Carl Nielsen is now acknowledged as Denmark’s most distinguished composer, and more than deserving to take his place with Grieg and Sibelius in the pantheon of Scandinavia’s long-revered composers. It was not always so, of course, and it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that his music enjoyed broad admiration, study, and performance. Not that he ever languished in obscurity, for by his forties he was regarded as Denmark’s leading musician. He grew up in modest circumstances—certainly not a prodigy—studied assiduously, played in several unpretentious ensembles on various instruments, and began composing in small forms. He was intellectually curious, reading and pondering philosophy, history, and literature, and it must be said, was profoundly aided in his overall growth as a composer and in general intellectual sophistication by his long marriage to a remarkable woman.
His wife, Anne Marie Brodersen, was a recognized major sculptor, a “strong-willed and modern-minded woman” who was relentless in the pursuit of her very successful career as an artist. Her independence—and penchant for frequently leaving the family to pursue her own career—impacted the tranquility of the marriage, without doubt. But she was a stimulating, strong partner that unquestionably aided in his development into an artist of spiritual depth and sophistication.
Nielsen’s reputation outside of Denmark is largely sustained by his six symphonies—Leonard Bernstein was an influential international champion of them—but he composed actively in almost all major genres. From song and choral music to chamber works, he left behind a rich musical legacy. His musical style, rooted early on in the model of Mozart and Beethoven, and later, Brahms, evolved with the times, as the nineteenth century yielded to the twentieth. By the nineteen-twenties his works explored many of the progressive harmonic and structural innovations of late-Romanticism and Neo-Classicism. But, it was only after the hegemony of Schoenberg and his disciples waned after World War II that his works began to be respected internationally, and not dismissed as hopeless examples of naïve, of out-of-date musical style.
In 1902 Nielsen completed his second symphony, which was inspired by seeing a painting in an inn that depicted the four temperaments (choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic, and sanguine). This influence of extra-musical ideas upon his compositions was a concept with which he was philosophically uncomfortable, but nevertheless it was a temptation for him. And it surfaced again soon the next year with the composition of Helios Overture. Nielsen’s wife, Anne Marie, had achieved the distinction of being one of the first to be given permission to make copies of the statues in the Acropolis Museum and Nielsen wangled a stipend from his publisher to support his accompanying her in 1903 for an extended visit to Athens. While his wife beavered away at the Acropolis, he was able to spend time at the city conservatory of music in a room with a piano. The salubrious warmth and beauty of the Aegean Sea must have stirred his northern blood, for in about two months in the spring, he composed Helios Overture.
The plan and intent of the concert overture is simple and clear: to depict the rising of the sun, its journey overhead through the day, and its setting in the evening. The title, of course, refers to the Greek god, Helios, who personified the sun. In art he is often depicted driving a chariot across the sky. Nielsen thoughtfully shared his lyrical feelings about his work in an epigraph that he including in the score:
Stillness and darkness—Then the sun rises to joyous songs of praise---Wanders its golden way—quietly sinks in the sea.
Nielsen’s musical approach was to open the overture with a serene sunrise that almost imperceptible grows from darkness and quietude, yielding to a vigorous depiction of the brilliance of the Aegean summer day, and ending with the gentle waning of the day into night. An orchestra sunrise, of course, had already been executed with spectacular success in Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra (the ubiquitous “2001,” you know), seven years earlier. And Nielsen began his work in a somewhat similar fashion, but then how many options were really possible?
So, we initially hear—after an opening low G in the basses—soft low Cs that lead to the horns’ leaping intervals, announcing the sun’s first rays. Rather like Strauss—C major pedal and brass--but in Nielsen’s own fashion, horns, not trumpets. The slow, gradual rising of the sun in the music finally leads to what Nielsen called a “morning song.” That done, a fanfare from the trumpets heralds the arrival of the faster, middle section. We’re now in the quintessential romantic key of up a major third—E major—and the vigorous first theme is announced by the strings.
The tempo ultimately relaxes and softens considerably for “second theme” ideas, and the ‘cellos take it first. The first idea is the source for the motif that ultimately informs the ending sunset, later on. A kind of fanfare in the brass leads to a busy fugato in the strings, each solo entrance of the scurrying contrapuntal theme is clear to hear, as each section enters with surging eighth notes. But wait! Clever (and well educated) Nielsen turns this fugato into a double fugue—with the brass, led by the trombones, jumping in with their own powerful idea. After hearing the second theme again the inevitable sunset begins, with slippery chromatics sliding down with the sun, with the woodwinds playing the little extract from the second theme, as everything softens. Most of the opening material now bookends our musical day with Helios, and the string basses have the almost imperceptible last say.
--Wm. E. Runyan
©2023 William E. Runyan