Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Music Examples
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Carl Nielsen Chronology
- 1 Introduction: Carl Nielsen at the Edge
- 2 Thresholds
- 3 Hellenics
- 4 Energetics
- 5 Funen Dreams
- 6 Counterpoints
- 7 Cosmic Variations
- 8 Conclusion
- Appendix: Sketches for the Sinfonia semplice
- Select Bibliography
- Index
4 - Energetics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Music Examples
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Carl Nielsen Chronology
- 1 Introduction: Carl Nielsen at the Edge
- 2 Thresholds
- 3 Hellenics
- 4 Energetics
- 5 Funen Dreams
- 6 Counterpoints
- 7 Cosmic Variations
- 8 Conclusion
- Appendix: Sketches for the Sinfonia semplice
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In a note for a performance of his Third Symphony, the Sinfonia espansiva, in Stockholm in the final year of his life (1931), Nielsen sketched a brief outline of the work that Swedish listeners were about to hear. ‘The symphony is a result of many kinds of forces’, Nielsen explained. ‘The first movement is intended to be a burst of energy and acceptance of life out into the wider world, which we humans not only want to know in its diverse activity, but also wish to conquer and appropriate.’ The finale, meanwhile, is a ‘hymn to work and to the healthy unfolding of everyday life.’ Contemplating the symphony from his hospital bed, Nielsen was surely struck by the work's strength and physicality. Yet two decades earlier, when the symphony first received its premiere, such notions of energy and bodily health were part of a wider cultural shift in early twentieth-century Danish art. As Jørgen I. Jensen has suggested, the symbolic emblem of this Nordic-Hellenist vision was the sun: the radiating globe whose presence is generative and potentially destructive. Yet this symbolic breakthrough also reflected a broader philosophical turn, one which concerned a fundamental shift of world view. In an article entitled ‘Energie og Materie’ (‘Energy and Material’) published, auspiciously, in the 1900 volume of Tilskueren, Emil Petersen introduced Danish readers to the work of German scientist (and later Nobel Prize winner) Wilhelm Ostwald.
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- Information
- Carl Nielsen and the Idea of Modernism , pp. 96 - 131Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011