Carl Nielsen at Age 150

Both research and performance of Carl Nielsen’s music have taken off in the past two decades, thanks to a flurry of publications that make crucial primary source materials readily available for the very first time, many of them online, with critical commentary in English as well as Danish. These include editions of his collected works, prose writings, and voluminous correspondence, as well as a comprehensive works catalog. After more than half a century of celebrating Nielsen as an isolated, self-made genius, the Danes have thrown open the door of inquiry and beckoned foreign scholars in. The result has been a new assessment of the composer, the man, and his music in the context of his European contemporaries, and Nielsen has fared well in the comparison. The application of an array of analytical techniques has yielded insight into Nielsen’s treatment of harmonic, rhythmic, and formal ambiguity to dramatic ends, and the common ground between his two favored but stylistically opposed genres, symphony and song, has been explored. Perhaps most gratifying of all is that the high quality of the collected edition has spurred a spate of performances and new recordings worldwide, some of compositions that had languished since Nielsen’s death in unpublished obscurity. There is a sense that finally, at the ripe old age of 150, Nielsen has come into his own.