About this volume (7)
Letter editions are like life: the many large and small events and themes of life are intertwined; a secondary theme in one letter may become the main theme of another, or the main theme may lie between the lines, or be conspicuous through its absence. An edition assumes a sorting and a new threading together of large and small pieces of information, of statements and inferences, and a familiarity with the circumstances surrounding the individual letters, their senders and their recipients, in order to determine the actual sequence of events, let alone to reach a coherent and plausible interpretation of the people's stories. In this respect, this volume is no different from the preceding volumes; even such a rich edition of correspondence as this, which typically reveals the main figures' comings and goings from week to week, from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, presents first and foremost the rudiments of a life, not a finished account of it.
Life seldom gets simpler with age. For famous people, such as we are dealing with here, the interaction with the public can in itself become a crescendo, which increases the confusion of voices, the amount of supplementary material and the opportunities for checking the information in the letters. The development both in the small and the large story places greater demands on the editor and reader to get an overall sense of what is important.
In this volume, where a number of masterpieces are created, where the couple are reunited, where the composer's heart fails him, where the tax authorities fail the millionaire, where society's entire economy was failed by Landmandsbanken's Landsmandsbanken ('the Farmer's Bank'), now Danske Bank, was founded in 1871 and became the largest bank in Scandinavia. It teetered on the verge of bankruptcy in 1922 as a result of unfortunate investments following the international recession after World War I. collapse, where the composer himself arranges and finances (in Deutschmark of little value) several concerts abroad in the hope of achieving a breakthrough, where older and younger colleagues now combat Carl Nielsen, the success, each in their own ambivalent way, and where Carl Nielsen himself, in the midst of the relief following the reunion with his beloved, experiences perhaps more his own human bankruptcy. For this volume, the introduction summarises some of the main themes in the order in which they will develop over time, so that the reader can become acquainted with some of the essential material before encountering the rudimentary, disordered reality of the letters.
Celebrating reunion [CNW 18]
The war has been over for about two years; its consequences continue to make themselves felt. A positive result of the peace negotiations in Versailles, however, is that the fatherland, truncated since 1864, was reunited with North Schleswig, where, in accordance with their right to self-determination, the people had voted to return to Denmark in February 1920 [6:334].
The reunification formally took place and was celebrated in July of 1920. The Royal Theatre wanted to reflect the national euphoria with a piece celebrating reunification that Helge Rode was commissioned to write, but the premiere was delayed and it was not until 30 January 1921 that The Mother finally opened, with music that Carl Nielsen completed in the autumn of 1920, having laid aside work begun on his Symphony no. 5 [CNW 29] in order to do so. The play had limited success, was performed 31 times until the spring of 1922, and since then just five more times in 1935 when Carl Nielsen would have turned 70.
The music disappointed the reviewers; they found in it not those inflated feelings that the national situation warranted, but simple restraint, tortuous and elaborately contrived simplicity, as it was described in Politiken. Carl Nielsen himself writes to Julius Rabe in Gothenburg: They 'wanted me to compose more in the manner of Tchaikovsky, for that quiet and gentle, rather unassuming Danish play!!' [7:29]
At the sixth performance, which fell on the anniversary of the vote in North Schleswig on 10 February, the Theatre had invited 30 student singers to sing along in the seventh scene's closing song, 'There's a fleet of floating islands' [CNW 237], followed by 'A fair and lovely land'.'Der er et yndigt Land'. The king was present in the Theatre on that occasion; the composer had gone to a chamber concert in the Odd Fellow Palace's large hall to hear his son-in-law Emil Telmányi and the pianist Sándor Vas play Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole [7:17].
The composer and the sculptress, who had been circling each other since the outbreak of war in 1914 and had been separated since 29 September 1919, are still not reunited. Carl Nielsen still maintains his belief that it will happen, and finally, after seven years of alienation, he opens up and, in a moving letter to his best friend Bror Beckman in Stockholm, tells him how things stand:
'For many years I have lived with my private unhappiness, and Marie, too; I can't say more than this right now. But I hope and have unwavering faith that our relationship will improve, and I believe this because she knows that, even though I may become an old man and live a long time yet, it's my life's goal. It is I who have failed. She, never! We are good friends and spend time together, but her pure, proud nature has not been able to withstand the blow she's received, and even though she might like to, she cannot yet live by my side. But I've been hoping day in and day out, throughout all these years, and I would have liked to tell you everything we have endured. But now is still not the right time.'! [7:28]
When he is in Copenhagen, he stays at the pharmacy building belonging to Irmelin's mother-in-law on Nørrebrogade 20, where Irmelin Eggert Møller and Eggert Møller live on the 4th floor but, although his eventual relocation to Frederiksholms Kanal more or less coincides with his heart attack in May of 1922, a closeness and growing communication between the estranged couple is apparent long before. As late as March 1922, however, the aggrieved party delivers yet another definitive rejection in the midst of their developing rapport, in a letter which, in all its feminine ambivalence, deserves to be read in its entirety and in context: 'I can no longer see any glimmer of light in our relationship[.]' [7:206]
For a large part of the winter and spring of 1921, Carl Nielsen lives in Tibberup, near Humlebæk, with his friend, patron, and former pupil, the merchant Carl Johan Michaelsen and his wife, Vera. Here, he continues working on the edition of The Folk High School Melody Book,Folkehøjskolens Melodibog. for which, with Thomas Laub, Oluf Ring and Thorvald Aagaard (whom they have appointed coordinator of the project), he has taken responsibility, and which will be published in the summer of 1922 [7:235] [7:240]. First and foremost, however, his focus while in Tibberup is on his Symphony no. 5. On 4 March 1921, in a letter to Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, he pronounces the first part of the two-part symphony finished, but thereafter has trouble moving ahead with the second part, and other things also start to demand his attention.
The Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
At the end of March, he writes to Anne Marie, who is now in Venice: 'At the moment I'm stuck on my symphony and have a pretty strong sense that my old ability is beginning to fail me. I try, as usual, to take courage from Sebastian Bach, but that is probably also about to cease. / Oh well, I suppose it will come by itself, even if it's not as willing this time' [7:47]. With his fifth symphony, he has clearly entered into new territory, which is not as easy to navigate, and it appears, also from the same letter, that a request from the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra asking whether he is willing to sign a contract to conduct 20-30 concerts next season comes at a very opportune time.
In the letter to Bror Beckman from the end of February, he had already written: 'I live here in the country and try to work. It's a comfort to Marie when I can compose and so I do what I'm able to. –- If I were needed for a concert, I would gladly come to Stockholm? Then we could talk.' [7:28] It is his relationship with Anne Marie that causes him anguish, and which both compels him to compose and perhaps also prevents him from doing so, and consequently also makes him look forward to an opportunity to get away from it all.
The offer from Stockholm ends up being an embarrassing affair for all parties concerned. The board of Stockholm's Concert Society's orchestra are at loggerheads with the entire orchestra and with a large portion of the public. They wish to limit the powers of the conductor Georg Schnéevoigt and want therefore to appoint Wilhelm Furtwängler and make them conductors on an equal footing. Schnéevoigt responds with an ultimatum that his position be all or nothing, and so the board begin, among other things, to negotiate with Carl Nielsen, to whom they offer half of the conducting [7:50]. At a meeting on 18 April 1921, the entire orchestra, minus four absent members, formulate its position. In a letter to the board, they announce that the orchestra have decided not to renew their contracts for the 1921-22 season with the current board. This forces the election of a new board and ensures that it is the orchestra and Schnéevoigt who walk away with the victory. The orchestra's detailed letter characterises the conductors with whom the board have negotiated:
'Without wanting to diminish the Danish composer Mr Carl Nielsen's value as an artist in any way, we cannot fail to emphasise the lack of temperament and creative ability that is desired in a great artist and first-class symphony conductor. As for the other conductor proposed, Mr Tor Mann, we cannot accept his involvement as a principal conductor. Mr Mann is still only an apprentice and far too immature leader of our organisation. Moreover, he does not possess the qualifications that we can fairly demand of a permanent, committed conductor. On the other hand, we have not had anything to complain about regarding Mr Mann as a guest conductor at a small number of concerts, so that he should be given the opportunity to show his progress on the path he intends to take. As far as the German conductor Mr Wilhelm Furtwängler is concerned, among the three standing we consider him to be hors de concours and so his involvement would only be greeted with satisfaction by us."
The orchestra published its letter to the board in full in Stockholms-Tidningen the next day, 19 April 1921, and this is what Carl Nielsen refers to in his letter to John May on 27 April 1921 [7:59]. Excluded now from the whole business in this way, Carl Nielsen was left with a feeling of having been drawn in under false pretences; the same was true of Tor Mann, and the fact that he, too, felt annoyed and constrained by the orchestra's public statement is clear from Carl Nielsen's downplaying the affair and his consoling comment in a letter to him at the end of the year: 'That business with The Concert Society was local politics and when the lie of the land changes, you will surely come to the fore once again.' [7:167]
Helsinki
The Nordic Music Festival, which took place in Helsinki at the end of May 1921, also offered Carl Nielsen a brief reprieve from the anguish of creative work. The Danish orchestral concert on 23 May concluded with Carl Nielsen conducting his Hymnus Amoris [CNW 100], and if we can believe the many postcards he sent home to various people on that occasion, it must have been one of the greatest successes he experienced as a conductor of his own music. To Anne Marie, to whom he had dedicated the work [2:12] he wrote, for example: The audience 'streamed out to my carriage and wanted to touch my clothes; I think I could have healed the sick at that moment.' [7:70] Regaining Anne Marie's love still remained out of reach.
The next morning, the Breuning-Bache Quartet had arranged an extra morning matinée in Stenman's art salon with Nielsen's String Quartet in E-flat major, op. 14 [CNW 57] on the programme. Jean Sibelius arrived and was beside himself over the quartet, Carl writes to Anne Marie, but otherwise Sibelius is the music festival's main attraction. The closing concert on 28 May is dedicated to him alone, and the Finnish organisers were so unsure whether this was overstepping the mark that they previously made enquiries in Copenhagen, not of Carl Nielsen but of Frederik Schnedler-Petersen, who must have given the arrangement his blessing (Cf. Robert Kajanus til Frederik Schnedler-Petersen 05.03.1921, KB, HA acc. 2008/45).
Jean Sibelius conducted himself. The principal work was his Symphony no. 5, which in November 1920 had finally been premiered in its final version by Armas Järnefelt in Uppsala, repeated a few days later at the Stockholm opera. By this time, the Symphony's premiere had been announced several times only to be postponed and followed by a new revision. In this way, the first performance of Carl Nielsen's Symphony no. 4, The Inextinguishable [CNW 28], in Stockholm in January of 1917 had depended on Sibelius once again failing to appear with his 5th. [5:455] [5:471] Now, Sibelius' Symphony no. 5 was indisputably the music festival's main attraction, and for Sibelius it was the first time he had the opportunity to present this new and different symphony to a larger circle of colleagues from all over Scandinavia.
From the correspondence between Julius Rabe and Carl Nielsen, it can be seen that these two, who in their perception of music saw eye to eye, also used this opportunity to exchange views [7:80]. Rabe's review of the Sibelius symphony even includes a characterisation of music developments in Denmark, Sweden and Finland:
'With this [Sibelius'] turn towards musical objectivity from the Tchaikovsky-like emotional music – a turn that is not new but already exists in the third symphony and in Voces intimæ – Sibelius has followed the same development as music in Denmark and Sweden with Carl Nielsen and Wilhelm Stenhammar as pioneers. That the character in each composer's music is different is completely natural, and one can probably say that each one represents the character of his whole people: Carl Nielsen the broad, open Danishness, with connection to continental cultural traditions, Stenhammar the Swedish, slightly academic and distinguished reserve, and Sibelius the barren and bound, deep-eyed and dreamy Finnishness.'(Göteborgs Handels-och Sjöfarts-Tidning, 07.06.1921.)
