Nielsen Symphony No. 4, "Inextinguishable"

At the top of the score for the Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s
4th symphony, he wrote: “Music is life, and like it,
inextinguishable.”


This could easily be the shortest podcast I’ve ever done. I could
leave you with that quote and then play you the beginning of the
symphony, and you would understand everything Nielsen wanted to
portray in this remarkable music. But don’t worry, I won’t do
that. Carl Nielsen’s music has never quite made it into the
standard standard repertoire, but if there is one piece of his
that is played more often than any other, it is his 4th symphony,
subtitled The Inextinguishable. But as a whole, Nielsen’s
4th symphony is not easy to digest. It is a piece that is
contradictory, in the sense that Nielsen uses an extremely small
set of motives to write practically every note of music in the
score, and yet sometimes the music can feel like a stream of
consciousness. Nielsen himself wrote: “I have an idea for a new
composition, which has no programme but will express what we
understand by the spirit of life or manifestations of life, that
is: everything that moves, that wants to live ... just life and
motion, though varied – very varied – yet connected, and as if
constantly on the move, in one big movement or stream. I must
have a word or a short title to express this; that will be
enough. I cannot quite explain what I want, but what I want is
good.” 


There is a James Joyce-esque sense of jump-cutting between
different ideas, as if that inextinguishable life force is
unaffected by earthly things like form and recognizable
structure. But if you peek under the hood of this piece, you find
that it is really in 4 movements, and the first movement is even
in a kind of a Sonata Form. It has an intermezzo, a slow
movement, and a rambunctious finale. In many ways, this is a
conventional symphony, but in terms of the musical material and
the way Nielsen decided to manipulate that material, it is
anything but conventional. We’ll talk about all of this today,
including the influence of World War 1 on the symphony and on
Nielsen himself, and the remarkable music that throws us along
like a relentless and boundless current of energy. Join us!