrality to the composer. This presents a tough test of their old friendship. Carl Nielsen now insists that, having for his entire time as kapellmeister been constrained by Rung from above, he will not now combat Høeberg's ambitions from the side. He will either be the first kapellmeister with the same rights as Rung had had or he will resign. Since his request is not granted, he immediately requests on 18 February that his resignation be expedited. However, the theatre director does not send his letter of resignation on to the ministry until 12 March, and the weeks between these two dates see further negotiations, which at least show that there was a hope on the part of the theatre that Carl Nielsen would end up swallowing the new arrangement with the two equally ranked kapellmeisters.
In this phase, Carl Nielsen is assisted by Jørgen Hansen Koch, the president of The Maritime and Commercial High Court, who helps him by drafting letters and attending meetings on his behalf with the theatre management. Even Carl Nielsen's old friend, Robert Henriques, the critic from Vort Land, participates in meetings with the theatre management to try to secure him a future at the theatre. When this fails, Henriques writes as follows on the front page of his paper:
'... it is highly regrettable for the situation of the Opera at The Royal Theatre that a name that carries as much weight as regards musical authority as does Carl Nielsen is to disappear from the kapellmeister's podium at The Royal Theatre at a moment when our national stage had every reason to want his skills to be at its disposal for the arrangements that need to be made and which – if we think to the future – will not easily be made with any degree of satisfaction by the new manager, whose musical interest can hardly be said to be overwhelming. Here, Carl Nielsen's name was a guarantee that was worth much, one that could justify the management being equal to their musical responsibility towards the public by indicating that they rightly relied upon this excellent musician's experience and taste.
It is hard to see what the future will now bring and what arrangements will be made to procure the right man to take on overall musical direction at The Royal Theatre.
Those with the best interests of The Royal Theatre at heart will be hoping that its management show skill in resolving the dispute about its kapellmeister in such a way that the reputation our Opera has been fortunate in building over time can for its own sake be preserved and maintained.
However, to that end, what needs to be found is not simply a dutiful and solid official but a true artist with imagination and heart, to whose culture and talent others will be able to look up with respect and veneration.
The moment the management finds such an artist, the question of their kapellmeister is solved. Until then, we have to regret that a modus vivendi was not found whereby Mr Carl Nielsen could be retained within its precincts.' Vort Land 31.03.1914.
It is clear from this that there were forces in the musical milieu of Copenhagen that wished to see a creative personality become leader of the opera, not just kapellmeisters on an equal footing who would be subject to a theatre management with no professional grounding in music. This was not simply a quarrel between individuals in an environment full of intrigue but also a struggle to raise the status of music generally, as can be seen, for example, in the tirades sent home by Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen from Celle in support of her husband. If he could not manage to do something for music in Denmark, as Max von Schillings had in Stuttgart, Richard Strauss in Berlin and Armas Järnefelt in Stockholm, then he would do better to leave [5:80].
Charles Kjerulf, too, wrote a feature article about 'The issue of the kapellmeister at The Royal Theatre'. He, who over the years had regularly questioned the assessment of Carl Nielsen, the composer, now declined to admit he had any qualities as an opera conductor:
'... with time he became an acceptable conductor – but no more than that. Which was far too little for a musician of Carl Nielsen's rank and for a composer with his talent.
He must certainly have had a tough struggle with himself before now determining to leave. But deep inside he was perfectly aware that he was not up to the job. And it was a shame for him. He was far too good to occupy this position – in that way.
Two of the greatest names in our musical life should stand out as shining examples for him. The one to be followed, the other as a warning. Niels W. Gade was for a time kapellmeister "on trial" for one season at The Royal Theatre. At which point he said "Thanks but no thanks! It's not for me! I'd rather compose!" And he really did have qualities as a conductor that would have justified him staying on. Johan Svendsen retained the kapellmeister position for many years, though he often longed to leave it. But there was no mistaking the sad result that his fabulous talent for composition, one of the richest sources of music, at the same time dried up and ceased flowing.
That is a price that Nordic music should not have to pay yet again. It is far too dear in blood for that. Solely for that reason, then, the composer Carl Nielsen's best friends ought to offer heartfelt congratulations that Kapellmeister Carl Nielsen is leaving.' Politiken, 01.04.1914.
On 30 May 1914, Whit Saturday, Carl Nielsen conducted the last performance of the season, which also marked his last performance as kapellmeister at The Royal Theatre. The work was Puccini's La Bohème, once again a work and a composer with only limited interest for him and whom he had characterised by asking: 'Isn't it as if feelings have become mechanical?' [4:15]
His last days at the theatre brought more humiliation. The first performance in Denmark of Tristan and Isolde, which he had wanted to conduct and which had played a central part in his handing in his notice in the autumn, took place on 14 February conducted by Frederik Rung's assistant, Georg Høeberg, recently appointed to the official post of royal kapellmeister and formerly, like Carl Nielsen, second violin in the orchestra. The following day, Robert Henriques wrote in his review: 'He had the honour of the evening, which did not so much demonstrate his spirituality as his ability to direct a performance punctiliously and conscientiously.'
Høeberg was also allowed to conduct the final symphonic concert of the season on 6 March. It may have been significant, and it is at any rate difficult not to see it as symbolic, that the main work on the programme was Richard Strauss' A Hero's Life, which was here given its Danish premiere. Over the years, Carl Nielsen had watched with mixed feelings his polar opposite, Richard Strauss, taking Germany by storm, while he himself struggled to make his mark, and in Stuttgart he had even found himself having to surrender his slot on the programme to Strauss [4:269]. The royal Danish opera that Carl Nielsen was leaving was a delayed mirror image of developments in central Europe. He had not even been allowed to make a sufficiently powerful mark for there to be any comparison.
At the theatre and in the opera, feelings had become routine. In his marriage, it was more the conflicts and their suppression that had become routine, but here, too, the situation was coming to a head. That spring, Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, who for so long had only come home from Celle on brief visits, was preparing for a more general homecoming and she writes to her husband asking whether he has been faithful to her over the winter [5:53]. This he avows, upon which a dialogue on the topic ensues, the precise content of which is not easy to make sense of.
During the first days of his re-found freedom from The Royal Theatre, Carl Nielsen travels to Dresden to visit Irmelin at the Dalcroze School in nearby Hellerau. He has also planned to visit his wife in Celle, but his travel plans are altered and on 6 June, Anne Marie arrives in Copenhagen, Carl joining her only two days later. However, Karl Straube is also now in Copenhagen, and that same evening they invite Carl Nielsen's adviser in the negotiations with The Royal Theatre, the president of The Maritime and Commercial High Court, Jørgen Hansen Koch, and his wife, Anine Koch, to dinner. One of Anne Marie's cousins has also arrived from Germany. 'Mrs Koch, rather awkward, naïve, flirty,' notes Anne Marie in her diary, which in this critical phase of the marriage supplements the rest of the source material in the correspondence.
From here, suspicion grows day by day. On 11 June, they all go to see Elves' HillElverhøj. at The Open Air Theatre, though not together. Anne Marie accompanies the cousin, while Straube, Carl and the Kochs make up a separate party, and Anne Marie is busy trying to distract the cousin's attention from Carl and his interest in this unknown woman. On 19 June, the same people attend Carl's rehearsals of Hymnus Amoris [CNW 100], which is to be performed at the Baltic exhibition in Malmö some days later, and afterwards they go to the Palace Hotel. 'It is all beneath me in my position,' notes Anne Marie. The same day, she talks with her friends, Suzette Holten (Cali) and Marie Møller, and returns her wedding ring to her husband [5:90]. There are indications elsewhere that this is not the first time things have come to such a pass; it is scarcely a year since he had returned the ring to her finger [5:101]. On 21 June, it is Anne Marie's birthday. She is 51. That evening, Carl leaves the house to stay with Svend Godske-Nielsen in Holte.
Some days later, after both man and wife have been in Malmö where Carl has conducted Hymnus Amoris[CNW 100] (the song of love at various stages of life that had been inspired by their wedding journey to Italy in 1891), Carl is still staying with Godske-Nielsen, where he receives a letter from his wife [5:91].
It appears that he has wanted to continue having Anine Koch as a student even though his wife now knows about the relationship. Anine's husband, Jørgen Hansen Koch, who is 20 years older than her, is aware of the relationship but apparently finds it acceptable that his wife should also receive 'entertainment', and it has surprised Anine that Carl's wife does not also find it acceptable. The only person who does not think it acceptable appears to be Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen.
The following year, in 1915, Anine Koch gives birth to her first child, a daughter, Nynne Koch, who in 1999 published her memoirs as narrated to Karen Syberg. Nynne Koch was also aware of the story about Mrs Carl-Nielsen forbidding her husband, 'who was known as an inveterate womaniser,' to teach her mother. However, Nynne Koch also describes the approach of her childhood environment to marriage, sex and eroticism as follows: 'A wedding did not announce that they went to bed with each other but that they now were a social unit.' Karen Syberg: Ved nærmere eftertanke, Nynne Koch ser tilbage, Copenhagen 1999, pp. 28 and 151. Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen makes it clear in her letter: 'I cannot turn a blind eye to it all but, if I am not to fall apart, have to maintain what I have told you even though I want to give in to you and pretend it's not there I simply cannot do it!'
There was as yet no mention of divorce and no recognition yet of Marie Møller's role, but Carl Nielsen's relationship with Anine Koch sets the avalanche rolling. For the time being, the parents and their youngest daughter collect themselves sufficiently to travel together to Damgaard at the beginning of July. From here, Søs describes the situation in a letter to Irmelin: 'Finally we are all here together in peace and quiet and I really hope for Father's sake that he can start work – he has been given a piano for his room and has now already begun on a new symphony. Mother is so sweet and calm now – I think she is sitting downstairs modelling a snail – it rains and it rains...' [5:95].
This symphony develops, over the next 18 months, into The Inextinguishable [CNW 28]. Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen left the snail behind and travelled to Norway where she had to make arrangements for a grave monument for the Rønneberg family. It was a journey towards a dawning of understanding for her. Alone with her own thoughts in the Norwegian uplands, she relives and remembers the conflicts and reconciliations of the past, and she recognises that even their most serious reconciliations have been built on lies and deceit. The wool has been pulled over her eyes, she has never been told the truth, even when she took Carl back with an open heart in Greece in 1903. When, after her return from Greece, they got through what had taken place in her absence and she could smile again, even then it was all built on deceit. She can see that now.