Springtime on Funen [CNW 102]
Home – and homeless – again, now at Damgaard, Carl Nielsen has a new task, which delays the completion of his idiosyncratic Symphony no. 5. While Sibelius cannot let go of his work and deliver by a promised day, Carl Nielsen often composes best under pressure and works on his masterpieces until a few days before the established date of the premiere, making it difficult for the copyists to write out the parts for the orchestra in time.
Several years earlier, he had promised to compose Springtime on Funen for the 1918 Danish Choral Society's planned – but not realised – national convention in Odense [6:17]. Now they are asking to have the work as soon as possible so that it can be rehearsed by the many individual choral societies with a view to performing it at the 1922 national convention in Odense. As was the case when he composed the Aladdin music [CNW 17], he enlists the help of Nancy Dalberg, who lives at her mother's manor, Mullerup, on southern Funen. It is without much enthusiasm that he throws himself into the old task but in August he writes to Vera Michaelsen:
'For some time I haven't felt very well because I couldn't get going with a choral piece which has to be finished before 1 September,[CNW 102] and every day I thought about being done with it and telling the committee of all these associated societies that I would have to give it a miss, but I promised it several years ago and as the fee was acceptable at the time but now is simply worth nought, people would of course say – such are our friendly fellow humans often – that I broke my word for the sake of the money and that I couldn't have, especially as that was not the reason.' [7:108]
After being at Mullerup for several days, during which time he had worked together with Nancy Dalgaard, he can report to Anne Marie on 3 September from Damgaard that Springtime on Funen has been delivered on time [7:120]. In the same letter, he thanks her for being in Tivoli for the season's last symphony concert, which Frederik Schnedler-Petersen concluded with Espansiva [CNW 27]. She even wrote to him about it in a letter that has not been preserved. Thus, the letters have to be read attentively to detect the rapprochement between husband and wife that is actually there. 'Now I'm going to return to my interrupted symphony,' he writes in conclusion, perhaps with a renewed desire to work.
In September, he responds to a letter from Stenhammar, who is also having trouble getting going on the second part of a large work, The Song (Sången), for soloists, choir and orchestra, a work to be premiered at The Royal Swedish Academy of Music's 150th anniversary celebration in December to which Carl Nielsen is also invited. It is almost as though he is addressing himself about his new two-part symphony when he writes:
'Your plan for these two large, completely contrasting, yet complementary halves is capital, and you really mustn’t give up now. I believe I know how you feel, dear Sten, but you just have to put your back into it. Remember that you are not only uncontestably Sweden’s number one, and therefore owe your country a great deal in return; but that for your own sake, too, you really have to do your utmost. Don’t wait for the right mood..' [7:133]
There are many external disruptions in store for Carl Nielsen himself in the autumn. In November, the first Music Society concert features his childhood friend Victor Bendix's Symphony no. 1, Ascension.Fjeldstigning. He also conducts this symphony in Gothenburg at one of the nine concerts he performs there in the period from 10 November to 12 December [7:148]. Among his own compositions, he plays the Suite from Aladdin[CNW 17] twice, while during the same month in Stockholm, Frederik Schnedler-Peterson performs Nielsen's Symphony no. 2, The Four Temperaments [CNW 26], for the first time.
Wilhelm Stenhammar was in attendance, and the next day, Svenska Dagbladet published his remarkable review. Stenhammar is aware that it was not Nielsen's symphony the audience had come to hear, but nevertheless devotes nearly his entire article to the stylistic characteristics of Nielsen's 20-year-old symphony. After a comparison with the late-Romantic composers Hans Pfitzner and Max Reger, he characterises Carl Nielsen as follows:
Carl Nielsen's 'music is rooted in the strict style of the old Italian masters (di Lasso) and father Bach, and from there progresses toward the perfection of his individual self. He is a person who represents the new age, a man of hard work and strong will, a worshipper of reality, of the cosmos and of the plasticity of music. He abhors sentimentality, but does not lack emotion, and even if he might sometimes seem dry, he has fully demonstrated that his music is infused with enthusiasm, with pulsating life and masculine solemnity, with healthy and smouldering strength. And his thematic material is of the most potent sort, it is decidedly personal in its chromatically oscillating figuration (usually within the range of a third or a fourth), the same way that his penchant for avoiding the leading tone (he lets the minor seventh form a sort of tonal pillar, so to speak), at times disguises the modes for us. His voice-leading marches inexorably towards the given goal – and if there are dissonances along the way, they mean little.' Svenska Dagbladet, 14.11.1921.
What Stenhammar formulates here is of interest not only because he is the one saying it and because it concerns Carl Nielsen, but also because it is part of the ongoing dialogue conducted during these years by these two major composers – who were dissimilar and had different starting points, and at the same time were on the same wavelength. A dialogue that mainly took place in person, but to which Carl Nielsen also contributes significantly in his letter to Stenhammar from June 1922 in which he discusses the relationship between absolute music, ideas, and illustration in music [7:234].
Purely egoistically, Stenhammar hopes that he can soon have Carl Nielsen all to himself and suggests in his response that they should arrange 'a proper meeting for talk'. In the same letter, he describes his relationship with his Danish fellow composer, six years his senior, in these words: 'You stand out for me as the most serious, least egocentric artistic personality that I have met along my way, the one that I feel myself drawn towards with the greater sympathy than towards any other, while in your art you are often so strangely distant from me. In brief, you offer me a constant source of invigorating self-examination and healthy stimulation.' [7:270]
The Symphony no. 5 [CNW 29]
On 15 November, at the age of 72, Ove Jørgensen's mother, Louise, dies suddenly and without warning of a heart attack. Her death gives rise to correspondence between Carl and Anne Marie. For him it is a big loss 'because Louise harboured hopes and desires for you and me that were a great support in my life, and that I always sensed when I was with her.' [7:153]
Anne Marie confirms to Carl what a great loss this is, and in the same letter says that she has been having strange dreams lately; the other night, she felt so sick of everything in the dream that she wanted to run out into the night in a soldier's uniform. However, her armour [i.e., her inner strength] is still intact, even in the face of this 'irrational' dream, or perhaps no longer in perfect condition, given that she must emphasise once more that a beautiful and wonderful vase has been smashed to pieces, and can never be put back together again [i.e., their relationship] [7:158]. It is difficult to dispel the thought that the appeal, not least to Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen – always present in Louise and Ove Jørgensen's hopes for the artist spouses' reunion and in the balancing act they have maintained between the two parties – has grown, not diminished, with his mother's death.
For the time being, however, there's a symphony to be finished; it has already been put on the programme for the Music Society concert on 24 January 1922, and yet only on 15 January can he date the end of the symphony. Two days later, he writes to Julius Rabe in the hope that he can lure him to Copenhagen for the premiere the following Tuesday: 'I believe I've achieved essentially what I wanted; in any case I cannot do any better, and this work has interested me like nothing before – or what should I call it when I place no weight on subjective feelings and my relationship to the piece as a work of art?' [7:179].
Carl Nielsen is aware that the second movement in particular is exceptionally difficult for the strings to play. There is, however, a solution to this which, given the scant resources available to the Copenhagen music scene at the time, could be solved at very short notice through a personal approach. One day shortly before the concert, he goes to The Royal Theatre to speak with the manager, his old friend Johannes Nielsen. When he does not find him in his office, he explains his errand instead on the manager's writing paper: that it is impossible for him to perform his new symphony without the assistance of a number of the orchestra's members, and that the premiere therefore depends on the Theatre putting on a play that evening and giving the musicians required the opportunity to attend rehearsals in the days leading up to the concert.
He is also aware, at least during the rehearsal process, that the new symphony, even though he himself cannot hear that it is different from the previous ones, is not 'that easy to grasp', and perhaps that is why, in the interview published in Politiken on the day of the concert, he himself mentions the Modernist example of shock-inducing incomprehensibility: 'Some people have even thought that Arnold Schoenberg could now pack up his dissonances and go home. Mine were worse. I don't believe that, however.' (Samtid nr. 69) After that statement, the music could not catch anyone off-guard; perhaps instead it will allow them to breathe a sigh of relief.
Present at both the dress rehearsal and the performance was Carl Nielsen's older composer colleague Victor Bendix, with whom he had had a close relationship and collaborated since early days and whose Symphony no. 1 he had performed in both Copenhagen and Gothenburg the year before. In that context he had spoken about good music from 'the dangerous interim period touched with Romanticism' [7:156], the period between Gade/Schumann and himself. The day after the performance of Nielsen's Symphony, Bendix delivered his very direct reaction to the new symphony in a letter. Bendix admits his conflict, starts by quoting lines from Gade's The Elf-King's DaughterElverskud. about Sir Oluf's heart being cut in two, but then calls the work a 'Sinfonie cinematique' and 'impure trench music,' a 'punch in the face of a defenceless public, with their novelty snobbery and longing for titillation, . . . who lovingly lick the hand stained by the blood of their own noses!' [7:180]
And how does the composer respond to this? Well, he who has tried to maintain, towards Rabe and probably often towards himself, a clear detachment as regards his own work now effectively poses the question whether his commitment is too great: 'Is it wrong that I have to pull myself up by the bootstraps every time I want to write something bigger?' [7:181] Did the composer, in his own way, also need to 'run out into the night in a soldier's uniform'?
In Politiken, however, the symphony led to a proposal and a discussion about appointing Carl Nielsen as an honorary Professor or Doctor. There were contributions by Poul Schierbeck, Hugo Seligmann, Rudolph Bergh and Rued Langgaard, who, like Mary Quite Contrary, thought that on 'The Question of Carl Nielsen, Politiken's readers have no "Freedom of Will!" He is the Great Composer – Full stop.' According to Langgaard, when it comes to Carl Nielsen, the freedom of will only extends to allowing readers to consider what his title should be (Politiken, 13, 17, 18, 21, 20 and 23.02.1922).
The Wind Quintet [CNW 70] and Gothenburg
Before his title was publicly discussed, Carl Nielsen had again travelled to Gothenburg to conduct a new series of concerts in the city which, if anywhere, was unreservedly positively predisposed to him as both a musician and a human being. It is worthy remarking that, among programmes primarily composed of popular classical hits, on 15 February 1922 he gives the first performance of a new Danish symphony by a younger composer, Poul Schierbeck, and that at the concert on 8 March 1922 he puts the second performance of his new Symphony no. 5 on the programme. Julius Rabe is in the hall for both the dress rehearsal and the concert, and the next day, the newspaper publishes his review on the front page, beginning with the words:
'Carl Nielsen fifth symphony is perhaps the boldest and most original piece of music that has ever sounded in Gothenburg's concert hall.' The central section goes on to say that, even though for the composer there is nothing entirely new in the style of this symphony, 'he has probably never before written melodic, contrapuntal music with such unswerving consistency and brutality and in such a large, monumental form. In the depiction of chaos in the introduction, the various voices collide with reckless violence; they do not give way to each other for a moment. In the second part of this movement, they form a fabric of wonderful clarity and firmness. And the last movement not only contains a couple of fugues that follow all the rules of that form but is also fugue-like as a whole. Stylistically, its entire underlying character is fugal, i.e. each part has its own constant vitality and independence. There are not many counterparts to a movement like this finale in the entire history of music. One can only think of a few movements in Beethoven's last quartets and in The Great Mass.' (Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfarts-Tidning, 03.03.1922)
With two interruptions, Carl Nielsen stays in Gothenburg from 5 February until 9 May 1922. After four concerts, he spends some days in Copenhagen, from 18 to 26 February, specifically to rehearse and conduct a Music Society concert, in which the pressure for him is somewhat relieved by Rudolph Simonsen, who conducts one item on the programme, his own Symphony no. 2, Hellas. However, it must also be during these days in Copenhagen that he embarks on his Wind Quintet [CNW 70]. It is mentioned in a letter from Gothenburg to Anne Marie on 2 March: 'I had begun working on a new composition – a quintet for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn, (The wind quintet, op. 43) – before I travelled up here, I have got a little further into it.' [7:198].
