Spring Symphonies, No 73 - Nielsen: Symphony No 4 "Inextinguishable"

Of all of the symphonies in this brief survey there are two I hold dear.  They provide a tremendous invigorating impact with a positive sense of what we can be and they are in the end paragons of optimism and generosity.  They are both by composer Carl Nielsen: the third and fourth in his canon.  In other essays I’ve written about his life as a composer, in this one I think I’m bound to say more about my journey as a listener.  

Two things struck me about Nielsen 4 when I first encountered it.  Firstly, in that facile way of adherents, that it must be a great symphony because so many people talked about it: it had pedigree. It had a name “The Inextinguishable” which was intriguing and Karajan had recorded it (which in those days counted for a lot for some of us).  And the other thing was - much as I loved the noise it made - I couldn’t make head nor tail of the music though.  I’ve come to realise that the former doesn’t matter and the latter is most important. 

It is a short work and a profoundly different one from it’s predecessors.  Gone is the four movement classical structure and very present is a tonal conflict as ferocious as they come.

The late Robert Simpson wrote a marvellous book on Nielsen and I’ve tried not to pinch his ideas here but it is profound on this work, and with a bit of work his analysis can be understood.  The chapter on this symphony is so full of detail and a complete analysis thematically and harmonically that it’s hard not to be engrossed by it’s detail.  I don’t want to get into all of that but I can offer something we so rarely get nowadays here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T7LfLsKRuE a short talk by Dr Simpson on the symphony with excerpts.  It is easier to explain if the work is split into movements - they are on better acquaintance pretty easy to pick out but for the beginner in all these notes its hard.  It is a continuous work but Nielsen was sensible enough to put in tempo indications and I’ll put in timings for Karajan’s recordings which has a middle of the road pace.

1. Allegro, 13’00”
2. Poco Allegretto, 4’57”
3. Poco Adagio Quasi Andante,  11’47”
4. Allegro, 8’56”

Simpson contends that a number of factors see the Fourth Symphony as a major step forward from the Third - a move from the earth bound to the ethereal as it were.  The period 1914 - 1916 when this work was written was tumultuous for Europe and Nielsen captures some of that.  But where the Third is definitely a Heaven on Earth harking in some ways back to Beethoven’s Pastoral, I find the Fourth is a more internal work on our condition.  It is the first sight of those qualities that educators nowadays call grit and resilience in Nielsen’s music.  And the reward is an enveloping and joyous sense of security which helps us understand how our travails are all but the elimination of doubt and the banishment of anxiety.  But it is a work which illuminates anxiety and doubt so well I can’t help but feel this surprising Dane had the same spark of genius which enabled him (alongside Mozart and Beethoven to capture in music that which psychology has only recently expressed in words).  Indeed so close are these works to my head and heart that I like to remind myself of Nielsen’s contribution to my goals for my own psychological state.  I draw on what I learn from Nielsen when times get hard: life is expansive and inextinguishable.

Nielsen’s Fourth symphony begins with the most angular and glorious upsurges.  A unexpected wave of power anti musical power which stands there shouting. There’s a boundless, breathless energy and some weird effort to make itself heard amongst the noise of it’s own making.  All most immediately there’s a feeling of modern pressurised life, metropolitan stress and a listener willing to bear with the composer will I think come to the same conclusion about the opening 3 minutes or so that I do.  This symphony is about life, our lives, our preoccupations, business and stresses.  The interruptions, digressions, tranquility and battles of this symphony are applicable to our day too.  But this isn’t another domestic or dramatised symphony. It goes much deeper than that and as a result it is much more fulfilling, instructive and for me, inspiring. 

There is as in life friction and conflict and there is safe haven which is sometimes destabilised, and the appearance of stability which we find is not quite the firm ground we seek.  And it is only by these processes that the material becomes stronger.  And so it is with life, through adversity we too can become stronger and in the beyond the reach of our physical limitations.  This is not a mandate for a superhuman: this is an essay in weathering the storms.

This angular start is expressed in two keys.  The purpose of the work is to resolve the dominance of one key over another. This whole tense journey explores the progress until the matter is resolved in a glorious unmovable conclusion.  The core thematic material, that is the patterns of notes forming very short motifs, is all in these bars too and it is to appear in various guises. 

From that turbulent opening we work through a pretty dense structure.  The music quickly lapses into a quieter more restrained solo string and woodwind interlude - which feels even this early on like respite.  There follows the central theme on winds and eventually full orchestra. It’s on this theme that the whole work depends. It’s obvious warmth and humanity make the drama more poignant.  But it is not going to be a battle if it is this easy.  The music is hijacked time and time again even without reading the blow by blow account of the harmonic shifts which Simpson gives us, we can tell something is uneasy and amiss. The music various from intimate - sometimes quite static - solo interjections, moody shifts of instrumental groups and false starts.  The movement shifts towards the central theme in grand oration but there’s something missing (we don’t hear it we feel it). Something is not quite right… There some great intimacy in the orchestral writing and audacious orchestral effects too adding to the exhilaration of the journey. The timpani play a key roll as harmonic arbiters.  A drum over the quietest strings marks the end of the first movement. 