Her friend Cali's husband also has his affairs, and it has even fallen to Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen to be made aware of an affair with a certain Fie. Her own sense of honour and her self-assurance have led her to reveal her knowledge to her friend, but Cali 'succeeds in submerging herself in the muddy sump of lies and deceit.' [5:101]
No diary entries written by Carl Nielsen have been preserved from this critical period, and he probably wrote none. He was not the one who needed to keep an alternative account of the artifice that has dominated his life. He eats humble pie, attempts to explain, makes appeals, apologises, admits his sins in a way that seems odd in a man who was otherwise not terribly Christian, and since he does not even entertain the idea of divorce, we have to accept that at heart he has never loved anyone but Anne Marie. He speaks of 'the strange enchanted feeling' he has had so often, 'like a sleepwalker who thinks he is awake', and he explains to her – and to himself and to us:
'When I’ve been creating best and most powerfully, I’ve had this same kind of feeling. I’ve talked with you about this before. At such times, it’s as though my individual will is gone or is so slackened that it’s the work that takes me over to such an extent that I – i.e. the person I am – am dissolved and as though scattered into the air and floating in everything. I told you that when I was working on Masquerade [CNW 2], I had the impression now and then that I was like a large drainpipe through which a stream was running that I couldn’t do anything about. – It’s curious that my highest and lowest moments have this in common: that my individuality vanishes and I become like an empty space in which there is neither good nor ill. If only I could explain everything and my true nature to you. We have all of us – even the meanest, yes, the coarsest human being – a true nature in us; that’s absolutely certain. I don’t want to make myself look better than I am – I really don’t want to do that – but I do want to say that I am still intact and I haven’t fallen to pieces in those areas where there is something good and true.' [5:96]
On 24 July, Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen is in Bergen, where a redirected letter from Carl Nielsen to her, dated 14 July, is waiting. He promises on his honour and on hers, writes of 'The powerful current of life that will also carry you and me and lead us together out into the great sea; and if our boat bears the marks of storms and foul weather, it will also be decorated with flowers on the last journey and we two will stand together at the masthead when we slip out onto the great ocean.' [5:100] - She visits Nina Grieg, and from there she replies with a trivial postcard. For her, maintaining an alternative account is a necessity, both as part of the process of acknowledging the truth, and also as a way to delay responses to that realisation.
During the days that follow, she walks over the Hardanger, spends a tearful night in a cabin and gets up in the morning to write: 'A couple of days ago something dawned in my consciousness and now I see everything in context.' [5:106]
Three days later, she arrives in Copenhagen in the morning, immediately rings Marie Møller and asks her to come to the house with the key. Marie Møller arrives 'with a frightened appearance of guilty conscience' [5:107], and Anne Marie presumably confronts her with her realisation that she, too, is one of Carl's women, but without eliciting an admission from Marie. Some discussion must have taken place since, in Celle a couple of weeks later, Anne Marie notes that Marie Møller has had 'the cheek to tell me that she had told Mrs Koch that if there was a choice between Mrs K and me she would stand by my side.' [5:114]
The same afternoon, Anne Marie travels to Holte to visit Svend Godske-Nielsen and has a long talk with him. He is shocked at her 'shattered appearance' and understands 'in full measure' the cause. However, it later appears that at this stage of the relationship's unravelling he, Henrik Knudsen and Carl Nielsen all deny facts as regards Marie Møller – Knudsen and Godske-Nielsen probably in good faith.
Later that day, Anne Marie sends a letter to Carl at Damgaard. It has not been preserved, and close reading of the letters reveals that several must be missing. However, a number of letters have been preserved that the author requested the recipient to burn. It goes without saying that there are lacunae in many areas in such extensive material, but there seems no reason to believe that during these years of crisis they had more deliberate causes than in other periods. If that were the case, we might well wonder what criteria had formed the basis for the removal of evidence. We might miss a letter here and there, but there is no lack of sensitive information!
War breaks out during these days, World War I, and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen's concern, apart from her marital problems, is, of course, how to save her models and the effects she has left in Celle. Her anger at her husband is not such that she does not expect him to help her. He sends a letter in which he writes both that she should immediately come to Damgaard and that he will go with her to Celle – they should go together no matter where [5:108]. In the end, she travels alone the very day that Germany declares war on Russia, without a passport, on one of the last trains to cross with the ferry from Gedser and manages to reach Celle.
In Celle, she has great difficulty in focusing on her work but completes, amongst other things, a statuette of her model stallion and rider, Major-General Ernst Digeon von Monteton. One Sunday, she is reading in the forest when she finds herself arrested, accused of spying, of having drawn the town's powder magazine, whose whereabouts she does not even know [5:116]. She sinks deep into a sense of disgust at everything, re-reads Carl's letters, makes fun of 'the flower-bedecked boat out in eternity', which he wrote about in the letter she received in Bergen. There, he can get what he needs. 'And just think once a week Mrs K can hop on board and study theory so he'll be missing nothing. I am disgusted with myself for having been so blind.' And she can only weep over the fact 'that even these letters were lies' but nevertheless comes to have her doubts about that, 'maybe in a way they are not, but where then is his personality?' [5:114]
And his excuse that he in his highest and lowest moments is without a will and does not know what he is doing! But why then has he not forgotten himself with women at the theatre, as he boasts he has not done, because it would be unwise for his position at the theatre. As soon as there is some higher consideration to take account of, he is not without a will!