In April 1921, Paul Hagemann, flute, Aage Oxenvad, clarinet, Knud Lassen, bassoon, Hans Sørensen, horn, and Svend Christian Felumb, oboe, had formed The Wind Quintet that later, when Paul Hagemann was replaced by Holger Gilbert-Jespersen on flute and when all were members of The Royal Danish Orchestra, came to be called The Royal Danish Orchestra's Wind Quintet. The Wind Quintet made their first appearance at a public concert on 14 November 1921 (Cf. Politiken 16.11.1921) and it was during that very autumn that Carl Nielsen conceived the idea of writing his Wind Quintet for this ensemble.
One evening, Carl Nielsen had called his friend the pianist Christian Christiansen and, when he heard music in the background, had been told that The Wind Quintet, minus the flute, was in the midst of a rehearsal on Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, K. 297b, for four wind instruments and orchestra. A moment later, Carl Nielsen had joined the gathering; Christian Christiansen lived in Nybrogade, a few steps from Frederiksholms Kanal. And now we can let Svend Christian Felumb, who has written and published the story, take over:
'We drank tea (or was it beer?) – he [Nielsen] talked and talked – about Mozart, about wind instruments, etc. But then suddenly, he fell silent. He looked at us with his warm, Funen eyes, and promised us a wind quintet if we would follow through and perform it in public. He confided to us that something in our treatment of the instruments captivated him especially – our human differences were a remarkable match for the individuality of our instruments. 'And,' he said, 'there must of course also be a theme and variations movement, where I shall try to portray each one of you.'' (Svend Christian Felumb: 'De gamle blæsere' – and Carl Nielsen, Dansk musiktidsskrift, no. 2, 1958, pp. 35-39).
Carl Nielsen also had to interrupt his role as conductor in Gothenburg in March. He was supposed to conduct his Symphony no. 4, The Inextinguishable, in Bremen on 14 March [7:205], and shortly afterwards, another Music Society concert was scheduled for 28 March in Copenhagen. The concert's principal work was Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and that symphony came to influence the wind quintet which he was working on; though we can safely say that no one would imagine there might be a connection between Berlioz's Symphony and Carl Nielsen's Wind Quintet if they did not know the story. It is nonetheless a rare glimpse into Carl Nielsen's compositional workshop.
During this time, he was wrestling with the prelude to the final movement with its variations, and he confessed to Felumb that the soundscape he wanted was not yet clear to him. However, Felumb himself was playing the cor anglais in the pastoral movement of Berlioz's Symphony, and its sound remained in Carl Nielsen's ear. It was this sound he had been after for his prelude.
Later that night after the concert, Carl Nielsen called Felumb, asking him to tell him honestly: Would it be possible for the oboist to shift to the cor anglais in the prelude to the finale, and immediately thereafter back to the oboe? The younger Felumb responded with an enthusiastic yes, but the older one telling the story admits that it has since caused both him and subsequent players many difficulties – though it has been worth the trouble.
Carl Nielsen declares the Wind Quintet finished on 24 April 1922 in a letter to Anne Marie from Gothenburg: 'My Quintet is almost finished (two hours left). It will be tried out one of these days.' [7:219] On 30 April, for Lisa Mannheimer's 46th birthday, members of Gothenburg's Symphony Orchestra performed the new work for the first time in the Mannheimer family's music room – though the sources may give rise to doubts as to whether it was an actual performance or just a rehearsal with a presentation and performance of portions of the work [7:229].
The first public performance of Carl Nielsen's Wind Quintet[CNW 70] took place at a concert organised by the society New Music in Copenhagen on 9 October 1922 The Wind Quintet played; its members had been the inspiration for it and to them it was dedicated.
It is unusual in Carl Nielsen's production for two major works to follow immediately after each other, as is the case here with the Symphony no. 5 and the Wind Quintet. The two works can even be seen to express something like a change of perspective. While the Symphony no. 5 turns on a fundamental conflict, especially in the first movement, between constructive and destructive forces, the Wind Quintet is characterised by a dialogue among five equal characters, instruments, musicians, and the dark side is alluded to only in the prelude to the variation movement. While in the Symphony no. 5 there is an all-encompassing and threatening cultural drama, in the Wind Quintet there is a utopia of human conversation. Whether or not it has something to do with the composer's relationship to his better half, it does at least also indicate an artist with his finger on the main pulse of civilisation.
With the gradual softening of his relationship with Anne Marie, of which there is little doubt, Carl Nielsen would hardly have objected to his commitment in Gothenburg seeming to be drawing to a close, but it is not something he himself has planned. Wilhelm Stenhammar wants to leave his post as conductor of Gothenburg's Concert Society at the end of the season, and so Carl Nielsen time as his stand-in must also end. Time and again he has pointed out that the prospect of Stenhammar and him being able to get together and exchange views on a daily basis was just as important a condition of participation in Gothenburg's musical life as the opportunity to work with the excellent orchestra. Carl Nielsen also tries to detain Stenhammar:
'Dear Sten! I've thought so much about you and The Orchestral Society during this time. Is it really true that you don't want to continue? I can't imagine it. Look! Gothenburg stands out everywhere with an elevated and impressive aura. A city of musical culture, despite the town's provincial nature,2 a truly artistic spirit despite its trading and industrial character, a rare haven for the good and the best! And you have set your spiritiual stamp3 on it! You alone! Your spirit suffuses the waters, and now it is all to end! I cannot believe that outsiders are now to erase all trace of you!!' [7:212]
The information in the letter to William Behrend [7:215] that Carl Nielsen has negotiated with people from Gothenburg at the Hotel d'Angleterre must also be a sign that he has been directly involved in changes in the Gothenburg music scene. But Stenhammar insists on leaving Gothenburg, and the traditional end to the season with the performance of a large choral work turns into a joint farewell to the two composer-conductors. At two concerts, on 27 and 28 April, Carl Nielsen conducts the Helios Overture [CNW 34] and Hymnus Amoris (with his daughter Irmelin among the soloists) in the first half, and Stenhammar his own cantata The Song in the second.
Carl Nielsen's letter to The Music Society's administrator Alfred Nielsen from Gothenburg on 29 April 1922 makes clear, however, that there have been discussions about concerts with Carl Nielsen as the guest conductor in Gothenburg in the following season as well, concerts that had to be cancelled as a result of what has happened. Carl Nielsen doesn't conduct again in Gothenburg until 1927.
Reunion and the heart
On 9 May he is again in Copenhagen, probably including a visit to Frederiksholms Kanal. This year, Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen exhibited her Mermaid at The Free Exhibition, and she had just informed Carl in Gothenburg that The National Gallery of Denmark had bought it [7:225]. It must have brought about some redress and encouragement after all the fights over the royal monument. With this, she had perhaps also got herself out of hot water financially.
Ten days later, Helge Nissen, who had been both the first Samuel in Saul and David [CNW 1] and the first Henrik in Masquerade [CNW 2], celebrated the 25th anniversary of his debut. Carl Nielsen took part but did not feel well, and the next day, 20 May 1922, he suffers his first heart attack. From then on, in varying degrees, his heart problems continue until in October 1931 they are the cause of his death.
He is put to bed in Frederiksholms Kanal, and the day before his 57th birthday, 8 June, Anne Marie writes the letter to Ove Jørgensen that is proof of the couple's reconciliation: 'I want now with these few words only to tell you, dear Ove, that Carl couldn't do without me, and that I will try to draw a line through the past and sincerely hope I'll be successful, and that I'll succeed in looking at the broader picture.' But some ambivalence is still apparent when she adds: 'I had hoped I could free myself completely, and would have preferred to talk about this only once it had happened, but Carl has been so reluctant to cut ties, and now it seems he has been the stronger one' – this, about the broken man.
But he is soon up again and, on June 17th, Irmelin and Anne Marie go with him to Damgaard to recuperate. Irmelin stays for an entire month to care for and keep an eye on him, while Anne Marie returns to Copenhagen again a few days later. And now the composer turns to knitting and it is said, often and rightly, that he knits during this period because he is not to do anything that might stress him either physically or emotionally. In fact, he had started knitting already in the autumn of 1920, at the same time that he started working on the Symphony no. 5 as a sort of innocuous pastime – or was it a form of compensation for the contact with the abyss that opened up when, as he wrote to Victor Bendix, he 'had to pull himself up by his bootstraps' every time he attempted to write a larger composition?
Carl Nielsen is convalescent, with several relapses, for the entire summer and finally leaves Damgaard again only at the beginning of September. He knits, reads a lot, and also writes an essay, 'Musical Problems','Musikalske Problemer'. that Poul Levin commissions from him for the journal Tilskueren [7:252]. And in rainy weather, he goes in to see Miss Thygesen and converses with her: 'She lies on a sofa and is always a little shy at first, but that quickly passes, and then I sit for an hour and speak with her, which she is very happy about and even touchingly grateful for. It is philosophy, Goethe, Nietzsche, Kant, and "along the shores of experience," but it always ends with "this Steiner, no, no, he wants to obscure everything" and "that is not the true knowledge".' [7:276]
Masquerade and Antwerp
Slowly, however, he also gets started with his music again.
Already a couple of days before the heart attack, he had received a letter from Wilhelm Hansen reporting that the opera in Antwerp wanted to perform Masquerade. From the end of June [7:247], we can follow the complicated matter in the correspondence as it develops. Carl Nielsen involves Telmányi in the case, and in many ways, it is he more than the composer who maintains the pressure.
The main problem is that the unprinted performance materials are only available in manuscripts at The Royal Theatre and that a copy must therefore be made. This triggers a revision of the material and a complicated approach to cuts and abbreviations, which over the years had been carried out differently. Before a copy can be made, it is not just a matter of determining who shall make it and pay for it, but there also have to be instructions that clearly state what the copy should contain. In the end Emil Telmányi comes to Damgaard with the material, and Carl and he work intensely on it from 4 to 14 of August, after which Telmányi travels to Berlin with it to get the copying started there, where the currency has been drastically devalued.
Prior to that, on 8 July 1922, The Danish Choir Society had its national convention in Odense with the premiere of Springtime on Funen without the composer present. On the other hand, Irmelin and Hans Børge travelled from Damgaard to Odense, while Eggert Møller and his mother, Frederikke Møller, and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen came from Copenhagen. A week later, Irmelin leaves her father at Damgaard to take a bike excursion with her husband in Jutland, ending in Skagen. Over the following days, the composer's heart suffers a relapse which he reports to his daughter and his doctor, her husband, in a letter to Skagen. Two days later, Anne Marie arrives unannounced in Damgaard, perhaps notified via Skagen.
No sooner has Telmányi travelled to Berlin than Georg Høeberg, on behalf of The Royal Theatre, orders music for a small festival play, Homage to Holberg,[CNW 20] with a text by Hans Hartvig Seedorff Pedersen [7:315]. In September, the Theatre will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the emergence of Danish theatre, and as part of that perform Holberg's The Political Tinker,Den politiske Kandestøber. 200 years after its first performance, and this performance will close with the new festival play.
As a continuation of the anniversary festivities, there are plans for a production of Carl Nielsen and Vilhelm Andersen's opera Masquerade. The composer must therefore return the borrowed performance materials to the Theatre in time! Consequently, instead of this the composer and his son-in-law begin to prepare the draft of Masquerade in Carl Nielsen's own possession, as a template for the copying of the parts for Antwerp.
