TY - GEN

T1 - Related European Symphonists?

T2 - Carl Nielsen and Vagn Holmboe in Relation to George Enescu

AU - Fjeldsøe, Michael

N1 - ISSN 2247-7256

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - Two Danish composers contemporaneous with George Enescu (1881-1955) – CarlNielsen (1865-1931) and Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996) – are widely recognized as notablesymphonists of the twentieth century. Similar to Enescu, they are considered ‘national’composers, whose output reflects their national heritage and mentality. Yet there areobvious similarities in their approach to the symphonic genre: without neglecting thesymphonic sound or leaving the realm of tonality, they renewd the symphonic language bygiving priority to the melodic lines and by using modes from pre-classical music or derivedfrom folk music idioms. Some features of Enescu’s First Symphony are in fact very muchlike Nielsen’s. The description by Noel Malcolm of Enescu’s ‘Romanian’ works might fitNielsen quite well, too: “Of the most common scales… others have ’mobile’ thirds, sixthsor sevenths, creating a shifting major/ minor atmosphere which Enescu described as one ofthe characteristics of the Romanian music.” (Noel Malcolm, George Enescu. His Life andMusic, Toccata Press 1990, p. 65).One reason might be that Nielsen, after finishing his training in the Germantradition, received important impulses from France during the 1890s, a course parallel tothat of Enescu. Though 16 years older, due to Enescu’s early musical development,Nielsen’s visits to Paris occurred at almost the same time as Enescu stayed there, at a time,when recognition of older music at the Schola Cantorum went hand in hand with newworks by Debussy, Fauré and Ravel, for instance. Even though Nielsen later came to knowborn violinist Emil Telmányi, had access to first-hand knowledge of folk music of theBalkans, this was hardly a direct inspiration to Nielsen.However, this was a major inspiration for Vagn Holmboe, whose formative years inthe late 1920s and early 1930s were the time when post-expressionist aesthetics inspired byNeue Sachlichkeit merged with a keen reception of Bartók. In this view, renewal out of thespirit of folk music was considered genuine contemporary music. Holmboe, trained as acomposer but working as well as an ethnomusicologist with specific interests in the folkmusic of the Balkans and Arabia, was the most prominent composer of this trend.Furthermore, he had a strong affiliation to Romania. During an ethno-musicological fieldtrip in 1933-34, aiming at reaching Northern Africa, he fell ill in Romania, where hemarried the Romanian pianist Meta May Graf, who he had met in Berlin in 1930. Althoughcompositions directly influenced by folk music were rare, Holmboe’s “Romanian Suite”(1937) remains an important exception. Like in Enescu’s music, the most important featuregained from the spirit of folk music was to be found in the preoccupation with melodiclines and a harmonic language derived from the melody rather than the other way around.This is a characteristic feature of Holmboe’s symphonies and string quartets, especiallythose from the 1940s and 1950s.Béla Bartók and appreciated his music and that he, due to his son-in-law, the Hungarian

AB - Two Danish composers contemporaneous with George Enescu (1881-1955) – CarlNielsen (1865-1931) and Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996) – are widely recognized as notablesymphonists of the twentieth century. Similar to Enescu, they are considered ‘national’composers, whose output reflects their national heritage and mentality. Yet there areobvious similarities in their approach to the symphonic genre: without neglecting thesymphonic sound or leaving the realm of tonality, they renewd the symphonic language bygiving priority to the melodic lines and by using modes from pre-classical music or derivedfrom folk music idioms. Some features of Enescu’s First Symphony are in fact very muchlike Nielsen’s. The description by Noel Malcolm of Enescu’s ‘Romanian’ works might fitNielsen quite well, too: “Of the most common scales… others have ’mobile’ thirds, sixthsor sevenths, creating a shifting major/ minor atmosphere which Enescu described as one ofthe characteristics of the Romanian music.” (Noel Malcolm, George Enescu. His Life andMusic, Toccata Press 1990, p. 65).One reason might be that Nielsen, after finishing his training in the Germantradition, received important impulses from France during the 1890s, a course parallel tothat of Enescu. Though 16 years older, due to Enescu’s early musical development,Nielsen’s visits to Paris occurred at almost the same time as Enescu stayed there, at a time,when recognition of older music at the Schola Cantorum went hand in hand with newworks by Debussy, Fauré and Ravel, for instance. Even though Nielsen later came to knowborn violinist Emil Telmányi, had access to first-hand knowledge of folk music of theBalkans, this was hardly a direct inspiration to Nielsen.However, this was a major inspiration for Vagn Holmboe, whose formative years inthe late 1920s and early 1930s were the time when post-expressionist aesthetics inspired byNeue Sachlichkeit merged with a keen reception of Bartók. In this view, renewal out of thespirit of folk music was considered genuine contemporary music. Holmboe, trained as acomposer but working as well as an ethnomusicologist with specific interests in the folkmusic of the Balkans and Arabia, was the most prominent composer of this trend.Furthermore, he had a strong affiliation to Romania. During an ethno-musicological fieldtrip in 1933-34, aiming at reaching Northern Africa, he fell ill in Romania, where hemarried the Romanian pianist Meta May Graf, who he had met in Berlin in 1930. Althoughcompositions directly influenced by folk music were rare, Holmboe’s “Romanian Suite”(1937) remains an important exception. Like in Enescu’s music, the most important featuregained from the spirit of folk music was to be found in the preoccupation with melodiclines and a harmonic language derived from the melody rather than the other way around.This is a characteristic feature of Holmboe’s symphonies and string quartets, especiallythose from the 1940s and 1950s.Béla Bartók and appreciated his music and that he, due to his son-in-law, the Hungarian

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Carl Nielsen

KW - Vagn Holmboe

KW - George Enescu

KW - Georg Enesco

KW - 20th century

KW - musicology

KW - symphony

KW - Carl Nielsen

KW - Vagn Holmboe

KW - George Enescu

KW - Georg Enesco

KW - 20. århundrede

KW - musikvidenskab

KW - symfoni

M3 - Article in proceedings

SP - 52

EP - 66

BT - "George Enescu" International Musicology Symposium 2009

A2 - Birnat, Liliana

A2 - Carneci, Carmen Maria

A2 - Petrescu, Mariana

PB - Editura Muzicala

CY - Bucharest

ER -