Finally, on the last day of the month, she informs not her husband but her daughter Søs that she will probably be coming to Copenhagen the following Thursday – 3 November – with all her possessions filling a whole carriage. Carl, too, has come to Copenhagen from Damgaard during these days. There must have been a number of 'conversations' over the autumn.
Marie Møller has been banished from the house, but when her father, the old member of Landstinget,Established in 1866 and roughly equivalent to an Upper House Niels Møller, dies at the end of September, the erstwhile friend Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen nevertheless sends a wreath to the funeral. Instead of a letter of thanks, Marie Møller pens these words: 'I did not lay your wreath on my father's grave. You take too many things for granted in this world. My father's honour and my honour are one. You cannot scorn and revile me and at the same time join the crowd that honours my father's life and memory.' [5:136]
Letters can tell us much, but they do not always do so in chronological order. This is true not least of the Nielsen's marital story, which requires a degree of detective work to extrapolate from the sources. The breach with Marie Møller has not yet become common knowledge in their circle, and we learn later that both Suzette Holten and Ove Jørgensen, for example, have been surprised at Irmelin's coolness towards Marie Møller [5:339]. During the course of the winter 1914-1915, it is Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen who ends up being the first to need to tell friends what is going on. Until now, it has primarily been the husband and wife licking their own marital wounds.
The new symphony, The Inextinguishable is not progressing rapidly, but by about Christmas the composer has managed to complete his new melodies for Johan Borup'sJohan Borup (1853-1946) was the founder of the Johan Borup Folk High School in Copenhagen songbook [CNW Coll. 12] Some of his students and Thomas Laub have also been involved in the work, Laub with mixed feelings because he himself could not choose the texts and, on 1 December, he proposes in a letter to Carl Nielsen [5:159] that they together compose a collection of songs using the maxim 'to give good people good words to sing with good popular melodies'. They immediately start work and the following spring, on 13 April, can already give the first performance of this landmark collection in Danish music, A Score of Danish Songs (1915) [CNW Coll. 9].
In the diary and the letters and in postcards from Laub, we can follow how the songs developed from day to day during December. Anne Marie is in bed with bronchitis and is still sunk in the marital mud into which she has been sucked by her husband. Relations with Marie Møller are over, but she still has links with Cali and, on the very day on which the composer makes his first abortive attempt to compose the melody for 'Odd and unknown evening breezes' [CNW 205], Cali comes visiting, and Anne Marie makes her an 'apology for the Fie story' that she had previously told her. This can perhaps be taken as evidence that she is inclined to want to continue living in her marriage with her shame.
The 21 December ends with yet another marital clash. Carl has met Marie Møller on the street, and he is still wanting to continue seeing Jørgen Hansen Koch and Anine. He does not believe that this is in the least important, and he will decide himself what he will talk about. Anne Marie wants clear boundaries and won't be bitten by snakes in the grass, and she asks him to consider how he himself would have seen things if their roles had been reversed. Carl leaps up and wants to go out to see Godske-Nielsen, while Anne Marie exhorts him for once to be a man instead of running away from everything, as he has done ever since his youth, when his aunt Marie had had to manage things for him, for example in connection with Carl August Hansen's birth in 1888. 'I couldn't continue we would either have to go through it or else I wanted to be free I couldn't continue alongside a person whom I couldn't be good to,' Anne Marie concludes in her diary for that day, while Carl notes simply that he has written the melody for 'Now the day is full of song',[CNW 213] even though he had announced the day before that the song collection was finished [5:175] [5:176].
The couple are together in Norway for the whole of January, probably in an attempt to get through this crisis. Carl Nielsen writes home confidently to Irmelin that he thinks he and her mother will come to an understanding. We can see from subsequent events that it is here in Norway that he makes the full admission of his relationship with Marie Møller. This he also writes to Marie Møller, who later quotes the missing letter when writing to Ove Jørgensen [5:336]. Carl has promised Marie Møller that 'never again will a word pass Marie's lips about this.' Marie Møller has, in fact, herself opted to give up her relationship with Carl, has wanted to withdraw from any involvement with the Nielsen family and may even have wanted to emigrate to America, but she was persuaded by Carl to remain and to maintain normal links to the family [5:203]. Here, the pair of them must have promised each other to preserve their finished relationship as a secret between them.
After their trip to Norway together, however, Anne Marie now has certainty about what had taken her so long to suspect, and she tells Marie Møller that she now knows how matters have stood. Henrik Knudsen and Svend Godske-Nielsen are also told, and they have to admit that this has not been a matter of 'a vile accusation' on Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen's part, as they had so far been claiming. Now, they have the word of all parties that it is true, and now they, too, are to a greater or lesser extent plagued and paralysed by the affair but insist 'that it would have been best if the matter had never come to light', as had been the intention of both Carl Nielsen and Marie Møller. And, as the house of cards starts to fall with its own inbuilt logic, it is at the expense of their friendship with both Anne Marie and Carl. [5:234]
The spring and summer bring a wealth of events that seem for a time to bring peace to the marital process. In March, the conductor of The Music Society, Franz Neruda, dies, and this results in Carl Nielsen being chosen as his successor on 27 May 1915. The society has been losing members and has recently been in the doldrums. Even though it involves only three concerts a year and is therefore no onerous task, it is nevertheless a position that carries both responsibility and prestige, and the attempt to put this society, so rich in tradition, back on its feet is no mean challenge.
