Nielsen: Symphony No. 5

This book focuses on the definitive work by Carl Nielsen - Denmark's greatest composer.

David Fanning (Author)

9780521446327, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 5 June 1997

138 pages, 32 music examples
21.6 x 14 x 0.8 cm, 0.19 kg

'The writing is imbued with a deep love and understanding of the music and the author has the skill to put it into historical and artistic perspective.' Musical Times

After the death of Mahler in 1911 the great Austro-German symphonic line was carried on mainly in England, America, Scandinavia and Russia. The Fifth Symphony of Carl Nielsen, Denmark's greatest composer, was composed in 1921–2. David Fanning discusses its place within the symphonic tradition since Beethoven, revealing the personal background to the work and taking full account of the extensive Danish commentaries, including the composer's own, which are given in English for the first time. In an absorbing analysis of the music he lays bare the origins of its images of inertia, anxiety and collapse in Nielsen's tone poems and incidental music for the theatre. Insights are offered into the symphony's 'progressive tonality' and its relationship to traditional structural models.

1. Tradition and renewal
2. The first movement: dark, resting forces
3. The second movement: alert forces
4. Composition, reception, editions, recordings
Appendices: A. Interview with Axel Kjerulf
B. Statement to Ludvig Dolleris
C. Analytical reductions
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH]