The “Eroica” was the high point of the program for me.
Though the performance of the “William Tell Overture” demonstrated how great it can be to hear such a war horse performed live and in its entirety.
Why do Beethoven’s works — e.g., the “Eroica,” which has been played repeatedly, innumerable times (it would be pointless to try and enumerate how many times) — continue to sound fresh?
There is almost no such thing as an inferior Beethoven work, meaning inferior to the rest of his oeuvre (with perhaps one or two exceptions).
All nine symphonies are unique and can “hold their own,” so to speak, each of them, with respect to the other eight.
The “Eroica” draws the listener in and transfixes you from the very first bar.
Beethoven wrote some of the most complex music imaginable in terms of structural depth and layers of meaning. Yet the listener never feels “lost” or adrift. Beethoven is admirably clear. Like all great artists, he has done the work, so that the listener (this is also true of literature) is made one with the piece; a fusion occurs between the artist’s intent, his subconscious, and what the listener or reader grasps, understands, takes in, experiences. The imagination is stimulated, the mind is stretched and energized, but made more rather than less whole. One experiences a sense of completion and wholeness rather than confusion/disorientation leading to frustration.
It’s okay for the mind to wander even with such great music because music both fixes the attention and engages you (and provides a relief by so doing) while, at the same time, stirring up thought in all directions and energizing the mind, so that at one moment I am totally focused on “musical ideas” and my mind seems fused with the piece, its “inner logic,” and then, seconds later, I am thinking, as happened as I was listening to the “Eroica,” of a dear departed friend whom there was no particular reason for me to associate with the piece.
There is a famous passage in Act 5, Scene 3 of King Lear, where Lear is holding his daughter, the dead Cordelia, in his arms. He says:
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I’ld use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone for ever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives.
The repetition of the words “howl” and “dead” was remarked upon by my professor at Brandeis University, Aileen Ward, with whom I took a course on Shakespeare’s plays in my freshman year. She made an allusion to the repeated crashing chords in the first movement of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony.
Professor Ward was a great teacher and critic/lover of literature and, from what I could observe, a beautiful, gracious person. I did not fully appreciate the wonderful teachers I had in college.
Posted here is a song by the Danish composer Carl Nielsen: “Min pige er så lys som rav” (Like golden amber is my girl), composed in 1920. The text is by the Danish writer Helge Rode (1870-1937).
LYRICS
Min pige er så lys som rav
og Danmarks gyldne hvede,
og blikket er så blåt som hav,
når himmel er dernede.
Prinsesse Tove af Danmark!
Min piges smil er sol i maj
og sang fra lærkestruber,
og smilehullet viser vej
til sindets gyldne gruber –
Prinsesse Tove af Danmark!
Min pige kan vel være hård
mod dem, hun ilde lider,
da har hun ord, som hidsigt slår
og lidt for hidsigt bider.
Prinsesse Tove af Danmark!
Det smilehul går bag en sky,
og farligt øjet gråner;
men smilet bryder frem på ny,
og blikkets bølger blåner.
Prinsesse Tove af Danmark!
Thi ser jeg i de øjne ind,
de bliver vege, varme.
Da hviler jeg i hendes sind
som i to bløde arme.
Prinsesse Tove af Danmark!
Like golden amber is my girl,
Like Denmark’s wheat when reaping,
Her glances blue as they unfurl,
Blue sky in sea a-sleeping.
She’s princess Tove of Denmark!
My girl can be a little hard
On those she won’t admire,
Then finding words that leave them scarred
Or burn with heat of fire.
She’s princess Tove of Denmark!
The dimple fades behind a cloud,
Her eyes turn grey and troubled;
But smiles again break through uncowed,
The light from blue eyes doubled.
She’s princess Tove of Denmark!
I look into those eyes and find
Them warm and unprotesting.
Then I am truly in her mind
As though in soft arms resting.
She’s princess Tove of Denmark!
1. Den milde dag er lys og lang
og fuld af sol og fuglesang,
og alt er såmænd ganske godt,
når blot, når blot, når blot,
når blot vor nabos Ilsebil
vil det, som jeg så gerne vil
vil lægge kinden mod min kind
med samme varme sind,
2. vil række mig sin lille hånd
med samme redebonne ånd,
vil lukke øjet som til blund
og give mig sin mund!