The Open Air Theatre also asks him to take on a major task, namely to be in charge that year of the first proper opera performance in Dyrehaven in Copenhagen. He chooses Little ChristineLiden Kirsten. by Hartmann and Hans Christian Andersen supplemented by Gade's The Elf-King's DaughterElverskud. in his own dramatic arrangement. In the latter, he even allows his own daughter Irmelin, with her training at the Jaques-Dalcroze School, to be the choreographer and director in the Elven Dance. It is such a success that yet another member of this crisis-ridden family now comes to public attention. Although it has been a risky undertaking, Carl Nielsen also enjoys great success, not only as conductor but also as the producer of the performance and as artistic and technical manager, since Johannes Nielsen and Adam Poulsen, who should have undertaken these functions, are both ill.
In this busy period, Carl Nielsen has his 50th birthday on 9 June. In April, the family moved from Vodroffsvej to Frederiksholms Kanal 28A, where the sculptress, now in the midst of one of her most unproductive periods, has been honoured with the offer to take over the old atelier and the apartment that went with it, where the sculptors Johannes Wiedewelt, H.E. Freund, H.V. Bissen and Vilhelm Bissen had lived and worked. She herself, as a 19-year-old during her first visit to Copenhagen, had stood in the atelier and asked Vilhelm Bissen to take her on as a pupil. 'But Bissen replied that he did not take women because nothing ever became of them. They married.' (Anne Marie Telmányi: Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, Copenhagen 1979, p. 13.) Now she was living there herself with a husband and all that went with that!
For the moment, the atelier could be used to accommodate a party for 70 people for Carl's birthday. Irmelin especially remembers talking endlessly with her father's pupil Ove Scavenius, with whom she was in love [5:230], but it also appears that Cali and Ove Jørgensen talked about what might happen with this marriage of artists. What the birthday is most remembered for in the sources is the dispute about presents that it arouses. Marie Møller gives or contributes to a gift of money to be shared between man and wife, but Anne Marie refuses to receive anything from her and returns her share of the money, whereupon Marie Møller sends it back via the husband only to have it returned once again. Finally, Henrik Knudsen takes pity on the homeless cash and suggest to Marie Møller that she should deposit it with him.
The quarrel about the present is also a quarrel about a meeting between Marie Møller, Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen and Carl Nielsen with Henrik Knudsen and Godske-Nielsen as witnesses. It was apparently to have taken place in February that year but came to nothing. It is not clear whether this was because Anne Marie backed out or because Carl wanted to protect his wife – or himself – from this confrontation.
However, even though there is disorder in our own lives, we nevertheless have to attend to the upbringing of our children, even when a child is 22. Both for her own sake and for Bodil Neergaard's, Søs has been staying for lengthy periods at Fuglsang since the death of Viggo Neergaard in May 1915. She has fallen for the Hungarian violinist Emil Telmányi, who has been in Copenhagen. Now, he is in Berlin and due to the war has been called up. The two young people want to see each other, and Søs arranges her journey in secret, only Bodil Neergaard being party to it, with Irmelin being informed and taking part by letter. Afterwards, Søs describes those days in Berlin and, not least, her return to Fuglsang in a letter to Irmelin, who is with her mother in Skagen – where, as chance would have it, Marie Møller is also staying! [5:241]
Emil accompanies Søs all the way back to Nykøbing Falster, where they find accommodation for him so that the young people can continue to meet for a few days there before Emil has to go to war. Søs cycles back to Fuglsang, where the maid receives her and diplomatically asks whether she would not rather eat her dinner in her room. Søs thinks she can hear a familiar voice down in the living room and is told by the maid that it is her father! He has telephoned while she was away, Bodil has made a clean breast of things, and now he has arrived and is waiting for his daughter to return. Bodil comes up first and thinks that Søs should have it out openly with her father. Then he comes in, the crisis-riven husband, and 'first draws a dreadfully hard shell around himself ', before giving his infatuated daughter a proper clout around the ear (Cf. AMT p. 107). He then cancels her arranged meeting with her lover, who is waiting for her longingly the following morning in Nykøbing, forces her to write him a letter, which he takes in and delivers, and has a thorough talk with his perspective son-in-law and partner in the world of art [5:241].
The following year, Telmányi is once again in Copenhagen and again there is trouble with the young people. The marriage has reached a low point, Carl is at Damgaard and has been forbidden to write to his wife, who nevertheless raises the alarm and asks for help: 'For Søs' sake, come straight away and make T[elmányi] take responsibility, our daughter's life and maybe her reason are at stake.' Carl rushes to the train and has yet another long conversation with Telmányi, who apparently manages to turn the conversation so that it also addresses the older husband's questionable lifestyle. At any rate, Carl declares: 'Ich habe einen Fehler begangen, den ich mit meinem Leben büssen will.' ('I have committed a fault that I will pay for with my life.') [5:405]
The long process of unravelling the sins of the past has not only paralysed Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen in her work as an artist but also prompts to her now for the first time to formulate directly her wish to leave the marriage. 'It is wrong when it is claimed that my art has overshadowed my marriage. I was a sculptress before we were married and yes I've taken it seriously God help me if I haven't. Have you not also taken your art seriously. But in recent years since, despite repeated promises, disquiet and distrust have proved to be justified, I have been ill and unable to work except at moments when I have forgotten my anguish... There was no fidelity or security in my home, what use was it for me to pile stones together and build something up when it was being demolished behind my back. What use was it for me to be proud of your name and to help to honour it. – Now I am ashamed of it. I no longer belong at your side.' [5:252]
This resolve(!) on her part now threatens to undermine his creative power: 'Everything you are telling me cuts me to the quick and this must be because I love you to the ends of the earth; so let me say this. Oh, dear little, sweet Marie that it should turn out like this, that I should be your evil spirit, the worst in the world; I have done you the worst evil and it is incomprehensible now when I see all my powers and the abilities I may have had are set to wither or harden.'
