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Carl Nielsen (1865—1931)

1. Nielsen the seventh of twelve children born to a poor peasant family in 1865 at Nørre Lyndelse near Sortelung, south of Odense on the island of Funen.

2. His poor, but not unhappy, rural youth Nielsen described in a moving memoir, My Childhood (1927), a classic of Danish literature.

3. Taking up the fiddle as a boy to accompany his father at dances, he used it to make a living while composing and landed a job as a second violinist in the Chapel Royal. After 16 years he had still not made it into the firsts. In 1905, a year before the premiere of his opera Maskarade and when he was by now conducting regularly, he was humiliated by the management when they stated he could either return to the second violins or leave. For everyone else’s sake, the Swedes at the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra were more appreciative.

4. Nielsen’s opinions on other composers was often very catty. Richard Strauss, for instance, was “a most unsympathetic person; a social climber who is already trying to play the great man.” Nor was he afraid to be provocative – “Beethoven, for all his great compositional power, is really only a lyricist.” In most cases, though, history has proved him right.

5. In 1908, Nielsen became the conductor of the Royal Theater. Though he was met with some criticism and public resistance for his continued departure from the traditions of romanticism in such works as his Third Symphony (Sinfonia espansiva, 1910—1911) and his Violin Concerto (1911), he was emerging to undeniable predominance in Danish music.

6. Visiting London in 1923 to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra with his Violin Concerto and Fourth Symphony, he had studied up on English in a Hundred Hours sufficiently to crack a joke, “Gentlemen, I am glad to see you. I hope I also will be glad to hear you.”

7. He once went to tea with the Danish Queen Alexandra, the Queen Mother, and sat with the top button of his trousers undone throughout the proceedings. Perhaps making room for some Danish pastries.

8. Nielsen found the inspiration for his Second Symphony, “The Four Temperaments,” while sitting in one. As the great Dane himself explained, “On the wall of the room where I was drinking a glass of beer with my wife and some friends hung an extremely comical colored picture, divided into four sections in which “The Temperaments” were represented and furnished with titles: “The Choleric,” “The Sanguine,” “The Melancholic” and “The Phlegmatic.”

9. He was in his 60s and already suffering from heart disease when he participated in the rehearsals for a new production of Maskarade in Copenhagen. When there was some trouble with the ropes during the dress rehearsal, he offered to hoist himself up into the fly loft by his arms to fix the snags.

10. Nielsen was admitted to Copenhagen’s National Hospital (Rigshospitalet) on October 1, 1931 following a series of heart attacks. He died there at ten minutes past midnight on October 3rd, surrounded by his family. His last words to them were, “You are standing here as if you were waiting for something.”