Ja, dagen den er lys og lang,
og der er nok af fuglesang,
men jeg er bange, Ilsebil
vil ikke det, jeg vil!
3. Bag hækken kommer Ilsebil –
mon det er mig, hun smiler til?
Hun bærer mælk i klinket fad
og giver katten mad.
Å se, nu smiler hun igen,
min Ilsebil, min egen ven –
det er, som selve solens skin
faldt i mit hjerte ind.
The Mild Day Is Light and Long (1921)
words by Aage Berntsen (from “Springtime in Funen”)
1. The mild day is light and long
and full of sun and birdsong,
and everything is quite good,
just when, just when
just reach our neighbor’s Ilsebil
want what I would like to do
will put the cheek on my cheek
with the same warm mind,
2. will reach me his little hand
with the same red-minded spirit,
will close the eye like to nap
and give me his mouth!
Yes, the day it is light and long,
and there are plenty of birdsong,
but I’m afraid, Ilsebil
do not want what I want!
3. Behind the hedge comes Ilsebil –
Mon, it’s me she’s smiling for?
She carries milk in a grated dish
and gives the cat food.
To see, now she smiles again,
my Ilsebil, my own friend –
It’s like the sun’s skin
fell into my heart.
(The English translation is from Google Translate and is no doubt imperfect.)
It should be noted that this lovely and charming choral work is autobiographical. The composer, Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), was born and raised on the island of Funen (Danish: Fyn). “Fynsk foraar” means “springtime in Funen.”
I finally got to Funen on a trip this April.
The recording posted here is of a landmark LP featuring the Danish conductor Mogens Wöldike, who studied under Nielsen and knew him personally. I bought this rare recording in New York City in the mid-1970’s for $10. It was a sort of big expense for me then.
I find enchanting the melodies and also the underling rhythms. Listen, for instance, to the soprano solo “Å se, nu kommer våren” (O see, spring is coming); and the baritone solo which follows immediately, “Den milde dag er lys og lang” (The mild day is bright and long), which brings tears to my eyes.
Fynsk Foraar (Springtime on Funen), for soloists, chorus and orchestra, Opus 42, is Carl Nielsen’s last major choral work. Written to accompany a prize-winning text by Aage Berntsen, it was first performed in Odense’s Kvæghal (Cattle Hall) on July 8, 1922 where it was conducted by Georg Høeberg.
Background
Auage Berntsen, a medical doctor and a writer, was the winner of a competition arranged around 1917 by the Dansk Korforening (Danish Choral Society) for a text on Danish history or landscape which would subsequently be set to music by Carl Nielsen. Several years went by before the composer could find the time or inclination to work on the piece, especially as he was in the middle of composing his Fifth Symphony. Indeed, on August 19, 1921, he wrote: “For some time I have not felt very comfortable because I could not get started on the choral work which I must have done by 1 September, and every day I considered throwing it away and informing the board of all these combined societies that I had to beg off… But then one day I found the tone and the style, which will be a light mixture of lyricism and humor, and now it is well in hand and will soon be finished.
Only with the help of his pupil Nancy Dalberg, who had helped with fair-copying the large score for Aladdin was he able to meet his deadline. On September 3, 1921, he wrote to his wife: “My new choral piece has turned out to be a really big piece of work (42 pages in the piano arrangement) and has now actually been delivered on time. But I have also worked a lot and with a certain lightness. The poet has called it Springtime on Funen but I also give it a subtitle, Lyrical Humoresque, which suggests that the style is light and lively. … Now I will continue with my interrupted symphony.”
Reception
The first performance of Fynsk Foraar was at the opening concert of Third National Choral Festival which took place on July 8, 1922 in the huge Odense Kvæghal (Cattle Hall), specially renamed Markedshallen (Market Hall) for the occasion. The circumstances were not ideal. While Nielsen had envisaged the work for a fairly small orchestra and choir, there were 80 in the orchestra and several hundred in the choirs from Funen and Copenhagen. The hall itself could accommodate up to 10,000 people.