Though in an interview in Politiken (Samtid, no. 73), as late as the beginning of November after the rehearsals have begun in Antwerp, the composer says he believes Masquerade will have its premiere in Antwerp at the end of January, the whole project stalls. After negotiating with Wilhem Hansen's Music Publishing House and The Royal Flemish Opera, on 24 October 1924 the Royal Danish Consulate General in Antwerp announces that the opera's board of directors 'does not believe it can perform "Masquerade" as the price is too high.'
Finally on 17 April 1925, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and The Ministry of Education (and again on 28 April of the same year the manager of The Royal Theatre) announce that by way of 'notification and in the event of future actions, the Consulate General, in consideration of the great significance that the presentation of Danish art abroad may have for Denmark, have informed The Ministry of Foreign Affairs that it is desirable that the opera Masquerade should after all be performed in Antwerp in the coming season.' The Consulate General also makes it clear 'that since the month of May last year has been conducting negotiations with Wilhem Hansen's Publishing House, at home, regarding the performance of Carl Nielsen's opera Masquerade at The Royal Flemish Opera in Antwerp, but that these negotiations have stalled solely due to financial difficulties.' (Ministry of Education to The Royal Theatre, 28.04.1925, National Archives, The Royal Theatre, parcel 1251)
There is nothing more to be said except that the composer's and his son-in-law's work on the opera, with a view to the performance in Antwerp, left their marks on the material, which has since compounded the difficulties of establishing a critical publication of the work based on the sources (Cf. CNU I/1/D, p. xi-xxvii, also the Critical Commentary, p. 98-104, and Peter Hauge: Pigen med den skæve ryg, Fund og forskning, v. 38, Copenhagen 1999, pp. 301-306).
Berlin
Carl Nielsen is in Copenhagen again from 5 September 1922 and – after being interrupted by a relapse - gradually resumes his public musical activities. Already on 30 September, he is in Berlin with Telmányi who is the soloist with The Berlin Philharmonic in three violin concertos, one by Carl Nielsen[CNW 41] conducted by the composer himself, while Richard Hagel deals with the Mendelssohn and Brahms concertos [7:334] In October, Telmányi plays his father-in-law's Concerto [CNW 41] both in Vienna and in Budapest [7:343] [7:344].
On the whole, there seems to be a trend toward more and more people performing Carl Nielsen's music; he is no longer the only one conducting it. At The Royal Theatre, Høeberg is now conducting Masquerade,[CNW 2] and during the autumn Høeberg will also perform The Inextinguishable[CNW 28] both in Vienna and in Berlin [7:345] [7:391]. In August, recent music has been collected for a chamber music event in Salzburg, which will mark the start of the international festivals for new music ,the ISCM-festivals. Here Thorvald Nielsen and Christian Christiansen play Carl Nielsen's Violin Sonata no. 2, op. 35 [CNW 64], on 8 August.
The composer himself has also made significant efforts to get his music performed; he has no thought of creative work during this period. With Carl Johan Michaelsen as advisor and helper, he has invested in Deutschmark in the hope of being able to afford to rent an orchestra and hall in Berlin for concerts of his own works. The plunge in the Deutschmark's value makes this possible, and even though he probably bought his Deutschmark too early and therefore, with the continued decline of the currency's value, gets less out of them than expected, he succeeds in December 1922 in arranging two concerts.
On 1 December, he conducts The Berlin Philharmonic in the Masquerade Overture, Saga Dream [CNW 35], the Violin Concerto [CNW 41] with Peder Møller as soloist and the Symphony no. 5 at the Beethoven Hall. Rudolph Simonsen is present; he was supposed to play the Chaconne for piano [CNW 86], Variations for piano, op. 40 [CNW 87], and, together with Peder Møller, the Violin Sonata no. 2, op. 35 [CNW 64], at a reception promised to Carl Nielsen by the agency company Hermann Wolff, but the reception was cancelled 'when Mrs Wolff suffered a "Palace Revolution" by her maids.' So that Rudolph Simonsen would not have travelled in vain, Carl Nielsen added the Chaconne to the concert programme before the Symphony no. 5.
The second concert takes place on 9 December with the same orchestra in the same hall, now with the programme: Aladdin Suite,[CNW 17] songs with orchestra sung by Ellen Overgaard, and Sinfonia Espansiva, which Carl Nielsen chose out of regard for Georg Høeberg's wish to play The Inextinguishable at his concert in Berlin on 15 December. Since Carl Nielsen was also on the programme at several Berlin concerts in the following months, this was a really massive drive. However, it should probably be considered within the context of musical life in Germany and Berlin, which, given the favourable monetary situation for the surrounding countries, must have been flooded with foreign music in this period.
Good fortune does, however, have its limits. On the heels of the reunion with Anne Marie, there was not just Carl Nielsen's own heart disease. In letter to Anne Marie in early August 1922, while he was still recuperating in Damgaard, Carl Nielsen rejoiced that Søs had announced that she was expecting. How long the joy lasted is not clear from the material, but we can clearly read that it ended with a miscarriage in a letter that Søs wrote from the United States where she was accompanying Telmányi and Sándor Vas on a tour from mid-November, and where she was already experiencing frustration at being just an accessory to a famous man [7:367].
Irmelin, too, is now struck by a serious illness just as the reunification of her parents, which she more than anyone longed for and worked on, has taken place. She had come to Berlin in order to attend the second of her father's concerts on 9 December 1922. Two days later, she is admitted to and operated on at the Franziskus Hospital, for what we do not know, but in the following period, she gets a number of blood clots in her lung and is confined to bed. She is not allowed to move, may only receive short visits, and then is only allowed to listen, not to speak. On 21 December, she feels well enough to think of going home, but on the 23rd she gets a new blood clot, and then four more.
Her husband, who is a doctor, and both Carl and Anne Marie travel back and forth between Copenhagen and Berlin; Carl can visit his daughter often, since he is in Berlin anyway for business of his own.
On 25 January 1923, he comes to Berlin to conduct some of his minor works in a concert to be given three days later by Camillo Hildebrand with the Blüthner Orchestra. That same day, Irmelin gets a new blood clot, and on the 26th, after Carl Nielsen had had a rehearsal with the orchestra, the doctor fears she will not survive; Irmelin herself says the same thing to her father. Irmelin's husband and mother are sent for, and Carl does not think he can conduct under the circumstances, but Irmelin urges him to go. On the concert date, her fever drops, and Carl Nielsen directs Helios, Pan and Syrinx [CNW 38] and 'The Dance of the Cockerel' [CNW 2] in good spirits and with great success [7:466].
Many people write letters to Irmelin in Berlin and her illness takes up much space in The Carl Nielsen Correspondence during these months. Even though she cannot write, she is eventually able to dictate her postcards to Sister Luise, and on 6 March 1923, after 12 weeks in hospital, Irmelin writes the first message in her own hand. On 16 March, she gets up for the first time and has to begin learning to walk and move all over again. It is only on Maundy Thursday, 29 March, that Irmelin is home at last, and just over two weeks later, Carl Nielsen reports that she is already able to go up the stairs [7:482].
Misfortunes are also reported from the United States where Søs and Telmányi are visiting several of Carl Nielsen's siblings. In Chicago, they visit his sister Lovise, who has been living in a small temporary apartment since her husband's death. Their sister Julie and her 15-year-old daughter Ellen are also living in the flat. Julie had a difficult coming-of-age story, involving a married man, about which she had to write to her older brother Carl in Copenhagen in order to find sympathy [2:198] [2:200]. Now, she is seriously ill with a nervous condition, suffering from paranoia, does not dare let her daughter out of sight and has forbidden her husband to go to work. On 19 January 1923, Søs writes from a hotel in Chicago, not to her father but to her sister Irmelin, whose illness she does not yet know anything about:
'Dear Irmelin – Yesterday morning she hanged herself. They came and found her on the floor with a rope up on the wall. She must have done it between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning without making a sound; everyone was asleep. Her little girl, Ellen, was fast asleep in the bed next to her, and only woke up when they laid her dead mother on the bed. – Oh, God, isn't it terrible? - Dear little Irmelin, I write about it to you –- I don't know how you'll tell Father –' [7:399].
On the exact same day, Carl Nielsen finally writes about Irmelin's illness to Søs and Emil via Emil's agent in New York, relatively briefly and reassuringly, but adding that if they write to Irmelin, 'don't sound alarmed, but just send a calm message to her.' [7:398]
Of course Søs' letter has of course been sent to Copenhagen. When in Berlin on 1 February Anne Marie and Carl Nielsen get ready to return to Copenhagen around midday, after Irmelin's last blood clot and after Carl had barely been able to conduct in Hildebrand's concert, the last thing they do is send a letter from Søs to Irmelin to the hospital with a short greeting:
'You will probably save it until I come again,' writes Carl, while Anne Marie instructs: '... keep your spirits up – it helps so much to be even-tempered and optimistic and believe in all the good things in life and believe in an Almighty Goodness / Your Mother' [7:408].
There is little doubt that the letter they sent in this way to Irmelin must have been Søs' report on Julie's suicide. How and when Carl Nielsen received this tragic news, we do not know.
Reunion with Willumsen
In this volume, Carl Nielsen is clearly in the process of strengthening his position both at home and abroad. While for a number of years he had performed concerts of his own compositions, including paying for the orchestra and rental of the hall himself, in early February, Copenhagen's Philharmonic Orchestra – after having performed with may foreign celebrities such as Wilhelm Furtwängler – invites Carl Nielsen to conduct a programme dedicated exclusively to his own compositions amidst the many trips to Berlin for performances of his works and to Irmelin's bedside.
In Copenhagen in late February, Carl Nielsen conducts both a Music Society concert in a programme devoted entirely to Beethoven programme and a Palace ConcertPalækoncerterne ('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. comprised of his own works, The Four Temperaments and Springtime on Funen. As stated in Politiken: 'The last couple of Sundays, the Palace Concerts have been dedicated to the classical national art, Kuhlau, Gade, Heise and Hartmann. Today we promote our own time with its biggest name: Carl Nielsen.' The Palace Concerts' permanent conductor, Frederik Schnedler-Petersen, reported he was very ill so the composer himself could take his place.
During these same days, Carl Nielsen's student Thorvald Aagaard's idealistic orchestra of amateur musicians, The Funen Musicians - which had been established and had its base at Ryslinge Folk High School to give people living in the countryside the chance to cultivate and get to know higher forms of music – ventures for the first time to Copenhagen to give a concert under the auspices of Copenhagen's Folk High School Association. On Sunday, 25 February, the musicians from Funen attend both the dress rehearsal for the Music Society's Beethoven concert, and immediately afterwards, the Palace Concert of Nielsen's music, and one of them remarks, 'an' we'd never 'a thought 'e wa' from Nørre Lyndelse'! – The Funen Musicians' Copenhagen visit is described in the diary that Thorvald Aagaard kept about the orchestra's work [7:428].
After all these concerts, Carl Nielsen needs a place where he can rest and recover. Miss Charlotte Trap de Thygeson from Damgaard, Cordt Trap's adopted sister, has invited him to the French Riviera with them, so the day after The Music Society's concert, Carl Nielsen travels southward together with Cordt Trap in order to meet up with Miss Thygesen in Menton.
Carl Nielsen will give yet another concert on the way in Karlsruhe. Peder Møller, who performed Carl Nielsen's Violin Concerto[CNW 41] in Vienna on 24 February with great success, steps in again here and repeats the triumph. On the outskirts of the city, located in the demilitarised zone dictated by the peace treaty after World War I, French troops have occupied the city's river port in response to Germany's failure to pay the war damages required by the peace treaty. In the city, people are afraid that the French troops will penetrate further; indeed, later in the year the situation does indeed develop into the occupation of the entire Ruhr area by France and Belgium. But perhaps art is capable of rising above politics and national disputes, and the musicians are so excited that they are willing to go through fire and water for Carl Nielsen in The Inextinguishable,[CNW 28] both as conductor and composer, and at the concert 'they played even better than at the rehearsal, and both the orchestra inspired me and I them to such a degree that blue flames arose' [7:429], [7:432], [7:435] [7:446]. Three days later, he is in Menton with Miss Thygesen and Cordt Trap.
J.F. Willumsen, an old family friend, lives in Nice not far from there, and Nielsen had received a letter with an invitation from him even before leaving Copenhagen. Willumsen had even written something about the possibility of one or another of his pieces being performed in Nice, and now Carl, who is riding a wave of success, assumes he can just arrive in Nice and conduct a concert and therefore, in a letter to Willumsen, he describes all sorts of details about his spectacular successes appropriate for promotional purposes in Nice [7:448].
Willumsen's response is to throw cold water on Nielsen's plan: the idea was that if Nielsen were to stay with him in Nice, Willumsen might put him in touch with some people with whom he perhaps could make an impression and pitch some of his works. And while Nielsen is a musical idealist, Willumsen is realistic enough to write: 'For me to go around promoting a man, whose reputation is essentially based on some performances in Germany would scarcely be a recommendation in these unhappy times. Better to stay silent. In any case, we've grown too far apart from each other over the many years.' [7:456]
Carl is quite embarrassed by the situation, but the old friends meet and it appears that Carl stays overnight at Willumsen's and Edith's house in Nice. At least they have the opportunity to discuss art, so Carl is completely elated and writes to Julius Rabe [7:466] that Willumsen and he wrestle with similar thoughts, and that he has begun to shape something into words that he has been working on for the past six months. Some undated diary entries [7:384] may be a testimony to this, and the lecture 'Form and Content in Music' (Samtid, no. 122] may have its origins here.
While in Berlin Irmelin is finally able to leave her bed and is gradually learning how to move again, her father finds that on the Riveria, in the clean air and not least up the mountainsides, he can walk and even run without discomfort from his heart [7:454]. From Berlin comes the news that he has been nominated for membership of The Academy of the Arts in Berlin along with the artist Edvard Munch and the composers Franz Schreker, Ferruccio Busoni and Aleksander Glazunov, among others.
Composer and millionaire
Though we do not know precisely what is on the cards, Carl Nielsen spends a few days in Berlin meeting with his friend and, by all accounts, economic adviser Carl Johan Michaelsen before returning to Copenhagen. A recurring problem awaits him there: the tax authorities.
Carl Nielsen's finances are not easy to untangle but they appear regularly in the material as an intrusive, peripheral theme. In this volume, we must relay the fact that the National Tax Board confirms the composer is a millionaire; that is, in the tax year 1917-1918, he had taxable assets of 1,000,000 Danish kroner [7:347].
In accordance with the gender roles in the society and legislation of that time, he is not alone in having accrued this considerable fortune; the sculptress has also played at least as great a part, and this despite the fact that, in 1915, the couple, at odds about so much else, had legally separated ownership of property – but not of their finances. So only one of them is liable for taxation: the husband. He is responsible for whatever he has got himself mixed up in, even if it is simply a consequence of an old flame. It has undoubtedly not been an everyday occurrence for officials in The Ministry of Finance to receive an application in which the composer's wife applies for concessions or a reduction in taxes on her spouse's behalf. Anne Marie writes in support 'of my petition can inform the department that my husband's assets, which on 1 January 1918 was declared to be 773,996 Danish kroner, at the beginning of the current calendar year only amounted to 153,000 Danish kroner, and that due to the general economic downturn has since been reduced probably by about 50%,' and she further notes 'that I myself, as a sculptress, who have considerable works in progress, constantly need to maintain several advances for the long term, and therefore, also for this reason, I am quite unable to contribute to the payment of the large tax demands mentioned.' [7:333]
When Carl Nielsen returns home from the trip in early April 1923, the tax authorities have decided to concede at least some of the taxes for 1917-18 and 1918-19, and it is in this situation that he writes his more detailed petition to 'be wholly and completely exempt from these extra tax levies' [7:488]. His application to The Ministry of Taxation in Copenhagen, in which he maintains that he is applying on behalf of both spouses, takes the form of a review of the artist couple's financial and artistic situation from their marriage in 1891 until the time of writing, when the sculptress has had to spend more than 50,000 Danish kroner in order to be able to work on the prestigious royal monument while he himself has just received 500 Danish kroner from his publisher in full and final payment for his latest work, the Wind Quintet. He might also have mentioned that at the same time that the tax authorities confirmed that he was a millionaire, he received a settlement from Wilhelm Hansen on the sale of his Hymns and Spiritual Songs [CNW Coll. 10] for just 14 Danish kroner [7:348].
He mentions as well that, in this season, he has paid for his own concerts abroad and that, in June, he will give a concert in London: 'This concert will cost 360 Pounds Sterling, but I hope I'll make this money back once my name also becomes known in England, as is the case now in most other countries. But I need working capital, as does my wife.' It is clear that when it comes to the propagation – it is called promotion today – of artistic values, the artist can almost be compared to a businessman who to a large extent and perhaps entirely remains at the investment phase.
Not only artistic pursuits, but also his son Hans Børge is a permanent expense for the family in that he is placed out in the country with Christiane and Johannes Østergaard at Bavnhøjgaard, near Damgaard, and costs 2,600 kroner a year. In this connection, there is for the first time in the material mention of the illness 'meningitis, which has forever deprived him of the ability to work'. The question is whether this statement is proof that Hans Børges' issues actually originated in a meningitis attack in his childhood, even though his illness at the relevant time is conspicuous by its absence in an otherwise detailed correspondence, or whether, with this statement, we have simply come closer to the origin of the myth? (Cf. the introduction to v. 3, pp. 21-22)
But why now this complaining about expenses when the man is a millionaire, at least was in 1917-18? Well, because this is pretty much purely imaginary worth – it isn't only artistic worth that may seem imaginary. The truth is that Anne Marie was not the child of a poor man in the countryside, as Carl was, but of a land owner from whom she has an inheritance. She has mainly invested this inheritance in shipping shares which during the war rose sharply in value but in recent years have fallen even further so that on 1 January 1923 her net worth (i.e., the portion of her husband's assets for which she is liable) is only 89,500 kroner.
Among other things, Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen has been hoping that she would be able to finance out of her own pocket the relief around the base of the royal monument, the procession of Danes that was to bear the king, which the monument committee has cut but which cannot be omitted if the horse's gait is to make any sense at all. She is not alone in thinking like this for the architect of Grundtvig's Church, P.V. Jensen-Klint agrees with her [7:336].
It appears that Carl Nielsen attends a meeting with the tax authorities and, on the basis of this meeting, his wife ventures to apply to them again in writing [7:493]. This leads to the tax authorities choosing yet again to reduce some of the taxes levied, but the matter drags on; the tax is not paid. In February 1924, their lawyer, Solicitor Trolle, receives a statement from the tax authorities about the unpaid taxes, amounting to 18,779.86 kroner plus interest. In 1925, the composer is summoned, and, in October of the same year, the case is finally settled in court. The composer pays 10,000 kroner plus the court costs of 600 kroner after which he successfully applies for exemption from payment of the accrued interest.
The composer's annual lifetime allowance is raised in the budget from 3,600 to 7,500 kroner, with effect from the following financial year. One cannot help but wonder how many officials and ministers must have been involved in solving the composer's and his wife's financial woes, arising from a tussle with and about imaginary worth.
These years play out against a background of powerful economic fluctuations, with turmoil in the capital markets and with bank acquisitions, bank crashes and bank reconstructions one after the other following in the wake of both of the world war boom and no less of the Russian Revolution, which deprived capital of many of its playgrounds and remained alive (to what extent is debatable), contrary to expectations at the time, for most of the century before its reversal finally came, causing similar surprise, strangely enough, as its failure to materialise 70 years earlier.
The disaster around Landsmandsbanken, Scandinavia's largest financial institution servicing a third of the Danish banking system, came to threaten the Danish state, and also crops up at several points in this volume of The Carl Nielsen Correspondence. This is not only because the crisis affected the country and its citizens as a whole but also because, in Carl Nielsen's family's circle of friends, we come close to some of the events' principal players. The sculptress Agnes Lunn, who had been Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen's friend since childhood, was the cousin of barrister C.L. David's wife, and David's sister was married to the doctor Petrus Beyer where Agnes Lunn celebrates her birthday, Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen also being present [7:463].
When the director of Landmandsbanken, Emil Glückstadt, who had also been the state's adviser on economic issues and a representative on international committees, was arrested in March of 1923, C.L. David appears as his defence barrister, and Agnes is indignant over the arrest, according to a letter written by Anne Marie to Irmelin in hospital in Berlin, in which Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen also reveals that she does unequivocally share Agnes Lunn's opinions [7:449].
Carl Johan Michaelsen, who is Carl Nielsen's advisor, and perhaps more than that when it comes to the arrangement and payment for the foreign concerts, is also close to these events. In May of 1921, he is engaged by Landmandsbanken to wrap up one of the bank's most burdensome projects, The Transatlantic Company, (Søren Mørch: Det store Bankkrak, Landmandsbankens sammenbrud, 1922-1923, Copenhagen 1986, pp. 67-68, 78 and 380. Per H. Hansen: På glidebanen til den bitre ende, Dansk bankvæsen i krise, 1920-1933, Odense 1996, p. 449.) and it is inconceivable that he and Carl Nielsen, who lived with the Michaelsen family for long periods while composing his Symphony no. 5, should not have discussed what was on everyone else's lips and about which Michaelsen must have known more than most: Landmandsbanken and the economic woes of the day.
Carl Nielsen's brother Valdemar was in Parliament as a member of the Danish Social Liberal Party during these years, and on Sunday 4 February 1923, when, for the third time in seven months, they have to urgently reconstruct Landmandsbanken (and save the Danish state) over a weekend, and Christiansborg is overheated and sparkles with excitement, Carl Nielsen is present for most of the night during the negotiations in both the Parliament and LandstingetEstablished in 1866 and roughly equivalent to an Upper House, and in SnapstingetThe Danish Parliament's restaurant he discusses and drinks coffee with Valdemar and other members of Parliament [7:412]. In the same letter, he tells Irmelin about the concert of his own works that Copenhagen's Philharmonic Orchestra has engaged him to conduct in the following weeks. For once, he does not have to pay for the pleasure himself: 'People had better show up, because I don't want the musicians, who are paying me into the bargain, to lose money, and that's always how it goes with the prophet in his own country, as you well know.'
London
In the summer of 1923, Emil Telmányi makes his London debut with two concerts in Aeolian Hall on 20 and 27 June. At the same time, he manages to arrange for Carl Nielsen to travel with him and give a paid concert on 22 June with the London Symphony Orchestra of his own works, including the Violin Concerto [CNW 41] with Emil Telmányi as soloist [7:500].
As early as 1920, in connection with Telmányi's performance of Bach's solo violin compositions in Copenhagen, Carl Nielsen had promised to write a work for solo violin for him. Now, there is an opportunity for such a work to be premiered in London and, beginning in April, we can follow the creation of the Prelude, Theme and Variations, op. 48 [CNW 46], in the letters.
Telmányi is in Hungary and brings the beginning of the work along with him so as to start rehearsing it; more follows in the post as it is composed. On 28 May, Carl Nielsen finishes the work, but Telmányi is not satisfied with the seventh variation, and the composer promises to write a new one, which is only finished in the hotel room in London, 24 June, three days before the premiere. According to Telmányi, it was a great success. 'I was called back to the stage six times, something completely unheard of in the conservative English music scene after such a modern, idiosyncratic, solo violin piece. The final time, the composer was summoned as well, and I think he was happy that the work had such a spontaneous public success.' (Telmányi, p. 160)
Carl Nielsen did not have high expectations of London: 'I await nothing more than that my name – as far as I can already understand – will be respected among musicians and appreciators of music. But I don't believe it's possible to gain a large following or to score a triumph, because there is, frankly, no interest in classical music here.' [7:509] But for the orchestra he has nothing but praise: 'the orchestra was first rate (66 men), and I've never heard better wind players.' [7:513] He, whose English vocabulary was restricted to 'yes' and 'ivory', as he himself put it, had introduced himself to the orchestra with the remark: 'Gentlemen, I am glad to see you; I hope I am glad to hear you,' and with these words, he broke the ice.
