Symphony No. 5 (Nielsen)

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The Symphony No. 5 (Op. 50, FS 97) by Danish composer Carl Nielsen was completed on 15 January 1922 and first performed in Copenhagen on 24 January 1922 with the composer conducting. It is one of two of Nielsen's six symphonies lacking a subtitle.

Many see the subject of the Fifth Symphony, as with his Symphony No. 4, as survival in the face of struggle. The work is noted for its unusual structure - two movements instead of the customary three or four - and for the modernity of its language.[1] According to a programme note by Nielsen scholar Robert Simpson, musicologist Deryck Cooke went so far as to call this symphony "the greatest twentieth-century symphony".[2]

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Composition

There is no documentation of what inspired Nielsen to write his fifth symphony or when he started to write it, but it is generally understood that the first movement was composed in Humlebæk during the winter and spring of 1921. He reported to his son-in-law Emil Telmányi in two letters dated 17 February and 23 March 1921 that the progress on his fifth symphony was slow, yet he mentioned to his wife Anne Marie Carl Nielsen on 4 March that the first movement has been completed. He told his wife on 31 March that he had made a fair copy of the first movement but had to stop for rest.[3]

Nielsen stayed at his summer house at Skagen in the early summer that year. At the end of July he moved to a friend's home at Damgaard to compose the cantata Springtime on Fyn, and was therefore only able to resume working on the second movement of the symphony that autumn, during his free time from his conducting work in Gothenburg.[3] He wrote to his wife on 3 September, "Now I am going to go on with my interrupted symphony."[4]

Nielsen finished the whole symphony on 15 January 1922 as dated on the score. He dedicated the new symphony to his friends Vera and Carl Johan Michaelsen. Having insufficient rehearsal time, the premiere took place only nine days later, conducted by the composer himself at the music society Musikforening in Copenhagen.[5]

[edit] Reception

The immediate reception of the press to the symphony was generally positive, especially the first movement. Axel Kjerulf wrote that in the Adagio section, he heard a Dream giving way to a "Dream about Deeds... Carl Nielsen has maybe never written more powerful, beautiful, fundamentally healthy and genuine music than here."[5] However, critics were more hesistant towards the second movement. In August Felsing's review, he commented that "Intellectual art is what the second part is, and it is a master who speaks. But the pact with the eternal in art which shines forth in the first part is broken here."[6]

Musicians' opinions were divided.[5] Victor Bendix, a long-time supporter and friend, wrote to Nielsen the day after the première, calling the work a "Sinfonie filmatique, this dirty trenches-music, this impudent fraud, this clenched fist in the face of a defenceless, novelty-snobbish, titillation-sick public, commonplace people e masse, who lovingly lick the hand staine with their own noses' blood!"[5]

[edit] Performances

Nielsen repeated the symphony later that year at Gothenburg's Orkesterfo. He conducted the German première in Berlin on 1 December 1922. The press was mixed this time. Oscar Bie in the Berliner Börsen Courier observed that "The Fifth Symphony, in two movements, with its Nature scenes and string chorale was reminiscent of Mahler's technique, but not so primordially felt: a not quite coherent assembly of desired vision and skilful art."[7]

A Swedish performance on 20 January 1924, under the baton of Georg Schneevoigt, caused quite a scandal; the Berlingske Tidende reported that some audience could not take the modernism of the work:

Midway through the first part with its rattling drums and 'cacophonous' effects a genuine panic broke out. Around a quarter of the audience rushed for the exits with confusion and anger written over their faces, and those who remained tried to hiss down the 'spectacle', while the conudctor Georg Schneevoigt drove the orchestra to extremes of volume. This whole intermezzo underlined the humoristic-burlesque element in the symphony in such a way that Carl Nielsen could certainly never have dreamed of. His representation of modern life with its confusion, brutality and struggle, all the uncontrolled shouts of pain and ignorance - and behind it all the side drum's harsh rhythm as the only disciplining force - as the public fled, made a touch of almost diabolic humour.[7]

Nevertheless the Swedes approved the symphony, as seen from reviews of the Stockholm concert on 5 December 1928.[7]

The composer performed the symphony five times, including the Oslo concert in 4 November 1926 and the second Stockholm performance with the Concertgebouw Orchestra on 5 December 1928, together with the three performances noted above. Emil Telmányi led the French première at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 21 October 1926. The symphony was performed again in Germany on 1 July 1927 at the International Society for Contemporary Music World Music Days festival in Frankfurt under Wilhelm Furtwängler, whose tempo for the Adagio was apparently too slow as reflected in the audience's lack of enthusiasm. He later performed in the right tempo in a Leipzig concert on 27 October 1927.[8]

[edit] Interpretation

The Fifth Symphony is often understood to be a work about contrast and opposition. In a statement to his student Ludvig Dolleris, Nielsen described the symphony as "the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good" and the opposition between "Dreams and Deeds".[9] To Hugo Seligman he described the contrast between "vegetative" and "active" states of mind in the symphony.[10] Simon Rattle described the Fifth Symphony, rather than the Fourth as proclaimed by the composer,[11] as being Nielsen's war symphony.[10]

The "evil" motif as it first appears in the Adagio non troppo section in the first movement. The motif borrows materials from the Tempo giusto section.
The "evil" motif as it first appears in the Adagio non troppo section in the first movement. The motif borrows materials from the Tempo giusto section.

The composer mentioned in an interview with Kjerulf that he was not conscious of the influence of World War I when composing the symphony, but added that "not one of us is the same as we were before the war."[12] In fact, the phrase "dark, resting forces, alert forces" can be found on the back cover of the pencil draft score. Nielsen might have considered it an encapsulation of the contrast both between and within the two movements of the symphony.[13] Nielsen also wrote to Dolleris about the presence of an "evil" motif in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony:

Then the "evil" motif intervenes - in the woodwind and strings - and the side drum becomes more and more angry and aggressive; but the nature-theme grows on, peaceful and unaffected, in the brass. Finally the evil has to give way, a last attempt and then it flees - and with a strophe thereafter in consoling major mode a solo clarinet ends this large idyll-movement, an expression of vegetative (idle, thoughtless) Nature.[9]

Although Nielsen asserted that the symphony is non-programmatic, he expressed his views of the symphony in the interview with Kjerulf:

I'm rolling a stone up a hill, I'm using the powers in me to bring the stone to the top. The stone lies there so still, powers are wrapped in it, until I give it a kick and the same powers are released and the stone rolls down again.[12]

[edit] Instrumentation

Nielsen's Fifth Symphony is originally scored for 3 flutes (third doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, celesta, and strings.[14]

Some optional doublings are added in the 1950 edition of the score revised by Emil Telmányi and Erik Tuxen; these include the third flute doubling flute in G and the second basson doubling contrabassoon.[15] These optional doublings are discarded in the 1998 Carl Nielsen Edition score.[16]

[edit] Structure

The fifth symphony has two movements instead of the usual four, which is the only time Nielsen used this structure:

  1. Tempo giusto - Adagio non troppo
  2. Allegro - Presto - Andante un poco tranquillo - Allegro

In the interview with Kjerulf, Nielsen jokingly explained that it was not difficult to write the first three movements of a symphony but by the finale most composers had run out of ideas.[12]

[edit] First movement

The opening of the Tempo giusto section of the first movement
The opening of the Tempo giusto section of the first movement

The first movement begins with the violas softly oscillating between the notes C and A; after four bars the bassoons enter with the initial theme. Gradually other wind instruments join in after the bassoons play a sudden descending scale. The beginning of Tempo giusto, in Robert Simpson's words, is like:

in outer space. A wave-like viola line appears from nowhere, as if one were suddenly made aware of time as a dimension. Against this passing of time shadowy shapes begin to form; they are unclear, and create problems, as if seen by a dawning consciousness unable yet to recognize objects, and finding them vaguely frightening.[17]

After the cold and emotionless strings passage, clarinet and flute enter with "savage and destructively egotistical" melodies amid simple percussive beats. The ominous string music is painfully distorted and disintegrated. As the tonality rises in fifths from F to C and is attempting to from C to G, the violas and cellos fail to catch the G pitch, falling in descending triplets and return to C. The music fades with the violins' repetition on the note D.

The opening of the Adagio non troppo section of the first movement
The opening of the Adagio non troppo section of the first movement

The warm, optimistic theme in G major in Adagio non troppo section is a contrast with the cold landscape in Tempo giusto. The music is soon disturbed by the "evil" motif on woodwinds, playing the shivering element in Tempo giusto; it is menaced by the snare drum at a tempo (quarter note ♩=116) faster than that of the orchestra. At its climax comes the famous instruction to the snare drummer by the composer to improvise "as if at all costs he wants to stop the progress of the orchestra". The great theme triumphs eventually, as is affirmed by the snare drum actually joining the orchestral fanfare; the solitary clarinet is left to mourn, as if for the terrible cost of the victory, or as a comfort postlude to the weakening impact of the snare drum.

The instruction for the snare drum does not appear in the 1950 edition of the score, being replaced by a written rhythmic line and instruction "cad. ad lib." after a few bars.[15]

[edit] Second movement

The opening theme on 1st violin of the second movement
The opening theme on 1st violin of the second movement

The second movement in four section consists of an "exposition", a fast fugue, a slow fugue and a coda. The music bursts in in B major and continues with great conflicts between instruments, until the calm, broad theme is found in the slow fugue. It progresses to a triumphant coda in E flat major, ends in the key far remote from the opening.

