Hi Richard, I'm from China and I'm totally a classical music fanatic. Of all the classical music, the symphonies written by Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and Bruckner are my favorite. Since that you've made a video about the most beautiful passages in the Mahler symphonies before, could you make another video like that and talk about the Bruckner symphonies? (Nielson's are great too, especially the first and the fourth.)
I haven’t listened to the first four in many a year. You have abetted my desire to return to them. I never really comprehended the 5th and 6th. It’s past time.
Thank you Richard. I am a huge Nielsen fan, and your analysis definitely makes me much more appreciate his music! Looking forward to more Nielsen (and everything!) stuff!
Thanks again for this fab exposition of Nielsen’s work. Richness of harmony marshalled to perfection in the glory of his intent. Stunning mastery that is no doubt influential to many composers working today. Such a world that exists in the marvellous outline. The orchestras are required to be so articulate playing this music. It comes to life as the inspired players give justice to this wonderful musical compexity. I benefited from your insightful descriptions too. Thank you. Is he more widely known than I thought? He should be !! Much appreciated !!
So I'm playing Nielsen's 2nd Symphony, 2nd violin in our local civic orchestra in Oakland, CA and realizing pretty quickly that, wow, this composer I'm not at all familiar with is indeed a totally radical and inventive bad ass of the highest order! And the more I play and practice this incredible symphony, the more I like like like then love love love this gift to the world. Carl Nielsen, bad ass extraordinaire! Can't wait to learn his other bad ass symphonies! Thank you RA for this delightful intro.
I agree with your point at 18:55 about dodecaphonic music. It's interesting to me however when composers writing in that style employ bursts of tonality and the absence of dissonance to create tension and contrast in the way that composers working within a more traditional tonal system might use dissonance (I'm thinking of Berg). My real problem is when listening to dodecaphnoy becomes drudgery because of a lack of harmonic direction or intrigue.
There is something so fascinating but also musically fulfilling when listening to Nielsen symphonies. It also sounds so modern and fresh, he was really ahead of it's time imo. I hope he will be appreciated more, his music deserves it!
Nielsen is my hero. What a distinct musical flavor he cooks with!! I love the bass bone part from the 1st example. And you picked my go to orchestra for Nielsen too. Well Done
Thanks for uploading! I never really listened to Carl Nielsen, and I have just always had my serving of badass from Shostakovich or Tchaikovsky... I've got some listening to do!
This is so fun to listen! I am not familiar with Nielsen’s music but I strangely hear Grieg in his pieces. Love the orchestration, very sophisticated. Great work, Rich!
this is phenomenal... I met these two young Danish people and they reminded me about Nielsen (Symphony #3 -- love it!)...as a violin ensemble player, have been exposed to his sorta contemporaries ..like Holst, Sibelius, and the like...but never Nielsen..on a slightly different note, I was just a little PO'd cause John Wiliams took much of his stuff from the giants like Holst (Planets Mars). I am loving these neo-classical early 20th century compositions....recently went to the SFS playing all Stravinsky and Hindemith...
Another remarkable piece of insightful analysis, which focuses on an important characteristic of this composer: his "badass" nature; or his fiercely independent iconoclastic identity. Focusing on this important quality of Nielsen is a crucial component of a complete understanding of this psychologically complex composer.
Great video! Blomstedt's recordings with the SFO are an absolute tour de force. I think they deserve to be held in the same regard as Bernstein/NYP and Karajan/BPO recordings.
I believe David Herbert was the timpanist in your recordings with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra who is now the solo timpanist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Great video and very great underrated symphonies. His work has such energy and originality. Your work was up to the badass quality of there masterworks. Bravo!!!
Thank you so much. I discovered Nielsen about 35 years ago on ABC radio here in Australia. It was the 5th symphony and I was gobsmacked. Especially with the incessant side drum, well before Ravel's Bolero and decades before Shostakovich's Leningrad symphony. Yet Nielsen remains the lesser known composer. Why? I quickly acquainted myself with symphonies 2, 3 and 4 and I've raved to friends but they remain indifferent. It's like there's something about Nielsen's sound that is too esoteric for some. Also love his violin concerto and the overture to his opera, Maskarade, which puts a 20th century stamp on the effervescent, Rossini style of an overture. My technical knowledge of music is limited so I appreciate these videos that show the score and highlight relevant passages. More please.
"which puts a 20th century stamp on the effervescent, Rossini style of an overture" This is a perfect description of it. I actually saw this opera performed, and I was very sad to discover that my favorite part of the overture (the very end) was cut off. Apparently, the version we all know and love is a "concert version" with the amazingly amusing coda, but when the opera is performed (which it rarely is), they play the original version without the coda.
Ravel attended the Paris premiere of Nielsen's 5th Symphony in 1924 and two years later he premiered his Bolero. Besides the use of the side drum, the clarinet melody at the end of the 5th's first movement is remarkably similar to the Bolero melody.
there's a pretty badass moment in the first movement of nielsen 6, when the brass play increasingly dissonant fanfares over an extremely fast (and difficult) run in the strings, followed by a blaring cluster-like drone in the high woodwinds. its one of the most genuinely terrifying moments in any music ive listened to!
A tiny comment on the fourth - It is not the symphony in itself that is inextinguishable, rather, it deals with all things inextinguishable as a theme. If the former had been the case, it would have been called "DeN uudslukkelige". Sorry for this bit of pedantry, I am eternally grateful for all your wonderful videos!
Pretty impressive work. I know that's a lot to do, but there are indeed badass moments in the other mvts of these symphonies. The 3rd mvt of 2 has some really badass moments, for example. Still, I'm glad to see another die hard Nielsen fan, exploiting some music theory knowledge to explain why these are so great.
I love your videos, very informativ und yet enjoyable to watch ! Please continue doing this ! Ps: I would love to see a video about all the Bruckner symphonies, maybe about their most badass moments too ? ♥️
Forgive me if this was mentioned by any other commenter, but an extraordinary thing happens at bar 116 in mvt 1 of the Sinfonia Espansiva: As the tension unwinds, the complete opening rhythmic salvo of octave-chords returns, *in rhythmic retrograde*, in the brass. Maybe not "badass", but the only example of this I know in the symphonic literature.
Damn, this really is badass. I didn't know much of Nielsen's music, mostly his chamber music, but I'll definitely check out his symphonies now! Would you like to make a similar video on Dvorak? Quite a lot of badassery in his symphonies too! Come to think of it, I do hear a few similarities in style between the two judging just from these examples.
Great video that inspired me to listen to a composer I’ve avoided...I don’t get most 20th century music. Other Scandinavian late romantic symphonies I’ve discovered lately: Ludolf Nielsen, Hugo Alfven, Louis Glass, Kurt Atterberg and Rued Langgaard (who apparently was jealous of Carl Nielsen’s reputation and died totally neglected).
Fortunately several record labels have given Langgaard the recognition he deserves. He was an odd and inconsistent composer, but when he was inspired, he really was.
I don't know why I've avoided these symphonies for so many years. Adore Sibelius. Nielsen was I guess a little to gritty. But you've awakened a desire to get to know these masterpieces!
Thank you. " I find this kind of dissonance so effective because of the context......12 tone music generally fails to produce this kind of intensity...the dissonance looses its power when removed from any context of tension and resolution" great point
Thanks for the gratuitous and inapt slam of dodecaphony? Too bad. This remark ruined the whole video for me. And so pointless, too. It's kind of like praising all the wonderful string writing in symphonies by, say, Bruckner, and then suddenly throwing in a random slam of band music for not having any strings. Well, no. Aside from an occasional double bass, wind ensembles do not have any strings. "Why? Oh, why? Why doesn't Maslanka's "Give Us This Day" have a nice violin solo in it?"
@@asym52 This analogy does not work. A better analogy would be: It's like saying Bruckner uses strings to produce a certain effect, and band music is incapable of producing this effect because bands don't have strings. It was a very specific criticism and you generalized it inappropriately.
Of course what’s “badass” is a matter of variable opinion. I just want to say that, while I endorse your choice of great moments from Nielsen, my own candidates for what’s the -most- badass in his symphonies is different. I’d name: 1) From Symphony No. 1, the “risoluto” closing section of the first part of the third movement, with its intense and unstoppable three-note snaps. 2) From Symphony No. 2, a slightly earlier spot in the first movement development, the big climax beginning at rehearsal letter H. This is the moment that made me a Nielsen fan. 3) From Symphony No. 6, the moment in the first movement where the music suffers the composer’s recent heart attack. (I’m reminded of the animator suffering a fatal heart attack in the middle of Monty Python & the Holy Grail.) Putting that in your own music - now that’s badass!
This was wonderful, thank you! Please do, or listen to: "An Imaginary Journey to the Faroe Islands". I absolutely love it! Even if he didn't care for programme music, he did a fantastic job, both at conveying the sensation, foggy weather and dread that must have accompanied a ship's journey to the Faroes, and at incorporating so many folk melodies, especially considering how the Faroe Islands had just begun to have any any music instruments at all, which meant that the exclusively sung melodies where arguably closer to carnatic scales and melisma than to European mainland music
Beginning at 8 measures after rehearsal number 6 in Symphony Nr. 4, the trombones and timpani play the opening 26 chords in reverse (almost). There is a metric shift and the first two chords are perhaps just played in the timpani.
Having just started this video, I can already tell you know what you are doing, having chosen the Blomstedt performances. The only other conductor I would mention in the same breath with Blomstedt in Nielsen is Jascha Horenstein.
Thanks for this. I have to plunge into Nielsen now. I think you might underestimate a point you made about the twelve tone element in Nielsen. You say it has context and that is why it succeeds where other composers don’t provide any. This is the key to what went wrong in the twentieth century. It’s not that audiences rejected the new system, it’s that that was all it was: a system without any context. There must be foreground and background in art.
Yes - for example, I've always thought serialism is an interesting way to produce raw material for compositions, but if it's the entire basis for the composition, it almost always fails. Much of 20th century music is trying to be different at all costs without also trying to be good.
This makes me want to listen to Nielsen's symphonies again ... I might just do that now. But you didn't include the raspberry by the soli bassoons at the end of the Sixth. The fugue from the Fifth has nothing on that ...
lovely ! I didnt even know nielsen existed, but Ill give these symphonies a listen... just on the topic of jokes/pranks, are u planning to do a video on 'a musical spazz' ? :)
Actually, I'm already halfway finished with a video about that (K. 522, I'm assuming you're talking about?) I started it last year but took a break and never finished it.
I hear a striking resemblance, at least rhythmically, between the main theme of the first movement of symphony 1, and the vigorous rhythmic theme of the scherzo of the Brahms Piano Quintet!
Nice comparison between the Inextinguishable and Beethoven's 2nd. Also, I think that the rapid strings was inspired by Liszt's Die Ideale, and there also hymn-like material in that symphonic poem related to Nielsen's 4th.
You missed the "Death Knocking on the Door" near then end of the final movement of the final 6th symphony. Nobody has done anything like it. There are moments where, according to Robert Simpson, where Nielsen goes and does unique confounding things. Like composing a musical passage that he likens to having and suffering a heart attack in the 1st movement of the sixth. Simpson likened it to the most catastrophic music ever written.
Dear Richard, I must apologise for such delay I didn't reply back-and the questions, probably my own wandering about the stuffs that come around: such as the colossal texture in the brasses, the film-like intensity, and others. But if you insist for me to ask you a question I might be curios; I shall ask you out of your enthusiasm in music-I may want to know where and how did you managed all of these beautiful thoughts?
I started listening to Mahler when I was 7 years old and I've been fanatical since then. I don't know where the enthusiasm comes from, but I'm definitely glad you can tell it exists, despite my monotone voice!
As a fellow young musician as me, I must say I found that deeply remarkable to me. See that Mahler could reach you so early; I was late to find him, nonetheless my life has been so profoundly affect since then when reach him at my 17-his time is come.
Quando faço minha sinfonia já penso em como alguém iria explicar isso em um video no futuro talvez, se ficar mesmo boa. Estou quase terminando a minha sinfonia 1, talvez eu poste no You Tube em breve.
Neilsen sounds like noone of his time.I can't believe what I'm hearing it is as virulent,stirring as Puccini or verismo opera yet les Italianate chilling and intelligent. Even colder than German music and without their native charm of BrahmsTchai without the sentimentality and saccharine melodies and his harmonies are new .I don't hear the Germans either. Is Brahms there? 1905 Was Reger,Mahler,Cornelius,Strauss 'rococo fancy string and virtuosic instrumentals are very different and the chromatic harmony is a different world closer to Korngold and rach and latelater Romaticism.Neilsen really stands out .There must be a Scandanavian school ?
You need to turn off comments, otherwise people will keep telling you it's childish and borderline stupid to think you can tell others what are the best moments in some piece.
Yes. There's hardly a quote in music history lore that I agree with more than that one from Sibelius. I'm still dumbfounded that his symphonies, while great, are somehow still more popular than Nielsen's.
To be honest, I got about half way through this. What I heard was mostly a Beethoven aesthetic, and quite a mainstream tonal palette. Which is not a bad thing. I'd much rather hear a high-quality Bthvn off-shoot at the local symphony than the umpteenth performance of any of the Nine. Richard, if you could recommend one symphony as Nielsen's best, for a listener to start with, which would it be?
Thank you very much for your videos for they are excellent but, this composer just comes to show us again that it's not just putting some phrases together and call it a symphony that what you have done will be good music. He's clearly knowledgeable and the music is well written but it's just not good. He refuses to breathe, it's funny.
![ละลาย (LALALYE) - DAOU PITTAYA ต้าห์อู๋ พิทยา [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wo6r9TgausI/mqdefault.jpg)
Nielsen is one of my favorite composers, who very frequently doesn't get time in the spotlight. I greatly appreciated this video.
Also one of my favorites!
An extraordinary composer. The more you look into his work, the more impressed. A thinking composer
Your channel is pure gold
Hi Richard, I'm from China and I'm totally a classical music fanatic. Of all the classical music, the symphonies written by Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and Bruckner are my favorite. Since that you've made a video about the most beautiful passages in the Mahler symphonies before, could you make another video like that and talk about the Bruckner symphonies? (Nielson's are great too, especially the first and the fourth.)
I second to more videos about Bruckner symphonies
+1
You should check out this classical piano music. th-cam.com/video/ryrSj7ASe7o/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for this - one of my favourite composers; lively, invigorating, uplifting and a true original.
I haven’t listened to the first four in many a year. You have abetted my desire to return to them. I never really comprehended the 5th and 6th. It’s past time.
I can listen to the 5th Symphony now. That entire symphony is one bad ass symphony. Having a harder time with the 6th, but getting there.
Thank you Richard. I am a huge Nielsen fan, and your analysis definitely makes me much more appreciate his music! Looking forward to more Nielsen (and everything!) stuff!
Always loved his 1st. Especially the coda of the first movement you highlighted. Very badass indeed.
It's such a great symphony - all 4 movements!
Thanks again for this fab exposition of Nielsen’s work. Richness of harmony marshalled to perfection in the glory of his intent. Stunning mastery that is no doubt influential to many composers working today. Such a world that exists in the marvellous outline. The orchestras are required to be so articulate playing this music. It comes to life as the inspired players give justice to this wonderful musical compexity. I benefited from your insightful descriptions too. Thank you. Is he more widely known than I thought? He should be !! Much appreciated !!
So I'm playing Nielsen's 2nd Symphony, 2nd violin in our local civic orchestra in Oakland, CA and realizing pretty quickly that, wow, this composer I'm not at all familiar with is indeed a totally radical and inventive bad ass of the highest order! And the more I play and practice this incredible symphony, the more I like like like then love love love this gift to the world. Carl Nielsen, bad ass extraordinaire! Can't wait to learn his other bad ass symphonies! Thank you RA for this delightful intro.
Nielsen is absolutely badass. Thanks for the video!
I agree with your point at 18:55 about dodecaphonic music. It's interesting to me however when composers writing in that style employ bursts of tonality and the absence of dissonance to create tension and contrast in the way that composers working within a more traditional tonal system might use dissonance (I'm thinking of Berg). My real problem is when listening to dodecaphnoy becomes drudgery because of a lack of harmonic direction or intrigue.
There is something so fascinating but also musically fulfilling when listening to Nielsen symphonies. It also sounds so modern and fresh, he was really ahead of it's time imo. I hope he will be appreciated more, his music deserves it!