There are anecdotes remembered from this tour, not least about Carl Nielsen's visit to Dowager Queen Alexandra at Marlborough House to whom he paid a call on 20 June to thank her for being the patroness of his concert. Due to his lack of suitable clothes, he appeared wearing Telmányi's suit unable to button the tight trousers properly. It all went wrong when Dowager Empress Dagmar, another of Christian IX's daughters, also showed up, and Carl Nielsen had to walk into the tearoom with an old Danish princess on each arm, no longer able to hide his trouser problem with one hand (Telmányi, pp. 158-59).
Louis Glass – forgotten colleague
Carl Nielsen's music is not only being played more and more both at home and abroad; his reputation is also becoming an increasing problem for his colleagues. The year 1923 offers two clear examples of this. One involves the three almost accusatory letters from the composer Louis Glass, the other, Carl Nielsen's role in the attempts of some younger composers to promote Danish music – their music – in Paris in the autumn of 1923.
Louis Glass is a year older than Carl Nielsen, but he and Carl Nielsen had been friends when they were younger. In the 1890s they worked together in the society Symphonia, the society for new music at that time, and there, in 1895, Louis Glass premiered Carl Nielsen's first large work for piano, Symphonic Suite, op. 8 [CNW 82] (Cf. 1:538, also Samtid, no. 2). Now that Glass is approaching 60, he writes to Carl Nielsen asking him to put his last symphony, the fifth, Sinfonia Svastika, on the programme for The Music S0ciety for the following winter. In doing so, he takes care to remind Carl Nielsen that on the way home from The Nordic Music Festival in Helsinki in May of 1921, Nielsen had promised to perform the symphony in Gothenburg but instead 'chose another Danish symphony by one of the younger [composers].' [7:518] Glass is probably thinking of Carl Nielsen's premiere of Poul Schierbeck's symphony in Gothenburg [7:551]. On the way to Helsinki, the two composers met in Stockholm; on a card to Vera Michaelsen, Carl Nielsen wrote: 'went on a walk; met Glass; nonsense!' [7:69]
Carl Nielsen's letters to Louis Glass have not been preserved. When The Carl Nielsen Archive was created in 1935, Glass was asked whether he wanted to contribute, but he did not submit any letters then nor later so it must be assumed that he destroyed them (Cf. postscript to 7:520).
From Glass' next letter four days later [7:520], it becomes clear that Carl Nielsen immediately responds accommodatingly and considers his request for a performance on the occasion of his 60th birthday 'more than' justified. For Glass, the accommodation provides an excuse to write a very long letter in which he describes his perception of the reasons for the increasing neglect of his music over the years, contrasting this neglect with Carl Nielsen's growing popularity.
Glass provides a number of details in the course of the decades that he says have pushed Carl Nielsen into the limelight and led to Glass' being sidelined. It has not least to do with the relationship to the Swedish composers/conductors Tor Aulin and Wilhelm Stenhammar; both were Glass' friends early on and had performed his music in Sweden. It was, in fact, Glass himself who had to tell not to ignore Carl Nielsen's music, and the result was, as Glass writes, that 'you became the sole representative of Danish music,' and 'gradually, as your position grew more and more secure, there would surely have been plenty of opportunity for you to correct this inequity.'
The second problem for Glass is Carl Nielsen's students, 'who one by one take up positions as critics,' and who have handled Glass in a way 'that in certain cases can only be called improper.' He mentions a specific example after he performed the Helios Overture for The Danish Concert Society where for a time he was the conductor. In this instance, the critics were so hard on him that he decided to retire from conducting. 'Had I collected up all of the evidence on the matter, it would have been a sizeable collection. But my memory is failing, and it is also one of those subjects it's unpleasant to dwell on,' Glass complains. Since Carl Nielsen's letters to him have not been preserved, it is perhaps not entirely insignificant that the evidence Glass mentions, upon verification, demonstrates that his memory has actually failed him as regards his view of his imagined enemy (See the commentary about the relevant letter in The Carl Nielsen Letters [7:520]).
In September, Glass receives the official announcement that Sinfonia Svastika has been accepted for performance by The Music Society just as Carl Nielsen already stated after the first letter. This prompts yet another long letter from Glass, who would now like 'permission to have my say.' [7:551]
The new letter partly takes the form of a musical credo, which Carl Nielsen undoubtedly can largely agree with, and partly involves fresh accusations against Nielsen. It appears that, for Glass, the decisive trauma is that his Symphony no. 3, the 'Forest Symphony','Skovsymfonien'. has not acquire the status in Danish music he believes it should. 'Intrigues and antipathy' have suppressed it and concerning Carl Nielsen's role, or lack thereof, he states: 'You needed only to stay quiet, for your silence to be decisive.'!
In one of his letters, Carl Nielsen must have written something to the effect that he and Glass 'really cannot judge each other,' but based on this statement, Glass develops an oppositional relationship between them, which he partly hopes can be 'understood by us both, so we can save our friendship, and so that our collegial relationship can remain as it should be. Can you not see that we both have significance for Danish music?' – and partly inflates the oppositional relationship – in the eyes of the opponent: 'but if I am a threat to your musical conviction, to your faith and your ideals, just return my letter, and I will know where I stand. No diplomatic halfway house can provide a happy way out here.'
What we know is that Carl Nielsen neither sent the letter back nor deleted it; he can hardly have felt it personally compromising. It is true, however, that a thorough review and treatment of Louis Glass' life, work, and fate in the context of his times would be an act of justice not only towards the composer but it would also fill a gap in the account and contribute to the understanding of Carl Nielsen and his times, its musical life and its conditions (See also Claus Røllum-Larsen: Louis Glass og Carl Nielsen, Modsætninger i dansk musik, Deres forhold belyst hovedsagelig gennem breve fra Louis Glass; Musikvidenskabelige kompositioner, Festskrift til Niels Krabbe, Copenhagen 2006, pp. 591-602 –- who, however, has not taken the trouble to check Glass' 'facts').
The Ballad of the Bear [CNW 315]
Carl Nielsen's active, outgoing life is not evidence that his heart problems were over. During the autumn, he is examined by professor Knud Faber at The National Hospital and prescribed a diet, weight loss and carbonated baths and is warned that, if this does not help, he must give up conducting [7:553]. In 10 days he loses 5½ kilos. He writes to Vera Michaelsen: 'I don't smoke, don't drink, don't eat (that is to say, as little as possible), don't think (except, as you can see, of you), don't run, don't jump, don't yearn, don't feel (yes, yes of course –- except after and for you), and thus for the time being I'm experiencing a kind of death, which, however, is not serious enough to warrant crying over. – But do you know what the worst thing is? That I have no true desire to work and live, in the sense of accomplishing something in this little world. If only I could get moving!' [7:556]
On 13 November, Knud Faber informs him that he will never recover completely [7:579]. In the same letter, the composer announces that he has completed The Ballad of the Bear for voice and piano. The work occupies a special place in Carl Nielsen's output by virtue of the advanced tonal language, and because the text is through composed as compared to the many strophic songs he has composed in recent years. Aage Berntsen wrote the poem at Carl Nielsen's behest, based on a story by the Swedish poet C.J.L. Almqvist, The She-Bear (C.J.L. Almquist: Björninnan: Samlade skrifter (ed. by Fredrik Böök), v. 13 (Törnrosens bok, Imperial Octave Edition), Stockholm 1922, pp. 173-179).
We know that during a bout of illness in November of 1907, Nielsen read Almqvist's Sleeping Beauty Book (Törnrosens bok), which he had borrowed from Bror Beckman in a copy that once belonged to Esaias Tegner [3:418] [3:426]. After the heart attack in 1922, he reads Almqvist again at Damgaard and writes to Rudolph Simonsen (in a reference to Goethe) that he feels a 'Wahlverwandt [elective affinity]' with this strange poet [7:248] [7:255]. Whatever one may think of this small, seldom performed work, there are indications that the motivation behind it ran deep.
In the tale, a young farmer out hunting encounters a large she-bear whose young cubs have been killed by humans; it is about to attack his beloved, so he raises the gun to shoot the bear but ends up only grazing it and instead kills his beloved. This is the essence of the text Carl Nielsen set to music, while Almqvist's story also recounts that the farmer lad returns to the forest to wrestle with the bear and that both die in the fight. People who later entered the forest and saw the young farmer and the she-bear, lying dead side by side, said: 'no boy's body sleeps in the arms of a wilder woman; but no boy's spirit lies with a more beautiful bride.'
It is the stark catastrophe, not its popular sublimation, that interests Carl Nielsen. While the outside world is increasingly preoccupied with his success and dominance (also in their own heads), it was an experience of unexpected collapse, whether of the heart, of love or of life, without acknowledged guilt, that he himself was wrestling with: the man 'who shot his bride to death against his own will,' to quote Almqvist's introduction. 'It wails in the forest, as though a soul was sobbing,' ends the text Carl Nielsen set to music.
Paris
In contrast to the backward-looking Glass story, the trouble over the Paris Concert reveals, at an early stage, the problem of this little country, of its composers, and of its music scene with the little, the great Nielsen, also in the future.
On 21 November 1923, the day after he conducted Beethoven's 9th at a Music Society concert, Carl Nielsen travels to Paris for a promotion of Danish music. He travels with the pianist and friend Christian Christiansen, but while Christiansen was a part of the official delegation of musicians and society members who had left for Paris two days earlier, Carl Nielsen was just a private person – as well as the best known of the Danish composers whose works would be presented in Paris, and he had been in some doubt about whether he should travel with them [7:579] [7:582].
The Paris event had come into being on the initiative of The Young Composers' Society, which in March of the same year had arranged a French concert in Copenhagen. Two French musicians, a violinist and a pianist, played works by Ravel, Fauré and Albert Roussel, and with their personal presence gave the event the character of a start toward a closer collaboration between living Danish and French musicians.
Young Knudåge Riisager was prominent among those cultivating the French contacts; in 1922 he had become chair of The Young Composers' Society and was studying in Paris at that time. The Danish musicians' return visit to Paris the same autumn, however, presupposed that money could be raised in Denmark to cover the travel costs and, for this reason, it was opportune to begin a collaboration with the more established Danish Musicians' Society, which did not solely represent the younger generation and which had better contacts to political life and the funding authorities. The chair of The Composers' Society was Peder Gram, himself a young composer, and links between him and the young composers had only been eased by the fact that Riisager had studied with him, but both before and after the Danish musicians' Paris trip the alliance nevertheless resulted in ructions in The Danish Composers' Society that ended in Peder Gram having to resign as chair.