In the midst of these violent private outbursts, he drags himself from Fuglsang to Copenhagen to conduct an orchestra of 200 for a so-called 'Monster Concert' in The King's Gardens performing Paraphrase for Wind Band, Nearer My God to Thee [CNW 37], which he had composed on the occasion of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. At the time, a benefit performance had been planned in the old station hall in aid of dependants of musicians who had drowned with the Titanic, but this had been cancelled due to national mourning at the death of King Frederik VIII. The concert now took place in a world at war and in aid of The Copenhagen Orchestral Society's retirement fund. A crowd of 30,000 had gathered in The King's Gardens to hear it [5:253].
He even manages a conversation with his better half at this event. Her sister Lucie has persuaded her to pay him some attention, but to him she says directly that she has advised Anne Marie to leave him. However, man and wife do talk to each other, she cooks for him, he seasons the gravy, and they walk to Tivoli together [5:259]. Back at Fuglsang, he tells Irmelin that they have agreed to live separately for a time to try to get some work done [5:262].
This works at least for Carl. During the last months of the year, he works so assiduously on his Symphony no. 4, The Inextinguishable that, according to his diary, he can write a finishing date on 14 January 1916. The first performance already takes place on 1 February at a concert in The Music Society as the last item in a programme devoted to Danish music. The concert and the new symphony are a success, and, at a party after the concert, the company also celebrate the resurrection of The Music Society by singing John the Roadman [CNW 137] to a text written for the occasion: Who levels out for others the hard and stony way/and who will think of working as though it was just play?/This does our own Carl Nielsen – and afterwards we see/Him sit and eat his dinner with the same energy! [5:307] – To what degree he has left Anne Marie in peace during this busy period is difficult to determine. There are signs that she often stayed, almost lived, in the atelier on Vodroffsvej, which she retained for a long time after the move to Frederiksholms Kanal.
On 3 April 1916, Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen's activity has reached the point where she tells Ove Jørgensen and his mother that she wants a divorce and also tells them her version of the role played by Marie Møller. This sets a new avalanche in motion. However it happens, the news soon reaches Marie Møller, Henrik Knudsen and Godske-Nielsen, possibly because Ove Jørgensen and his brother Ejnar suddenly turn their backs on them and fail to acknowledge them – but not before having stopped and told them what they now know. Godske-Nielsen and Henrik Knudsen, who for decades had been two of the family's best friends, now write a brief letter to Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen on 7 April in which they tell her that they now intend to break the silence they have so far felt it incumbent on them to maintain and forthwith 'whenever and wherever as the occasion demands will give the presentation of the matter that our relation to it and knowledge of it entitle us to.' [5:328]
This letter must have triggered yet another conversation between husband and wife. At any event, on Sunday, 9 April, Carl Nielsen presents himself before the Jørgensen family and tells his and his wife's identical version of the story but also persuades them that his wife is the only person he really loves. After the conversation with Carl Nielsen, Ove Jørgensen writes a letter to Mrs Carl-Nielsen in which he presents the points of view that in various forms recur over the years ahead and in time play their part in bringing man and wife together again. In this way, from now on the Jørgensen family becomes the link between man and wife over subsequent years during those periods in which links between the pair are completely broken.
On the one hand, Ove Jørgensen makes it clear that both he and his brother and their mother fully understand her feelings but that, nevertheless, they believe she should retain her home because they think it is best both for her and for him. All three of them 'are certain that you are the only person he really loves, and not just now, when he is in danger of losing you, but in truth always. Just think how he has shared all the joys and sorrows of your heart, how he has lived with it and understood it. We have all of us always been able to feel how he has loved and admired you, also as a person; you can trust that there is no mistaking that; the other has only been superficial; you have been fundamental.'