Fantastic post....Nielsen is just so superb a composer!
thank you for covering Nielsen
Wonderful to see some love for Nielsen!
Nielsen is my hero. What a distinct musical flavor he cooks with!! I love the bass bone part from the 1st example. And you picked my go to orchestra for Nielsen too. Well Done
Thanks for uploading! I never really listened to Carl Nielsen, and I have just always had my serving of badass from Shostakovich or Tchaikovsky... I've got some listening to do!
Great stuff. I will be going back to my recordings of Nielsen with fresh ears. Love your channel.
This is so fun to listen! I am not familiar with Nielsen’s music but I strangely hear Grieg in his pieces. Love the orchestration, very sophisticated. Great work, Rich!
The part that you describe as "grotesquely hilarious" is very accurate. I was wondering what the heck you meant by that, but now it makes sense.
this is phenomenal... I met these two young Danish people and they reminded me about Nielsen (Symphony #3 -- love it!)...as a violin ensemble player, have been exposed to his sorta contemporaries ..like Holst, Sibelius, and the like...but never Nielsen..on a slightly different note, I was just a little PO'd cause John Wiliams took much of his stuff from the giants like Holst (Planets Mars). I am loving these neo-classical early 20th century compositions....recently went to the SFS playing all Stravinsky and Hindemith...
Another remarkable piece of insightful analysis, which focuses on an important characteristic of this composer: his "badass" nature; or his fiercely independent iconoclastic identity. Focusing on this important quality of Nielsen is a crucial component of a complete understanding of this psychologically complex composer.
Great video!
Blomstedt's recordings with the SFO are an absolute tour de force. I think they deserve to be held in the same regard as Bernstein/NYP and Karajan/BPO recordings.
Thank you so much for posting such a great video, helped me a lot
What a badass analysis!
28:30 horns never been happier to just be playing the "oom pahs".
I believe David Herbert was the timpanist in your recordings with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra who is now the solo timpanist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Great video as always. Thanks!
Great video and very great underrated symphonies. His work has such energy and originality. Your work was up to the badass quality of there masterworks. Bravo!!!
Could you do this with bruckner? Even just 7 to 9 would be fantastic.
Yes!
His 2nd symphony is such a lovely work, extremely underrated!!! And it also has badass moments in both the 1st and the 4th (last) movement.
Thank you so much. I discovered Nielsen about 35 years ago on ABC radio here in Australia. It was the 5th symphony and I was gobsmacked. Especially with the incessant side drum, well before Ravel's Bolero and decades before Shostakovich's Leningrad symphony. Yet Nielsen remains the lesser known composer. Why? I quickly acquainted myself with symphonies 2, 3 and 4 and I've raved to friends but they remain indifferent. It's like there's something about Nielsen's sound that is too esoteric for some.
Also love his violin concerto and the overture to his opera, Maskarade, which puts a 20th century stamp on the effervescent, Rossini style of an overture.
My technical knowledge of music is limited so I appreciate these videos that show the score and highlight relevant passages.
More please.
"which puts a 20th century stamp on the effervescent, Rossini style of an overture"
This is a perfect description of it. I actually saw this opera performed, and I was very sad to discover that my favorite part of the overture (the very end) was cut off. Apparently, the version we all know and love is a "concert version" with the amazingly amusing coda, but when the opera is performed (which it rarely is), they play the original version without the coda.
Ravel attended the Paris premiere of Nielsen's 5th Symphony in 1924 and two years later he premiered his Bolero. Besides the use of the side drum, the clarinet melody at the end of the 5th's first movement is remarkably similar to the Bolero melody.
I had never heard the 6th until today. Some of passages seem almost Shoskta-Prok type in their rhythmic and melodic invention.
Thank You. This is so Informative & useful.
What you're saying at 18:55 to 19:10 is SO DAMN RIGHT
there's a pretty badass moment in the first movement of nielsen 6, when the brass play increasingly dissonant fanfares over an extremely fast (and difficult) run in the strings, followed by a blaring cluster-like drone in the high woodwinds. its one of the most genuinely terrifying moments in any music ive listened to!
Definitely badass~ hope for the analysis of Richard Strauss's piece ~ his incredible counterpointul skill attracts me everyday ...
Whoa, Neilsen! Your taste is impeccable.
A tiny comment on the fourth - It is not the symphony in itself that is inextinguishable, rather, it deals with all things inextinguishable as a theme. If the former had been the case, it would have been called "DeN uudslukkelige". Sorry for this bit of pedantry, I am eternally grateful for all your wonderful videos!
Thank you! I don't know any Danish, so this is useful info!
An awesome transition to a recapitulation in a sonata form is the one in the first mvt of Paul Duka's symphony
Pretty impressive work. I know that's a lot to do, but there are indeed badass moments in the other mvts of these symphonies. The 3rd mvt of 2 has some really badass moments, for example. Still, I'm glad to see another die hard Nielsen fan, exploiting some music theory knowledge to explain why these are so great.
Glad to see you are covering that 3rd to 4th mvt transition in 4. Almost sounds like Bartok, that part.
Also, I hear plenty of things in the 6th symphony as being badass. It's got a lot of ugliness and darkness in it, but it's beautiful.
Additionally, more could be said about part 1b of Symphony 5. Some very lush string writing there, chill inducing.
Ah, glad to see you are covering the "shit show" in the finale of 6. That moment when things just explode for a measure and then another 2.
28:34 sounds like Ives! Great video. Thanks so much!
That's funny because I almost mentioned that the last excerpt from Symphony No. 6 always reminded me of Ives...
For me a very, very under rated composer. With Sibelius, Vaughan Williams and Shostakovitch the symphony survived the last century.
Thank you!
I love your videos, very informativ und yet enjoyable to watch ! Please continue doing this !
Ps: I would love to see a video about all the Bruckner symphonies, maybe about their most badass moments too ? ♥️
Very interesting! Thanks for this!
Excellent video, thank you for sharing your knowledge. Maybe one day you can go over Vaughn Williams’ symphony No.4.
I like it, You are my hero!!
There is SO much Nielsen in Shostakovich!
Forgive me if this was mentioned by any other commenter, but an extraordinary thing happens at bar 116 in mvt 1 of the Sinfonia Espansiva: As the tension unwinds, the complete opening rhythmic salvo of octave-chords returns, *in rhythmic retrograde*, in the brass. Maybe not "badass", but the only example of this I know in the symphonic literature.
Damn, this really is badass. I didn't know much of Nielsen's music, mostly his chamber music, but I'll definitely check out his symphonies now!
Would you like to make a similar video on Dvorak? Quite a lot of badassery in his symphonies too! Come to think of it, I do hear a few similarities in style between the two judging just from these examples.
Love your videos! Could you make one with Tchaikovsky's most badass moments in symphonies?
Thansk u for upload :)
Great video that inspired me to listen to a composer I’ve avoided...I don’t get most 20th century music. Other Scandinavian late romantic symphonies I’ve discovered lately: Ludolf Nielsen, Hugo Alfven, Louis Glass, Kurt Atterberg and Rued Langgaard (who apparently was jealous of Carl Nielsen’s reputation and died totally neglected).
Fortunately several record labels have given Langgaard the recognition he deserves. He was an odd and inconsistent composer, but when he was inspired, he really was.
I don't know why I've avoided these symphonies for so many years. Adore Sibelius. Nielsen was I guess a little to gritty. But you've awakened a desire to get to know these masterpieces!
Thank you. " I find this kind of dissonance so effective because of the context......12 tone music generally fails to produce this kind of intensity...the dissonance looses its power when removed from any context of tension and resolution" great point
Thanks for the gratuitous and inapt slam of dodecaphony? Too bad. This remark ruined the whole video for me. And so pointless, too. It's kind of like praising all the wonderful string writing in symphonies by, say, Bruckner, and then suddenly throwing in a random slam of band music for not having any strings.
Well, no. Aside from an occasional double bass, wind ensembles do not have any strings. "Why? Oh, why? Why doesn't Maslanka's "Give Us This Day" have a nice violin solo in it?"
@@asym52 This analogy does not work. A better analogy would be: It's like saying Bruckner uses strings to produce a certain effect, and band music is incapable of producing this effect because bands don't have strings. It was a very specific criticism and you generalized it inappropriately.
That’s why I love his music.