To solve the task of encouraging this closer collaboration with their French counterparts, the two societies form a joint committee. For The Danish Composers' Society this consisted of the chair and Godtfred Skjerne, while for the young composers it was the pianist Max Rytter and the teacher of music Hjalmar Bull. Alongside and overseeing the committee from his base in Paris, the chair of the young composers, Knudåge Riisager, was looking on and pulling the strings, and it is he who announces in a letter home to his committee: 'I have written to Gram saying that we consider him the committee's actual leader, as that is probably for the best.' (Knudåge Riisager to Hjalmar Bull, 19.06.1923, the DUT-Archive, MTA)
The young composers are well aware that some buttering up is required to get the partner they need to participate in this joint venture. Even Peder Gram is aware that he has got himself in a bind. He writes to Riisager: 'I am almost getting scared! From being a society matter this had turned into a national campaign of great import, and it will surely be difficult to maintain the hegemony of our little committee. The Danish Composers' Society's representatives will surely try to assert themselves when they realise the proportions the matter has taken on.' (Peder Gram to Knudåge Riisager, 10.07.1923. Private ownership; the quote is provided by Claus Røllum-Larsen) To correct the imbalance, Gram proposes to expand the committee with well-known artists; he proposes, too, that Carl Nielsen join the committee. Just before the whole thing takes place, Gram even writes to Riisager: 'I sympathise deeply with my detractors who feel that the delegation is too weak for the money. They are promising to duff us up in the press afterwards.' (Peder Gram to Knudåge Riisager, 13.11.1923. Private ownership; the quote is provided by Claus Røllum-Larsen) But outwardly, Peder Gram remains loyal to the collaboration with the young composers even after he announces his resignation as chair of The Danish Composers' Society, and time after time, it is he who responds to the criticism.
Officially, it is The French Association for Artistic Expansion and Exchange and its director Robert Brussel who invite the Danish guests, and a comprehensive programme is planned by the French side that contributes to the official aura around the event.
It begins on Friday, 23 November, with the laying of wreaths at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe, accompanied by representatives of The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of War. On Saturday the 24th, there is a reception at the Institut de France, whose 'Permanent Secretary' is the composer Charles-Marie Widor. Here, the famous Prix de Rome is awarded to a female composer whose identity remains unknown. On Sunday 25th, they are invited to attend the performance of operas by Raoul Laparra and Jules Massenet at the Opera-Comique; these are hardly Carl Nielsen's favourite composers and – without being able to conclude anything from this with certainty – he does not mention participating in this engagement in the letters from Paris.
We do know, however, that on Monday 27th he goes on the arranged excursion to Berlioz's home in Montmartre and the subsequent laying of flowers on Berlioz's grave in the Montmartre Cemetery. Also, in the afternoon, Carl Nielsen participates in an evaluation of the ongoing exchange work between French and Danish music chaired by Paul Léon, director of The National School of Fine Arts, followed by a Fauré concert and banquet in the Café de Paris in the evening. On Tuesday 27th, the Danish musicians are shown around the Louvre by the museum's director, and on Wednesday 28th, there is a trip to Versailles and afternoon tea with the composer Albert Roussel [7:582].
In return for all this French hospitality, the Danish composers are allowed to offer one chamber music concert and Danish music is played, primarily for Danes living in Paris, at a couple of receptions as well.
The chamber concert of Danish music takes place Friday, 23 November 1923, in the hall of the old conservatory in Rue du Conservatoire. The Breuning-Bache Quartet begin with Carl Nielsen's String Quartet in E-flat major, op. 14 [CNW 57], and finish with Knudåge Riisager's String Quartet no. 3, op. 15. In between, smaller works by Peder Gram, Rued Langgaard, Peter Heise, P.E. Lange-Müller, Louis Glass and Poul Schierbeck are played and sung.
At a reception at the Danish embassy on the evening of 25 November, the Breuning-Bache Quartet plays Gustav Helsted's Quartet in F minor, op. 35, after which songs by Victor Bendix and Carl Nielsen[CNW Coll. 4] are sung [7:582].
Finally, on Tuesday afternoon, 27 November, there is a concert in the editorial offices of La revue musicale. On this occasion, the Breuning-Bache Quartet play N.O. Raasted's String Quartet no. 3 and Christian Christiansen performs Carl Nielsen's Theme with Variations for piano, op. 40 [CNW 87].
Even before the Danish musicians left Denmark, the programme choice had been a subject of debate in the press. A few days before the composers' departure, Gustav Hetsch called the event 'Another Missed Opportunity' in the headline of his critique. It was the young composers' dominant position he was attacking; he wrote, for example: 'If they had taken – together with Carl Nielsen's Quartet, op. 14[CNW 57] – Helsted's latest string quartet in place of Knudåge Riisager's, for example, the young composer would surely have understood since he has not yet earned the reputation in Danish music production that Helsted has.' (Nationaltidende 17.11.1923) Two days later, Peder Gram responded to Hetsch, more loyal to the Paris Committee than to The Danish Composers' Society of which his position as chair gave him a place on the committee.
Hetsch stuck to his point of view in a new article: 'That "the young composers" have also been given a place on the programme for this concert as composers that rightfully should be given to those already generally recognised at home – while "the young" could more appropriately have appeared on the above-mentioned programme for more private parties – points back to the fundamental mistake that was committed: the fact that "The Danish Composers' Society" undertook co-responsibility for a musical propaganda campaign abroad in the first place, without taking the time to ensure that this campaign was led by the right people, in the right direction, and in the right way." (Nationaltidende 20.11.1923)
Ironically, it is not Carl Nielsen but Gustav Helsted and the young composers Knudåge Riisager and Peder Gram who get the best reviews from the Parisian critics, or as Gunnar Hauch, who travelled to Paris for Nationaltidende, expresses it:
'For us, a sober, general assessment of the works' worth – such as has been expressed in this paper, for example – would have preferred a fuller representation of the somewhat older art than the new and most recent, which in this case were given an equal place. Strangely enough, however, it is quite definitely the latter that has won the interest of the French whereas they are quite indifferent to the older and, to us, more important art. In other words, it is primarily Riisager and Peder Gram who can travel home with laurels in their suitcase whereas Carl Nielsen does not bring back anything other than what he took with him down there, his name, which in our Danish ears sounds so strong that it silences the younger ones.' Hauch also speaks about the French critics' belief that Danish music 'is still far too dependent on German influence; only among the young are there creditable indications of a tendency to turn their gaze toward France.' And so, the first little foray of Danish music into Paris also turned out to be subject to the great, political realities after World War I, of the demilitarisation of the Rhineland, of the struggle for the border areas between Germany and France, of the national armament of the time!
Back home in Denmark, settlement was waiting. Peder Gram ignored a wish for a members' meeting to discuss the Paris trip, and so it ended in an extraordinary general meeting on 21 December 1923 where the opposition even gets its way and the press is allowed to report on it so that we are not restricted to the minimalism of the society's minutes. According to Nationaltidende, Carl Nielsen told 'The Truth About the Paris Journey':
'At the concert in the Paris Conservatory, barely half the house was full; for the concert at "Revue musicale" there were just 21 in the audience, including only three Frenchmen. The whole concert visit was without the least significance, the whole thing was "illegitimate", carried out by a semi-private institution. It was not the French nation that had invited the Danish musicians; the whole thing was unwholesome. But if this battle is lost, perhaps a new one can be won another time, – that is to say, when our performing artists travel there individually without that great official apparatus." (Nationaltidende 22.12.1923)
By contrast, the day after the chamber concert in Paris, Politiken talked about 'a Danish-French event of the highest order. The beautiful hall's 1,000 seats were occupied by an invited audience made up of a number of prominent Danes living in Paris and Danish visitors to Paris in addition to Paris' most leading music authorities, critics and representatives of The Ministry for the Fine Arts. Among others, it included a rare guest, Georg Brandes,Georg Brandes (1842-1927) was a famous Danish critic and scholar and is considered the theorist behind the Modern Breakthrough. who for the first time since 1912 is visiting Paris to refresh his countless acquaintances in French literature and politics,' after which the newspaper listed the names of a large number of prominent Danes (Politiken, 24.11.1923).
Politiken also writes that at the extraordinary general meeting of The Danish Musicians' Society, Carl Nielsen gives 'a drastic description of the circumstances. At the concert in Paris there were only c. 230 people in attendance in the hall that held at least 600. The matinée, arranged by "Revue musicale", was attended by 21 people in a poor location with a red-hot tile stove and a draught from the street – finally, the gathering at the embassy was a purely social event. The whole thing meant nothing. It was poorly arranged. But it ultimately nor was it the French nation that had invited us. Way too much has been made out of this false story. He also hoped that the official programme with the famous article would not be regarded as "source material", which as such would stand to our eternal shame.' (Politiken, 22.12.1923)
With his last remark, Carl Nielsen is merely supporting what Poul Schierbeck had previously addressed in his speech, in which he 'strongly attacked the official French programme, which contained an explanatory article about Modern Danish music written by the composer Mr Knudåge Riisager. In this article, the Danish composers are placed in three descriptive groups: the Romantic, with Louis Glass at the helm, the Neoclassical, with Carl Nielsen as leader, and finally, "The Men of Progress" with Peder Gram as its chief. Mr Schierbeck protested against having this programme stand as a source text and be the French concert's historical result.' (Politiken, 22.12.1923)
The extraordinary general meeting results in three resolutions against Peder Gram, each more critical than the last, criticising his failure to consult with the board of directors and committee of representatives regarding the collaboration with The Young Composers' Society on the Paris event. Though it is the mildest one that passes and Gram initially states that he could live with it as chair, it is announced in the press a few days later that he would resign at the next ordinary general meeting, not because of the resolution, but because several well-known members of The Danish Composers' Society had begun to protest against him.
In the journal Musik's January issue, Peder Gram answers his critics. About Carl Nielsen's criticism specifically, he said:
'The concert was presented to an invited circle of people, following a proposal that came from the French side, as it was rightly understood that the goal was to win over leading French musicians and the press to Danish music and to the idea of the exchange. Both of these factors were in fact richly represented at the concert. The empty seats in the hall belonged to invited guests who at the last minute were prevented from coming so that they had not been able to return unused tickets. And the presentation of the matinée at the music magazine "la Revue musicale" was entirely tendentious. The Danish artists were invited to a reception and a glass of champagne at the magazine's reception rooms, where Danish music was performed and to which the editor had invited a circle of interested musicians and members of the press. The goal of this private event was to make a connection with the magazine "la Revue musicale" and to ensure that Danish works made inroads at the magazine's public concerts, at which new music is performed. From Carl Nielsen's statements, everyone must get the impression that this has to do with a badly attended concert, which is quite contrary to the facts of the case. – Generally, I must strongly distance myself from all of Carl Nielsen's statements at the general meeting.' (Musik, no. 1, January 1924, pp. 3-4)
The extraordinary general meeting of The Danish Musicians Society, at which Peder Gram resigned as chair, took place on 10 April 1924. On that occasion, Louis Glass, according to the society's minutes, declared 'that the attack on the chair had hurt him deeply, and asked the assembly not to forget Mr Gram's excellent qualities as a composer and the society's chair.' Thereafter, Glass proposed a resolution to this effect and had it adopted by 27 votes to nine.
'In support of the proposed resolution,' it is further stated, 'Miss Breuning Storm presented the conductor with a letter, signed by the participants on the Paris trip, which was read aloud by the conductor. The letter distanced itself from Carl Nielsen's statements at the extraordinary general meeting and supported the chair's statements on this point in the magazine Musik for January of this year.'
But, in response: 'Carl Nielsen maintained the accuracy of his statements, which were in no way tendentious, but energetically expressed his sympathy for the outgoing chair.' (The National Archives, Private institutions, Danish Musicians' Society, Archive no. 10,076, parcel no. 3)
Next, the course of the general meeting speaks for itself: The organist August Felsing, the sharpest of Peder Gram's critics at the extraordinary general meeting, proposed the creating of a new board which was adopted. Several of the candidates suggested had been among those who resigned to put pressure on Peder Gram. One of them, the kapellmeister Georg Høeberg, had again not yet handed in a written membership but since 'Statements from the society seemed to set a precedent for registrations being received orally, the chair recommended to the assembly recognising Kapellmeister Høeberg as a member' – and that is, as elected to the board.
The new chair is Hakon Børresen who, at the extraordinary general meeting, had challenged the programme choice at the French concert as he believed that it should have been up to The Composers' Society, and not The Danish Musicians' Society, to handle this. The many societies in Danish musical life, and the limited number of active members who were involved in everything, had again been quarrelling and had changed places a bit.
