Nielsen: String Quartet No. 4 in F major, Op.44 (1906)
Allegro non tanto e comodo
Adagio con sentimento religioso
Allegretto moderato ed innocente
Finale:- Molto Adagio – Allegro non tanto, ma molto scherzoso
Carl Nielsen (as he is known in Denmark, where the surname is as common as Smith!) used to be one of those composers who attract a large following of enthusiastic addicts without quite managing to claim an established place in the standard operatic or instrumental repertory. But members of this club have been known suddenly to capture popular appeal, and as fickle tastes and fashions change (and anniversaries come along….) it would appear that Nielsen’s music has finally made the kind of breakthrough achieved (posthumously, needless to say) by such as Mahler, Janáček, and Bruckner. His pre-eminent position in the musical history of Denmark has, however, still not impressed the world quite so much as with his Finnish contemporary Sibelius, whose fame during his actual lifetime amply justified his State sponsorship in terms of sheer prestige value to his country. And although it is easy to link these two composers by the accident of their both having been born in the same year in two countries generally (though somewhat incorrectly) regarded as part of Scandinavia, this convenient and slightly superficial pairing is in some ways musically justifiable as well. Having grown up at a time when artistic Europe had become a veritable hot-bed of ripe Romanticism and Expressionism both men reacted strongly against the current quest for “bigness”: as they became mature artists they returned more and more to the musical ideals of the 18th century classicists, deriving further inspiration from the people, legends, and natural beauty of their homelands.
It might have been expected that with these credentials Nielsen and Sibelius would have composed a copious amount of chamber music, especially since both were highly accomplished violinists and took active part in a great deal of chamber music making during their younger days – for which occasions they both produced a number of string quartets. But, studenthood over, Sibelius eventually published just the one quartet; and although Nielsen released four of them these are all relatively early works, so that for the last 25 years of his life that most exclusive of classical property seemed to hold no more interest at all for this decidedly classically-orientated composer. Would that we had just one quartet from around the time of the last three tremendous symphonies! The quartets he did produce promised so much that we are entitled to feel disappointed and deprived, even though his supreme intellectual and emotional energy gave us so many masterpieces in other genres. Each of his earlier quartets had demonstrated such an advance over its predecessor that with No.3 he seemed on the brink of composing a truly great string quartet: in this work he had started off with two magnificent movements, but then modestly withdrew from the fray with a relatively lightweight scherzo and finale. Eight years later his next quartet consummated his mastery of the idiom, but in it he made no pretensions towards the grand titanic masterpiece seemingly foreshadowed by the first half of No.3: indeed, the quartet was originally to have been entitled Piacevolezza; although the name was soon withdrawn the idea of such a title provides an insight into the composer’s mind, and a clue to the spirit and nature of the music evolving therein.
Nielsen produced an unusual number of Allegro movements in triple time, most of them bracing, invigoratingly athletic pieces like the opening of the Sinfonia Espansiva (No.3 – chronologically the closest symphony to this quartet). Such muscular strength would hardly have been appropriate in this scaled down context, so instead we have something rather more gentle and reflective – rather akin to a type of movement common with the Swedish composer Berwald, whose own E flat quartet happens to contain what might have been the perfect model. Berwald was also a violinist, and many aspects of his superbly idiomatic and resourceful string writing seem to have rubbed off onto Nielsen – not least the highly characteristic fondness for pairs of instruments in thirds: for sheer originality and freshness the soft chorale-like passage which prepares for the recapitulation warrants special mention, yet how disarmingly simple is its execution! It almost goes without saying that, as with all the Northern European violinist-composers, one is constantly aware of playing music penned by a string player – everything lies (reasonably…!) comfortably under the fingers and fits beautifully onto the instruments. Nielsen became a master at manipulating string quartet textures; in this single quartet of his maturity he rarely found it necessary to resort to the excessive double stopping indulged in by the likes of Dvořák and Brahms (or even the Norwegian pianist Grieg), simply because he understood so well how stringed instruments resonate together: rather, he used this device sparingly to make its fullest effect – for example, in the Adagio, which contains a little cadential refrain whose texture is progressively thickened for each successive appearance. Ultimately it almost sounds like a church organist rounding off a hymn or a voluntary, which fits nicely into place in a movement headed con sentimento religioso – although the scene evoked here might be more to do with a country chapel or an open air Sunday afternoon service. Indeed, one of the many attractive aspects of this quartet is its distinctly outdoor flavour, liberated as it is from the more stuffy aspects of quartet tradition. The third movement has an appealing homespun folksiness about it (Nielsen’s father was an excellent village fiddler and cornet player); here, as in all the other quartets (and also the first four symphonies) Nielsen follows the example of Brahms (a powerful early influence) in his preference for a more gentle Allegretto movement over a genuine scherzo.
One aspect of Nielsen’s musical language which did not develop to any great extent in the quartets was his use of tonality. During his formative years as a composer he became gradually less interested in the traditional concept of a single tonal centre for each composition: instead he developed a fascination for the possibilities of a conflict between two or more tonal poles, so that many of his later works are built on a progession from one tonality to another. In most of these works he abandoned the long accepted practice of attaching a key to the title: this is true of all the symphonies except the first, but none of the quartets demonstrate the same adventurousness – No.3 is positively rooted in E flat! Its successor can boast rather more tonal freedom, originating for the most part in the subtle chromaticism of its harmonic and melodic style – the very opening of the quartet quickly wanders away from the advertised F major, its theme (under the harmonic influence of a typical flattened 7th in the second bar), “progressing” quite happily to G flat, before reappearing in its “tutti” version in a confident D major as if this were the most natural thing in the world! But (apart from an amusingly miserable fugato in the middle) the finale has little time for such theories: its freshness and honesty provide a serenely joyful conclusion to what proved to be Nielsen’s last quartet, happily justifying Dr. Robert Simpson’s assessment of this particular period (1902 – 11) as “the sunniest in his whole life, filled with a Jovian sense of well-being”.
© Alan George
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