Of course what’s “badass” is a matter of variable opinion. I just want to say that, while I endorse your choice of great moments from Nielsen, my own candidates for what’s the -most- badass in his symphonies is different. I’d name:
1) From Symphony No. 1, the “risoluto” closing section of the first part of the third movement, with its intense and unstoppable three-note snaps.
2) From Symphony No. 2, a slightly earlier spot in the first movement development, the big climax beginning at rehearsal letter H. This is the moment that made me a Nielsen fan.
3) From Symphony No. 6, the moment in the first movement where the music suffers the composer’s recent heart attack. (I’m reminded of the animator suffering a fatal heart attack in the middle of Monty Python & the Holy Grail.) Putting that in your own music - now that’s badass!
This was wonderful, thank you! Please do, or listen to: "An Imaginary Journey to the Faroe Islands". I absolutely love it! Even if he didn't care for programme music, he did a fantastic job, both at conveying the sensation, foggy weather and dread that must have accompanied a ship's journey to the Faroes, and at incorporating so many folk melodies, especially considering how the Faroe Islands had just begun to have any any music instruments at all, which meant that the exclusively sung melodies where arguably closer to carnatic scales and melisma than to European mainland music
If you haven't already, you should check out Alfven's symphonies. They are quite similar and have that scandinavian flavour. 2 and 4 are the best imo
Beginning at 8 measures after rehearsal number 6 in Symphony Nr. 4, the trombones and timpani play the opening 26 chords in reverse (almost). There is a metric shift and the first two chords are perhaps just played in the timpani.
Fantastic! Every one of your posts opens new insights into the music. I look forward to more.
Having just started this video, I can already tell you know what you are doing, having chosen the Blomstedt performances. The only other conductor I would mention in the same breath with Blomstedt in Nielsen is Jascha Horenstein.
I hate that word but continued to hear your really sensible and helpful exposition👍
Thanks for this. I have to plunge into Nielsen now.
I think you might underestimate a point you made about the twelve tone element in Nielsen. You say it has context and that is why it succeeds where other composers don’t provide any. This is the key to what went wrong in the twentieth century. It’s not that audiences rejected the new system, it’s that that was all it was: a system without any context. There must be foreground and background in art.
Yes - for example, I've always thought serialism is an interesting way to produce raw material for compositions, but if it's the entire basis for the composition, it almost always fails. Much of 20th century music is trying to be different at all costs without also trying to be good.
Love the Queen in the beginning of the video!
This makes me want to listen to Nielsen's symphonies again ... I might just do that now. But you didn't include the raspberry by the soli bassoons at the end of the Sixth. The fugue from the Fifth has nothing on that ...
I think that you definitely need to do a video on shosty symphony no 7
The bassoon solo in Nielsen's 6th reminds me a little of the Invasion motif from Shostakovich's _Leningrad Symphony_
Shostakovitch was very familiar with Nielsen's music that preceded him. Shostakovitch is the most Nordic of the Russian composers.
You gotta do some Schnittke, man! Talk about badass.
Interesting. I like his symphonies
Iv'e always thought that the most badass passage from the first two symphonies is the very end of both.
Haha, I guess I thought the ends of their first movements were more badass.
Would be nice to do something similar but with Mahler and Shostakovich symphonies! Great job!
Which timpani won the battle though?
The other one.
@@AltGrendel Neither!
lovely ! I didnt even know nielsen existed, but Ill give these symphonies a listen... just on the topic of jokes/pranks, are u planning to do a video on 'a musical spazz' ? :)
Actually, I'm already halfway finished with a video about that (K. 522, I'm assuming you're talking about?) I started it last year but took a break and never finished it.
I hear a striking resemblance, at least rhythmically, between the main theme of the first movement of symphony 1, and the vigorous rhythmic theme of the scherzo of the Brahms Piano Quintet!
Genius is what Genius does!
Nice comparison between the Inextinguishable and Beethoven's 2nd. Also, I think that the rapid strings was inspired by Liszt's Die Ideale, and there also hymn-like material in that symphonic poem related to Nielsen's 4th.