Nielsen chisels out this music - hewn from a determined vision to endure the turmoil and enjoy the tranquil with it’s moments of sublime joy and often easy simplicity.  The symphony has also boiled, hissed and scalded but still found it’s way to a modest level of security.  He builds intensity with scant material and over a very short real time span.  The symphony feels longer than it is so deep is our involvement and intense our engagement in the detail.  

An engaging bucolic episode of great simplicity marks our next “movement”.  It’s so simple as to be classical - the winds provide a chanting like theme.  This theme is sourced from material is from early in the symphony in that turbulent opening assault.  This passage has a great deal of charm and it’s treatment has a good deal of clarity.  This material is repeated with embellishment, the strings provide a counter  and then shortened woodwind section is repeated and then bridges into the slow movement.  It’s the classic symphony scherzo and trio pattern, but it’s purposefulness is less obvious. 

The grating and anxious string opening of this slowest movement has terse timpani punctuation.  It yearns to be in our favoured and presaged home key but by dint of extreme dynamics, faltering pulse and a tendency for unrest just when we though things would settle, it’s all hard work.  Beneath, lower strings seem to be searching for something away from this tension - it’s a long, arduous descent.  

The music seemingly dies to just solo strings with interjections of a descending figure we can recognise from early doors.There’s a moment of calm that seems like a pause in the fight not a respite.  The stillness is broken by the high woodwind imposing more disquiet and we enter one of the most fiery of episodes. The music becomes insistent on all sides:  horns pitted against trombones, high strings and low at odds.  Above it all a seagull-like cry - carried over from Symphony No 3.   The music is forced into a resolution of something that feels like home.  Again it’s not quite home….in a strange musical half light themes tentatively explore this new landscape.  It’s calmer but soon develops acquires a silver shimmer from strings over which an oboe keens a repeating and familiar fragment.  It is no longer coherent, but will soon become so.

The rapier-like flash from the violins signals the last movement, marked Allegro, and it seems like victory or at east certainty is at hand. The acceleration and accretion of instruments in the sound picture here breathless - like a jet taking off.  This seems plain sailing until Nielsen applies a block to resolution.  First the tonal environment becomes more austere - back to the first movements battle ground, the ranks are drawn with instruments in groups firing fragments and new themes into the mix and a second set of timpani reinforce the argument.  

Simpson is eloquent but aloof in the nature of the crisis here.  He cites the second set of timpani as a fundamental part of Nielsen’s lifting the argument of the symphony from the harmonic tiff over a parking spot to the existential grip of life: its about whether we approach life with anxiety or confidence.  For so many now this is an immediate and present problem in their lives.  I prefer to view this not just as an example of working through those problems but as an inspiration.  The feeling of home coming in the last movement wasn’t quite right - we can sense the same in our own lives - and the real feeling of home coming can only be achieved when change and challenge are applied: the music shows our world can be stress tested beyond what we’ve felt so far.  The second set of timpani prove to be a forceful component in the argument as we will hear. Nielsen marks them to be played even at their quietest with  “a certain menacing character”.  

The agitation in the orchestra is great but the coherence of the argument taking the symphony away from it’s home is dwindling.  The tussle continues with the slow assembling of themes and fragments into a a more plangent atmosphere.  The pace picks up to an extraordinary battle between the timpani - like nothing else in music.  Nielsen instructs one set to be on the edge of the stage - an outsider.  It’s intense and sonically spectacular. The conflagration of timpani and strings  is peppered with woodwind shrieks of anguish. And just as the chaos seems re-imposed the timpani - with the most amazing glissandi - they are silenced.  

With this battle over, the oppositional force dwindles and one to the new fragments of the early fog in this movement becomes very important.  It’s strident tone is a front, because it’s accelerated progress on strings allows all the instruments of the orchestra to collect themselves.  From there - almost out of nowhere - the point of symphonic completion and fulfilment can be achieved.  The grand theme of the first movement returns twice as a most wonderful nirvana - first assembled from parts  and then in grand unison - with timpani in support.  It turns this vivacious symphony into the noblest gift to that angst filled Twentieth century.  

I dare say it is even more important now than it was when it was written.  We return to the grand theme victorious some would say, I would say victorious and wise.  It’s an ecstatic high I’d align with Bruckner’s Ninth and Debussy’s La Mer.  The exhausting progress is not obvious in all it’s mottos, tonal imbalances, devices and orchestration but I can well see even first time listeners feeling it’s power - which just grows on acquaintence.  When the striving stops, we are at rest, confident and content - it lifts the weight and teaches us to expect and weather the next storm.  But we bask in it’s blazing light, that whatever our earthly state, life is inextinguishable.  

PS: That Karajan recording, when I rushed home and put on the CD, was hard work at first.  The playing was fantastic but Nielsen’s ground plan was not at all obvious.  Now the plan is obvious - and my admiration knows no bounds.  Keep at it.

Here’s that fine Nielsen conductor, Juanjo Mena in the work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxMcjkWRChw