Sange = Songs, and: Juvenilia et addenda (review)

In the early 1990s, complaints about the poor condition of the performance materials by musicians in Innsbruck who were preparing a performance of Nielsen's opera, Maskarade, launched a barrage of polemics in the Danish newspapers about the damage being done to the cultural reputation of Denmark and to its "national composer." This eventually spawned an initiative to commission a complete scholarly edition of Carl Nielsen's works. The then-cultural minister, Jytte Hilden, asked the Music Department of the Royal Library to devise a comprehensive plan, and promised adequate funding for the project. By 1993 the plan was ready. It was decided to include all complete works by Nielsen in an edition that would be both practical and scholarly. The volumes in four series—stage music, instrumental music, vocal music, and Juvenilia et addenda—would follow the same template of a general preface; an introductory commentary about each work's origin and its reception in Carl Nielsen's lifetime (1865-1931); relevant facsimiles; the musical scores; and a critical commentary with an evaluation of all sources. Sketches, unfinished works, and Nielsen's reworking of others' works, and, with a few exceptions, of his own, were not to be included. One big decision—that is, adopting the policy of a practical edition—meant that the music would be printed without editorial remarks so that each score would represent one interpretation of the existing sources, with alternate interpretations made possible by printing all variants among sources in the critical commentary in the same volume as the score. Finally, the text for all general commentary would be bilingual (Danish and English), with the critical editorial commentary in English. In what were nearly ideal conditions, the editorial work was housed primarily in the Royal Library in close proximity to the bulk of the source material. The date of completion, originally set for 2003, was later revised to March 2009. The Carl Nielsen Værker is now complete and available in thirty-five volumes.

The completed edition will contribute to the surge of Nielsen scholarship produced since the early 1990s, such as the catalog of the Carl Nielsen Collection in the Royal Library by Birgit Bjørnum and Klaus Møllerhøj (1992); John Fellows's three-volumes of edited and annotated texts by Nielsen, Carl Nielsen til sin samtid (Carl Nielsen to His Contemporaries, 1999); establishment of the Carl Nielsen Studies (2003-), of which four volumes have so far appeared; several symposia involving Nielsen scholars (in Birmingham, Manchester, and Copenhagen), with another one in the planning stages; and an edition of Nielsen's complete letters. Recent and forthcoming monographs by French, American, English, and Danish authors reflect the wide range of views that propels this ongoing activity. A promised full-length biography is in progress, and recordings of works based on the newly-edited scores have begun to appear.

The...