You missed the "Death Knocking on the Door" near then end of the final movement of the final 6th symphony. Nobody has done anything like it. There are moments where, according to Robert Simpson, where Nielsen goes and does unique confounding things. Like composing a musical passage that he likens to having and suffering a heart attack in the 1st movement of the sixth. Simpson likened it to the most catastrophic music ever written.
What about the beginning of the Aladdin Suite?
El propio master don Nielsen!
I've so many questions after watching this..
And, badass, indeed.
Ask!
Dear Richard, I must apologise for such delay I didn't reply back-and the questions, probably my own wandering about the stuffs that come around: such as the colossal texture in the brasses, the film-like intensity, and others. But if you insist for me to ask you a question I might be curios; I shall ask you out of your enthusiasm in music-I may want to know where and how did you managed all of these beautiful thoughts?
I started listening to Mahler when I was 7 years old and I've been fanatical since then. I don't know where the enthusiasm comes from, but I'm definitely glad you can tell it exists, despite my monotone voice!
As a fellow young musician as me, I must say I found that deeply remarkable to me. See that Mahler could reach you so early; I was late to find him, nonetheless my life has been so profoundly affect since then when reach him at my 17-his time is come.
I'm up with badass!
Quando faço minha sinfonia já penso em como alguém iria explicar isso em um video no futuro talvez, se ficar mesmo boa. Estou quase terminando a minha sinfonia 1, talvez eu poste no You Tube em breve.
Which symphony is the best to start listening to Carl Nielsen? Which version would you advise me?
1?
@@Richard.Atkinson Thanks 😉 and is there a specific interpretation that you would recommend?
I would say 2 and 3 - the relatively new recording with New York Phil/Gilbert are marvellous
gostei muito desse video, like. Muito bem feito, assim como todos os seus videos.
can you do a symphony from Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach
I could... but I haven't heard any of them.
@@Richard.Atkinson that's a strange thing to hear from someone who loves Haydn.
Neilsen sounds like noone of his time.I can't believe what I'm hearing it is as virulent,stirring as Puccini or verismo opera yet les Italianate chilling and intelligent. Even colder than German music and without their native charm of BrahmsTchai without the sentimentality and saccharine melodies and his harmonies are new .I don't hear the Germans either. Is Brahms there? 1905 Was Reger,Mahler,Cornelius,Strauss 'rococo fancy string and virtuosic instrumentals are very different and the chromatic harmony is a different world closer to Korngold and rach and latelater Romaticism.Neilsen really stands out .There must be a Scandanavian school ?
Saludos desde México 🇲🇽
Amo tu canal y te agradezco con todo mi corazón tu sabiduría
Haces que este mundo sea mejor
Bendiciones
Nice vid, i didn´t know about this composer at all. A day like today J.S Bach and Antonio Vivaldi died
Thank goodness I'm not prim or proper, then!
Will you post Mahler's badass moments?
Yessss! 6 has so many
Sooooon!
Yes it does!
You need to turn off comments, otherwise people will keep telling you it's childish and borderline stupid to think you can tell others what are the best moments in some piece.
Ives would have been pleased with Nielsen's waltz
Although being extremely popular, there is a reason why Sibelius said that he did not rise up to Nielsen's knees.
Yes. There's hardly a quote in music history lore that I agree with more than that one from Sibelius. I'm still dumbfounded that his symphonies, while great, are somehow still more popular than Nielsen's.
The three great symphonists - Beethoven, Sibelius and Nielsen.
To be honest, I got about half way through this. What I heard was mostly a Beethoven aesthetic, and quite a mainstream tonal palette. Which is not a bad thing. I'd much rather hear a high-quality Bthvn off-shoot at the local symphony than the umpteenth performance of any of the Nine. Richard, if you could recommend one symphony as Nielsen's best, for a listener to start with, which would it be?
This video is already a distillation of my favorite parts, but I think Symphonies 4 and 5 are the most famous and iconic, if that helps.
A symphony is just prog metal.
Thank you very much for your videos for they are excellent but, this composer just comes to show us again that it's not just putting some phrases together and call it a symphony that what you have done will be good music. He's clearly knowledgeable and the music is well written but it's just not good. He refuses to breathe, it's funny.
Well, we'll have to agree to completely disagree about this one...
What Nielsen refused was to be a pedestrian and regular composer and many (including me) are more than happy for that.