Ove Jørgensen's final point is the art that binds them together and cannot exist without their living together, 'and that surely will find even deeper tones after all this agony. Your entire life and all your art are tuned to him, just as his to you. It would be a terrible misfortune for you if he was the one wanting to leave you, just as it now is in reverse for him. Our affection for you will not be diminished if you leave, but we believe that you are doing yourself a great harm – and that you also wrong him somewhat.' [5:329]
The involvement of the Jørgensen family also leads to a final break with Henrik Knudsen, Svend Godske-Nielsen and Marie Møller, who does everything she can to get Ove Jørgensen to hear her version of the story. This puts the husband in a situation where he, too, is forced to shut them out completely if he is still to have a chance of reaching his wife, and it gets to the point where not even he will greet Marie Møller on the street. In a very long letter, Godske-Nielsen concludes with an account of his own (and Henrik Knudsen's) viewpoint, namely that Carl Nielsen has obligations towards Marie Møller as he has to his wife who, in opposition to the truth, delights in presenting that relationship as 'a piece of fornication, pure and simple', 'M.M. as a common tart and you as a seduced neophyte.' Godske-Nielsen believes that Carl Nielsen has betrayed the 'true and proper manly instinct' that he did, in fact, possess. 'From the moment when you forsook M.M. for your wife until now, when you don't even dare greet her when you see her on the street, you have run through the entire gamut of debasement; you have refused to see that you cannot do wrong to two parties and at the same time think it's sufficient to do right to the one. You have done everything that you should not do (towards M.M.) and nothing that you should.' [5:345]
Carl Nielsen visited Svend Godske-Nielsen one last time on a day in July 1931 and invited him to a private concert at Christiansborg Palace Chapel a few days later to hear his organ work Commotio,[CNW 99] which had yet to be given its first public performance. Godske-Nielsen believes that Carl Nielsen was already thinking of his death – later that year on 3 October – and that this was a form of farewell 'to cover any eventuality' (Svend Godske-Nielsen: Nogle Erindringer om Carl Nielsen, Tilskueren, June 1935, pp. 414-430]. Back in 1916, there was talk for the time being of a separation. As Carl Nielsen expresses it in the last letter to Henrik Knudsen that has been preserved, written at Damgaard and sent to Middelfart: 'It is sad that there is more than the Little Belt between us; I feel it so deeply, but it cannot be otherwise.' [5:528]
In the midst of this quarrel with his alienated circle, the composer and conductor manages yet another success, perhaps one of the most decisive in his entire musical life. He performs a symphony concert exclusively with his own works, and the last item on the programme is another performance of the new symphony.[CNW 28] Not only is the success of the premiere almost two months earlier repeated, but the reception from the public and in the press signals his final breakthrough: 'It was all the healthy musical life of the city finding for once good company and breathing freely,' Ove Jørgensen writes that evening to the composer, and equally that same evening to his wife, who it is in such a poor state that she is unable to go to the concert: 'Never has his music made such a deep impression upon me, so great and honest, so lavishly rich in all the best there is. It belongs with your art, and, faced with that, all other considerations, no not considerations, but all other feelings have to fade. Neither of you belong to yourselves.' [5:332] [5:333]
Carl Nielsen himself writes some days later to his friend Bror Beckman in Stockholm: 'The public were exceedingly enthusiastic, and it was really the first time in my life that I became fully convinced that I had a public in Copenhagen that understood, that is, a musical audience that had gone to a concert for the sake of art. When it was over, there was a wild response, and I felt for once that I may come to mean something for my country in the future and that is, after all, a certain satisfaction in these barbaric time[s].' [5:342]
Charles Kjerulf, Politiken's foremost music critic, heard the symphony[CNW 28] for the third time on this occasion, for he had been present at the final rehearsal. Afterwards, he came up to the podium and said to the composer 'that he had previously on many occasions believed that I was going the wrong way, but that he now accepted that I nevertheless had been right to hold my own course. This moved me deeply because I cannot resist a trait of character that shows beauty and grandeur, regardless of whether it relates to me or someone else.' [5:338] He also said, ecstatically, Carl Nielsen writes on another occasion: 'I have been wrong about your music, about you yourself! You have emerged from the undergrowth, and tomorrow I will declare in Politiken that I have been mistaken until today.' The following day, Kjerulf writes in the newspaper:
'Now I know Carl Nielsen, now I have got him. And none too soon, either – rather at long last.
This work is absolutely his culmination, a breakthrough. For the first time, he not only promises but delivers... almost everything he has promised earlier. In everything that came before he was seeking and trying, here he has found and grasped – grasped maybe in the dark, as only a genius can. The two Janus faces that until now have been his strange artistic physiognomy – one child-like naïve and one an almost distorted, precocious Socrates mask – come together for the first time into a single artistic countenance: Carl Nielsen's own. This is nothing less than an event in Danish music.' Kjerulf also writes of 'the light that the symphony casts back on Carl Nielsen's entire earlier work. Now we can understand much that had been hidden and locked away until now, inexplicable and mysterious.' Politiken 15.04.1916.
Carl Nielsen was so affected by Kjerulf's behaviour and his review that he sat down and began a remarkable letter to him, only to interrupt it and visit him before going home and finishing the letter with these words:
'I think I have learned much over these past years – also in purely human terms – through so many strange sufferings, self-inflicted and undeserved torments and misunderstandings, but now I can speak a language that can help me to breathe freely and I must now set about giving it utterance through some works.
It is hard for you to understand what it means to me that you have found pleasure in my new symphony and have given such wings to your impression that the air buzzed, but I know it. [5:334]
On the same day on which Kjerulf's review appeared in Politiken, Ekstra-Bladet printed an article by Olfert Jespersen, composer of musical revues and café musician, who had played in the military band in Odense during Carl Nielsen's time. Carl Nielsen had invited Olfert Jespersen home and together in his room they had played a violin sonata by Carl Nielsen.
'We had finished, and I behaved completely hysterically,' Olfert Jespersen writes, 'I was crazy in my sorrow that a genius was wasting away in an attic room in Odense. In my despair, I gave him 1,000 confused pieces of "good" advice.
He looked at me as though he was a child in a cradle and I was the rattle that made his eyes gleam.
