Carl Nielsen is now a genuine name in concert halls, but he still doesn't get his due. The more I listen, the more I think about it, the more I begin to ponder if he is the greatest composer in what's possibly the greatest generation of composers: Janacek, Elgar, Puccini, Mahler, Debussy, R. Strauss, Sibelius. "Greatest" is obviously a meaningless term, but by 'greatest' i mean the most valuable, the most humane vision, the composer from whom listeners can derive the most moving experience, the most cathartic, the most applicable to living a meaningful life. The heresy implicit in this statement is enormous. Orchestra nuts will cry bloody murder if it isn't Mahler. Opera nuts may cry bloody murder if it isn't Richard Strauss. Musicologists and modernists will cry bloody murder if it isn't Debussy. The 1920 and 30s will cry bloody murder if it's not Sibelius. Even I'm thinking bloody murder that it isn't Janacek, and their contemporaries would cry bloody murder if it's not Elgar (believe it or not...). But ultimately, I wonder if Nielsen's achievement is most valuable of them all.
It's not just that Nielsen achieved astonishingly in every genre, that's only a symptom of great achievement, not necessarily a great achievement in itself. What qualifies him is not achievements in every genre of music, what it takes is the vision of humanity's entirety which is required to achieve in so many different kinds of music - the same humanity found in Mozart and Beethoven and Dvorak (and probably Schubert had he lived another two or three years). It takes the ability to find a comfortable home in over the top expressionism of opera, the understatedly intense communion of chamber music, the intimacy of art songs, the moral vision of the symphony, the ability to empathize with the personality of every instrument it takes to write a concerto (and Nielsen wrote so many great concertos...). All that's missing is a great sacred work, but by the 20th century, that was not quite as pressing a requirement.
In a popularity contest among the public, Puccini would obviously be the winner, but Puccini's operas, for all their beauty, do not display too many great humanitarian visions. Perhaps excepting La Boheme, his operas are galleries of cruelty. While the earlier Wunderhorn Mahler is as human as anything in Beethoven or Schubert, but as he journeyed through his gallery of symphonies, Mahler was increasingly beset by pessimism and misanthropy. Sibelius was a different kind of misanthrope who shut himself off from the world to concentrate on his gloom. From the beginning to the end of their careers, Strauss and Debussy were voluptuaries who put pleasure before compassion and missed a gene for shared humanity. And Elgar? Well... come on...
It is only in Nielsen that one finds the towering moral vision of Beethoven and Mozart. We are still catching up to it. There are times when Mahler and Sibelius refuse to say yes to life, when they can only be listened to as acknowledgement of life's overwhelming difficulties. Nielsen never for a moment lets us forget life's colossal struggles, and yet like Beethoven, the metaphysical challenge of living is always answered with affirmation. Listening to Nielsen is a way to remember that life, for all its terrible vicissitudes, and perhaps because of them, is always worth living.
Most people reading this far know some of the symphonies, however if you feel like an extended dive, listen to his two operas: Maskarade and Saul og David. The 1st a comedy, how Mozart might write in the earliest years of the 1900s, the 2nd a biblical epic, how Beethoven would write in the same years. Like Janacek, the operas are sung in an exceedingly difficult language, Victor Borge commented that speaking Danish is like speaking English while trying to swallow your own tongue.
Maskarade is a comedy, but like Mozart's greatest operas it is a sad comedy full of compassionate music and forgiveness that empathizes and sympathizes with its characters, bestows them their shared humanity while simultaneously demonstrating how absurd they are. How many Mahler symphonies or Sibelius tone poems sound as though they forgive us our flaws? How many Debussy piano works or Strauss tone poems/operas sound as though they even care? The more I listen, the more I become convinced that only Janacek among this generation shares this level of moral vision, but Janacek only became Janacek after he turned 50. Carl Nielsen was there his whole career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpm22Up8Efo
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