The day after the concert, Politiken commented: “Enthusiastic applause rewarded the choral work. The composer and poet were called for in vain. Neither was present.” Nielsen had in fact explained a few days earlier that he was not feeling up to travelling to Odense. Most reviewers agreed that the work had not been performed in the right venue. N.O. Raasted, writing for a local newspaper Fyns Tidende was frank: “So light and graceful, so witty and veiled is the language spoken here that several of the work’s beautiful passages could only be lost in a performance under such circumstances! We look forward to hearing it all again in the not too distant future if the work can be presented in circumstances that are more favorable to its appreciation.”
Another local newspaper Fyens Stiftstidende commented on the work’s regional tone: “There was the greatest interest in the next item in the concert, Aage Berntsen’s and Carl Nielsen’s never-before-performed work for soloists, choir and orchestra, Springtime on Funen. Rarely have a poet and composer been so fortunate in finding the fullest expression of the distinctive atmosphere and emotional life of a Danish region. The Funen islanders totally lack the capacity to take themselves too seriously. As true sons of the Funen soil, Berntsen and Carl Nielsen have therefore made Springtime on Funen a humoresque; but no less distinctively, the humoresque bears the stamp of the lyrical, for among the Danes the people of Funen remain those who abandon themselves most easily to the play of the emotions.”
In the meantime, Nielsen was planning his own performance of the work at the Music Society (Musikforeningen) in Copenhagen. In a letter dated June 29, 1922 to the composer Rudolf Simonsen, he describes how he would like it performed under his own baton: “III myself: Springtime on Funen small orchestra: light and gay and graceful as my humble talents can manage.” The work was indeed presented by the Music Society at the first concert of the season on November 21, 1922.
Axel Kjærulf, writing in Politiken, was full of praise for the work: “It is enchantingly formed, so light and bright, so full and fertile, so simple and inward. In each strophe one recognizes Carl Nielsen’s Danish tone, but here sweeter and truer than before. He is intimate with everything — and the rest of us get as close as possible to this often so inaccessible man — and grow fond of him.”
Music
Fynsk Foraar is often considered Nielsen’s most popular choral work, especially in Denmark. Nielsen gave it the subtitle “lyric humoresque”, aptly describing its simple, folk-like idiom and its compact form. Scored for a four-part chorus, soprano, tenor, and baritone soloists, a children’s chorus and a small chamber orchestra, the 18-minute cantata consists of several independent sections tied together with orchestral transitions. The choral writing is largely diatonic and homophonic. The solo melodies contain frequent alternations between major and minor tonalities.
This work is often cited as the most Danish of all Nielsen’s compositions; this seems borne out as the chorus and soloists extol a countryside replete with grass, water lilies, and gnarled apple trees blooming.
“Interrupting his work on the Fifth Symphony in 1921 Nielsen turned (fulfilling a promise he had given) to lighter things in Springtime on Fyn (Fynsk Foraar); this he called a ‘Lyric Humoresque.’ One could not imagine him, like Benjamin Britten, calling such a work a ‘Spring Symphony’; he took the symphony too seriously and mastered it too powerfully to use its name pretentiously: the sub-title ‘Lyric Humoresque’ is in this case a precise description of the work, as it would be of Britten’s. This is one of the most Danish of all Nielsen’s works, and it recaptures all the charm and fascination of that sunny childhood he described so perfectly in My Childhood on Fyn …: the musical idiom is the simplest imaginable, folk-like and gay, picturing his own native environment with the kind of truthfulness and subtlety that come only from real vitality, however modest the aims. Danish as this work is it would, with a simple translation of the rustic and touching words by Aage Berntsen, easily find its way into English hearts. It is scored for moderate resources, four-part chorus, soprano, tenor, and baritone soloists, children’s chorus, and a small orchestra without trombones—ideal, in fact, for the reasonably well-developed amateur musical society; at the same time, its gaiety and poetry are such that a first-class professional performance must inevitably reveal it as an exquisite work of art.”
— Robert Simpson, Carl Nielsen: Symphonist (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1979)