This movement was portrayed by Robert Simpson as arising from the ashes and ruins left by the conflict in the first movement.[18] Jack Lawson, founder and president of The Carl Nielsen Society of Great Britain, stated in his book:

In Part Two, an allegro containing two contrasting fugues, the listener inhabits a world reborn, at first calm but a world which produces new struggles and menacing dangers.… [The Fifth Symphony] heralds the coming of a second European war, but the more mysterious second part defies cerebral analysis (Simpson hesitated over analysing Part Two, feeling that it either needed very deep analysis or, on the contrary, to be described in the fewest possible words): it transports the listener through the depths or above the heights of more standard musical perceptions.[19]

[edit] Score publication

Three editions of the Fifth Symphony have been published[20]:

  • Borups Musikforlag, 1926, reprinted by Edwin F. Kalmus & Co., Inc. (A5659), with introduction by Clark McAllister, March 1983
  • Skandinavisk Musikforlag, 1950, ed. Emil Telmányi and Erik Tuxen
  • The Carl Nielsen Edition, 1998, ed. Michael Fjeldsøe

As Nielsen did not obtain satisfactory terms for the publication of his symphony with his usual publishers Wilhelm Hansen Edition, he turned to the symphony's dedicatee Carl Johan Michaelsen. An industrialist aware of the symphony's worth, Michaelsen financed the publishing firm Hans Borups Musikforlag as their first major project to produce the original publication of the Fifth Symphony in 1926.[20] Nielsen received 2000kr for the work, two or three times his expectation.[21]

In 1950, Skandinavisk Musikforlag published a new score with a brief commentary, heavily edited by Erik Tuxen. Modifications were made to scoring, articulation and dynamics; a notable change is the elimination of three-sharps key signature for the first Allegro in the second movement. The revision is often criticized as beyond Nielsen's intention. Emil Telmányi, credited in the preface as joint editor with Tuxen, later censured the latter for going beyond the "necessary" retouches to the orchestration.[22]

The 1998 Carl Nielsen Edition is being produced as a co-operation between the Danish Royal Library and Edition Wilhelm Hansen.[23] It is based on the edition by Borups Musikforlag under the general editorship of Niels Martin Jensen. [24]

[edit] Recordings

Although Nielsen conducted the Fifth Symphony on five occasions, none of his performances was ever recorded. However, four conductors and two orchestras have certain linkages with the composer, namely Georg Høeberg, Erik Tuxen, Thomas Jensen, Jascha Horenstein, the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra;[25], and all of them have recorded their interpretations of the Fifth Symphony for once or more.[26]

[edit] Selected discography

  • Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Georg Høeberg, 1933 (Dancord): the only recording made before the revision by Tuxen before 1950.[25]
  • Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Erik Tuxen, 1950 Edinburgh Festival live (Dancord): the first live recording of the symphony; Tuxen did another live recording with the same orchestra five years later in Paris.[27]
  • New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, 1962 (CBS, Sony): the first recording by a major international conductor; this recording has helped Nielsen's music to achieve international appreciation.[28]
  • London Symphony Orchestra, Ole Schmidt, 1973-4 (Unicorn-Kanchana): the first complete set of Nielsen symphonies on record.[29]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Kimmo Korhonen and Jaako Haapaniemi, notes for the recording by Jukka-Pekka Saraste with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, 1997
  2. ^ Fanning, p. 2 & 105. The comment is not found in any of Cooke's published writings, however. Robert Simpson remembers the remark being made to him several times in conversation.
  3. ^ a b Fanning, p. 79
  4. ^ 1998 score, p. xiii
  5. ^ a b c d Fanning, p. 80
  6. ^ 1998 score, p. xv
  7. ^ a b c Fanning, p. 81
  8. ^ Fanning, p. 82-83
  9. ^ a b Fanning, p. 99
  10. ^ a b Lawson, p. 169
  11. ^ Lawson, p. 151
  12. ^ a b c Fanning, p. 97-98
  13. ^ Fanning, p. 108
  14. ^ 1998 score, p. 161
  15. ^ a b 1950 score
  16. ^ 1998 score
  17. ^ Lawson, p. 172
  18. ^ Simpson, p. 95
  19. ^ Lawson, p. 172-173
  20. ^ a b Fanning, p. 83
  21. ^ Lawson, p. 173
  22. ^ Fanning, p. 84
  23. ^ 1998 score, p. vii
  24. ^ Fanning, p. 85
  25. ^ a b Fanning, p. 90
  26. ^ Fanning, p. 88
  27. ^ Fanning, p. 91
  28. ^ Fanning, p. 92
  29. ^ Fanning, p. 93

[edit] References

[edit] Books

[edit] Scores

  • Nielsen, Carl; Telmányi, Emil; & Tuxen, Erik (Eds.) (1950). Symphony no. 5 Op. 50 Miniature Score. Copenhagen: Skandinavisk Musikforlag.
  • Nielsen, Carl; & Fjeldsøe, Michael (Ed.) (1998). Symphony No. 5, opus 50. Copenhagen: The Carl Nielsen Edition. Preface and sources of this edition of score are available at the website of The Royal Library
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Symphonies by Carl Nielsen