Nielsen, Carl

Preface

Carl Nielsen – Concerto for Flute and Orchestra

(b. N0rre Lyndelse, 9 June 1865 – d. Copenhagen, 2 October 1931)

(1926)

Preface
For music lovers and a good number of musicologists, Cari Nielsen figures as the leading Scandinavian composer of the post-Grieg generation. Often enough we see his name linked with that of his age-mate Jean Sibelius – a musical shotgun marriage if only for geographic reasons (Finland is not part of Scandinavia). Further, as the Norwegian musicologist Hampus Huldt-Nystrnm pointed out in an untranslated study1 little-known outside Norway, there are marked differences between Swedish and Norwegian folk music, and they recur precisely in the works ofthose composers who expressly pursue a national-romantic approach.
Among many other things, Nielsen’s early music is a confrontation with the chamber musie of Edvard Grieg. His First String Quartet, in G minor, relates in strueture and motivic -workmanship to Grieg’s quartet in the same key (1877-79); his Third, in E-flat major, is dedicated to Grieg; and the Danish eomposer Mogens Christensen uses Nielsen’s Fourth Qùartet in F major to demonstrate the different paths on which the two eomposers struek out at the tum ofthe century, Grieg favoring a hannonically complex and rigorous style that often rode roughshod aver the origina! materiai and incorporated performance teehniques from folk instruments, Nielsen cultivating soaring diatonie melodies and rhythmic density.2 …

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