Quietly, slowly and modestly he returned all my "compliments" and as much advice.
There we stood, two unknown young minstrels, mutually infatuated and wanting to sketch out for each other the path of the artist.
Oh, he was a child. I was almost three years older, and 50 in reality, as I had been working as an independent "artist" since the age of eight. But he. The dust still lay untouched on the rare flower that must and would unfold.' Ekstrabladet 15.04.1916.
The day after the concert at which Carl Nielsen made his breakthrough with the music public in Copenhagen, Anne Marie leaves for Skodsborg Sanatorium and from there, some weeks later, to Søndervig where she stays for the most of May attempting in solitude to resolve her situation. Time after time she tries to pull herself together and write the decisive letter to Carl; she manages only draughts and diary entries and reflections in her notebook. On 23 May, for example, she writes:
'I have been standing still as an artist people will soon be ignoring me if you don't go forwards you go backwards. – Life goes on. I have to take a decision it is so difficult to hurt others. – I have been no good at keeping hold of him and I am no good at being one of many, the fate that has been my lot for 25 years {…} if there cannot be trust between adults then it must stop. I have had artistic joys and a little brief glimpse of happiness much shame and sorrow. – My best years have been wasted in an unworthy life. And now I am on the verge of going to the dogs as an artist.' [5:351]
Finally, on 29 May, a letter gets sent. The central message is: 'We no longer belong together and should go our own ways. But dear Carl, we will part without quarrelling for we were once soulmates, free of deceit, even though this was only for a short time.' [5:355]
In what follows, too, there are many touching statements, not least from Carl who is on the point of losing his wife, but the awakening that began almost 26 months earlier when Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen wrote to Copenhagen asking, 'Have you been faithful to me this winter?' [5:53] has reached a turning point. Anne Marie wants to be free of her husband, he does not want to be free of her.
It is paradoxical that, with the exception of her sister Lucie, the source material provides not a single example of anyone who supports her in this project. There are plenty who understand her feelings, but they all appeal to her not to break it off. This goes for the daughters, it goes for her artist friends, whether they are unmarried or married and have perhaps experienced something similar. Agnes Lunn puts it like this:
'Get divorced! When people are over 50, have grown-up children – madness, in my eyes. Life is lived for more than love-making – it's only a transition!
Marie, you are not allowed to render yourself incapable of work and nor are you allowed to punish the greatest composer of our time so severely that his existence becomes joyless. Believe me, your case is not much worse than many many others and it is probably true, as Olga Smith said to me one day – "Yes, it's all right for us – we, the unmarried; for just think how rarely one sees a happy marriage, – hardly ever!"
I am glad you want to ride, that is healthy, I will have to come over and see you – then I'll patch you up!' [5:450]
Even the solicitor she employs to deal with the divorce works against her. Having talked with her husband as well, he devises a plan which ensures she has peace and quiet to work but does not go through with the divorce. Carl is requested to leave the home and is even forbidden from writing to his wife. He also signs the necessary papers so that his wife can have them lying ready and is able to submit the application for separation if she finds it necessary [5:368]. On 17 August 1917, she informs him that she is now submitting the application, but this does not happen until 1919 – in the next volume.
Carl, feeling himself increasingly homeless, shuttles from Damgaard to Fuglsang and to various hotels in Copenhagen and due to the war has given up the idea of travelling to Germany or America. At the end of the volume, he finally hits upon the solution. During his visit to Copenhagen, Wilhelm Stenhammar has told him that he wants to take leave from his position as conductor in Gothenburg. Carl writes offering to be temporary conductor and will come to Gothenburg without his family:
'I need to be in fresh surroundings for a time, that is how I feel my current situation and the appalling artistic conditions prevailing here in this dreadfully frivolous city, where nothing truly serious can thrive in the long run. –
If it wasn't for the war I would long since have travelled to Germany or America, so this is no fleeting thought but a deep desire to break new ground. - What do you say?' [5:559]
Before his offer is accepted, he also has an opportunity to take stock of his own calling as a conductor [5:574].
Despite having finally made a breakthrough in the outer world as a composer, he also has problems in knowing where he belongs spiritually. The hymns that he composed at the beginning of this volume appear again at its conclusion, when Thomas Laub, his friend and collaborator on the two collections of Danish songs, expresses his resentment that an artist who has not been born and brought up in the Christian Church, who is not 'one of the family', could even consider composing hymns [5:546]. Here, too, the great composer gives in without, however, changing his attitude to the basic issue, and delays publishing his Hymns and Spiritual Songs[CNW Coll. 10] until Thomas Laub has published his major work Danish Church SongDansk Kirkesang. in 1918.
These years conclude, then, with a fermata which always, if sufficiently prolonged, makes it possible to regroup. As far as Carl Nielsen is concerned, they cannot be said to have been unproductive years, as they were for Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen. In both minor and major forms, the exhausting crisis in his private life went hand in hand for him with stylistic innovations which, paradoxically enough, found deep resonances in the collective psyche. There is good reason to emphasise that in this volume, too, there are more layers in the source material presented here than there are in the preface, where the emphasis here has been placed on the private conflict, which requires determined close reading if one is to get a grip of its chronology and 'events'.
The composer and the sculptress have given us something to keep track of, to identify with and to understand. The process does not cease with the completion of a volume, and the serial continues.