Both from the controversy before the Paris trip and from the bickering afterwards, it appears the actual divide was between some of the youngest musicians, led by the board of The Young Composers' Society, and the older ones who, in their own interest, too, thought that Danish music should have a broader delegation than that represented by 'The Men of Progress' headed by Knudåge Riisager and Peder Gram. The feeling of most members of The Danish Musicians' Society, responsible for the Palace Mutiny, must have been that with the help of their chair, a small, young group had succeeded in taking the entire Danish music scene hostage in the struggle for their own interests.
Carl Nielsen had been in doubt about whether he would take part [7:579], and was apparently also deceived about the event's 'highly official' character, just as the newspapers had been, both before and during the 'Paris trip'. Hence his strong reaction afterwards, perhaps. In addition, he and Carl Johan Michaelsen had already explored the possibility of campaigning for Carl Nielsen personally in the French capital. Some of the young people also tried to arrange for him to be able to conduct The Inextinguishable at an orchestra concert on this occasion. There is no way to determine how realistic this was, but during the preparations for the Paris campaign, Knudåge Riisager, as chair of The Young Composers' Society, wrote a letter home to his board colleague Hjalmar Bull that made abundantly clear just how full of intrigue the planning of the event had been. Mentioned in the following quote are the French Ambassador to Copenhagen, Joseph Fontenay, and the director Robert Brussel of The French Association for Artistic Expansion and Exchange, the two main liaison officers on the French side:
'French concert: Inform Gram that to date I have not received any of the reviewed scores. Were they stopped in time? It is necessary to be in close contact with Fontenay about this matter. I will probably have a meeting after the 25th this month with Brussel, but the final arrangement itself must be made between Fontenay and Beaux-Art, in writing and officially. My work can only be exploratory and ancillary. Schierbeck has gone and made a mess of things up there with Brussel and tried to get Carl Nielsen down here to conduct instead, and this he has been naïve enough to brag about so that I found out. This drove them crazy in Beaux-Art, and they now want the matter to be settled officially through Fontenay. Therefore you must do a lot of talking to him, present the programme to him and say: Thus is our programme, now everything is ready from our side so may we hear what you have decided?" (Knudåge Riisager to Hjalmar Bull, 19.06.1923, The DUT-Archive, MTA)
Carl Nielsen did not come to Paris to perform a symphony on this occasion; the only Danish orchestral work that was performed during the Danish visit was Peder Gram's Lyric Poem, which was performed at the Colonne Orchestra's concert in the Théâtre Chatelet under the baton of Gabriel Pierné on Saturday on 24 November. Carl Nielsen was probably present on that occasion; an undated card he wrote to Peder Gram during the Parisian stay points in that direction: 'Dear Peder! Roussel wanted to send me the ticket through you – as you heard. Has he done that? And if so, how do I get it? Greetings, your C.N.'
There must also have been some suspicion of Gram in connection with the performance of his orchestral work; in any case, in Nationaltidende, Gunnar Hauch finds reason to disprove the suspicion in his review of the reception by the French press of the performance of Danish music:
'About Gram's work, which was performed at the Colonne Concert, which incidentally was not – as it has so far appeared from the outside – placed on the programme through Mr Gram's own influence but, on the contrary, was chosen from a selection of Danish compositions by the conductor Mr Gabriel Pierné, ...' (Nationaltidende, 08.12.1923)
Carl Nielsen was perhaps not the least hostage held in this play between the young and the more established musicians, since he participated on a private basis and was the only Danish composer in Paris on that occasion except for the two – Gram and Riisager – the Paris Committee chair and the man behind it all. In what one could call the committee's official report, the unsigned article 'The Danes in Paris' in the December issue of the journal Musik, the article on which the opposition at the extraordinary general meeting of The Danish Musicians' Society was largely based, the ambivalence is apparent in the words 'The composer Carl Nielsen, though he travelled as a private person, by virtue of his entire position in our musical life was undeniably a welcome "cherry" on top of the cake.' (Musik, no. 12, December 1923, p. 158)
Riisager and Ravel – and Nielsen
Knudåge Riisager also took Carl Nielsen hostage in a private matter: namely, his visit to Maurice Ravel in Montfort as he described it in an article in Berlingske Tidende five months later (Berlingske Tidende, Sunday supplement, 04.05.1924. Reprinted in Knudåge Riisager: Det usynlige mønster, Copenhagen, 1957. pp. 43-50). It is impossible to say precisely how much Carl Nielsen himself took part and knew about this matter. What we do know is the following:
On 28 November 1923, the day before most of the Danish musicians in Paris travelled home, Maurice Ravel wrote to the young composer Knudåge Riisager in Paris [in French]:
Sir,
I will be very happy to meet Mr Carl Nielsen, but don't come on Friday! That particular day I have to be absent for a large part of the day.
Would you be able to come on Sunday, which would be most convenient for me, or any other day?
If you would like to come and have lunch (Invalides Station, 9:00am; take the coach from Montfort Station), please let me know.
Yours faithfully,
Maurice Ravel
(Private ownership. Shown at the exhibition 'Knudåge Riisager, 1897-1974,' arranged by The Royal Library at the Music History Music and Carl Claudius' Collection, 29.10, on 07.12.1997)
This letter was exhibited at the centenary of Riisager's birth with the following exhibition text: 'After having heard Riisager's String Quartet at the concert in Paris, Ravel invited Riisager for lunch at his home. Ravel encouraged Riisager to invite Carl Nielsen to come along.' However, Ravel did not actually attend the concert in Paris, as Riisager himself clarifies in his article, and there is no indication that Ravel approached Riisager on his own initiative. The letter's content leaves no doubt that it was Riisager who first wrote to Ravel and that the point of his letter, expressed one way or another, must have been the question: Would he, Ravel, like to make Carl Nielsen's acquaintance? – It is to this that Ravel responds positively. What and when Carl Nielsen knew and thought about it all will probably remain unclear. The proven facts are these:
On Thursday, 29 November 1923, the story looks like this in Knudåge Riisager's letter to his mother in Copenhagen: 'Yesterday I received a letter from the famous French composer Maurice Ravel, whose name you surely know, inviting me for lunch at his home this Sunday. He lives a two-hour train ride outside Paris. Naturally, I'm very happy about this singular honour. Prunières – you probably know who that is – said to me that it is nearly impossible to engage that man in conversation – let alone to be invited out to him at his villa! You surely understand that this is a unique recognition and that I'll write about it later in Nationaltidende. I assume that it is the extremely flattering coverage my quartet his received in all the newspapers here which has led to his wanting to do me this honour. You have hopefully already received the clippings from Le Figaro, Comoedia and Le Temps - the main newspapers – and imagine what incredible happiness they have brought me. With a single stroke, I'm in the first tier – my work is ranked higher than all the rest – this is clear enough. Imagine, that I should score a victory in Paris over our own Carl Nielsen. C.N. himself is very excited about my quartet and he will definitely come up to see what I have written here in Paris and to greet Åse – so today we are awaiting his arrival. He's a member of the board for the Ancker Travel Grant! All of this has made me completely muddle-headed – but don't think that means I'm losing my head about it. I'm just so glad and happy and grateful about it all.'
Later, in the same letter, we are told: 'I have asked Ravel whether I may bring Carl Nielsen out to him with me and so we may go out there together. In C.N. I've found a sincere friend, I believe. Isn't it wonderful?' (Knudåge Riisager to Henrikke Riisager, Paris, 29.11.1923. Private ownership; the quote is provided by Claus Røllum-Larsen).
On 3 December 1923, the day after Riisager visited Ravel by himself, he wrote again to his mother: 'I was there for the whole day yesterday, and imagine that he said "I have read about the great success you've had in Paris; this is why I wanted to get to know you personally." Wasn't it nice to be singled out in this way by the most famous composer of our day? He was very amiable, played his pieces for me, and we ate lunch, smoked and drank and had a great time together. {...} It was as Ravel said that, at a single stroke, I have become known in Europe.' (Knudåge Riisager to Henrikke Riisager, Paris, 03.12.1923. Private ownership; the quote is provided by Claus Røllum-Larsen)
The composer Knudåge Riisager, who divided his life between his art and life as a civil servant, and whose father died in 1919, clearly must have needed to defend his career as an artist to his mother. Carl Nielsen did not accompany him on the visit to Ravel's house, nor is he mentioned either in the article about the visit that Riisager published in Berlingske Tidende or in Nationaltidende, the newspaper in which most of his writing appeared at this time as he had reported to his mother. Ravel's statement about Riisager's quartet in the article boils down to an incomplete reply:
'Yes, I belong to the cowards who have long since fled Paris, says Ravel – I did not attend the Danish concert down here for the same reason. But now I have read about it in the newspapers, and so I thought...'
Riisager's article resembles most of all an interview with Ravel; it is Riisager who asks short questions and Ravel who responds in more detail about himself. It is of course conceivable that Riisager has asked for permission to do an interview; in that case, it was a remarkably odd visit, in which Carl Nielsen was to have been introduced to Ravel as well.
With regard to Carl Nielsen's role, we know only that on the same day as Riisager wrote to his mother, he sent a brief message [7:585] to Riisager from his hotel in Paris:
'Paris, 29 November 1923
Dear Mr Riisager!
Have unfortunately not been home, therefore these lines are delayed. Unfortunately I must leave on Saturday morning, as I have to be in Copenhagen on Sunday evening at the latest, because of work on Monday. Thank you for your kindness! I hope – as I said – that I'll get to greet you before I leave. With regards
Yours,
Carl Nielsen
In great haste!
P.S. Please give Mr Ravel my admiring greetings.'
Carl Nielsen is responding, then, to a letter or a message that Riisager has sent or delivered to him; this must also have included an invitation to visit Riisager and his wife, who are now waiting for him, according to the letter to Riisager's mother. It appears from Carl Nielsen's letter that he now knows that Riisager plans to visit Ravel. It is also probable that Carl Nielsen's comment that he will travel Saturday morning can be interpreted as evidence that he now knows something about Ravel's letter. How much or little he has known about Riisager's reaching out to Ravel beforehand, his statement does not disclose. His response to Riisager also does not exactly indicate a great desire to visit Riisager and his wife, and there is no evidence that it happened. The next day, Friday 30 November 1923, both composers surely had time on their hands: the visit to Ravel, which Ravel's letter suggests should have taken place that day, did not amount to anything, and yet one would think they both had the time to see each other that day if they had wanted to!
Riisager's article, which does not mention Carl Nielsen, begins with these words:
'To receive an invitation from Maurice Ravel to visit him in his home in Montfort is considered almost unattainable even by French musicians. How this happened to me, who comes from the north and whom he did not know at all beforehand, is a riddle that can't be solved –'
– or is it a riddle that solves itself when one supplements Riisager's own official account with the underlying story about Carl Nielsen who, knowingly or unknowingly, opens the door for Riisager.
This Paris story shows that larger stories can be hidden in even a few, small statements in the letters. The work of archaeological excavation that just took as its starting point the attempt to comment on a single, obscure letter in a relevant way, Nielsen's few lines to Riisager in Paris [7:585], ends up revealing that an event – not in itself particularly significant either in Danish music history or in Carl Nielsen's story – was in fact an expression of a serious conflict between an encroaching young generation and established figures in Danish music – who, it must be said, did not exactly see themselves as established.
With the Paris story we are witness to a concrete example of the creation of and basic pattern behind the ambivalence that has characterised the Danish music scene's attitude toward Carl Nielsen to this day: an ambivalence that has secured him the role as both national frontrunner and whipping boy and made it exceedingly difficult, if not directly undesirable to devote an impartial look at the person and the work and their interaction with the nation and its self-understanding.