CARL NIELSEN EDITION.

Christensen, Jean ; Christensen, Jesper

Carl Nielsen. Sange = Songs. Udgivet af = Edited by Niels Bo Foltmann, Peter Hauge, Elly Bruunshuus Petersen, Kirsten Flensborg Petersen. 3 vols, of music + 1 vol. of commentary. (Carl Nielsen Vaesrker, series III, vols. 4-7.) Copenhagen: Edition Wilhelm Hansen, 2009. [Vol. III:4, songs 1-144; vol. III:5, songs, 145-292; vol. III:6, songs 293-431; vol. III:7, editorial texts. ISBN 978-87-598-1820-6 (III:4), 978-87-598-1821-3 (III:5), 978-87-598-1822-0 (III:6), 978-87-598-1823-7 (III:7); ISMN M-66134-208-3 (III:4), M-66134-209-0 (III:5), M-66134-210-6 (III:6); M-66134-211-3 (III:7). DKK 463,20 (III:4); DKK 431,20 (III:5); DKK 423,20 (III:6);DKK 519,20 (III:7).]

Carl Nielsen. Juvenilia et addenda. Udgivet af = Edited by Lisbeth Afilgren Jensen, Lisbeth Larsen. (Carl Nielsen Vaerker, series IV, vol. 1). Copenhagen: Edition Wilhelm Hansen, 2009. [Prefaces in Eng., Dan., p. xi-li; facsims., p. lii-lvi; score, p. 1-283; abbrevs., p. 284; crit. commentary, p. 285-324; edition information, p. 325-30. ISBN 978-87-598-1824-4; ISMN M-66134-212-0. DKK 1.168.]

In the early 1990s, complaints about the poor condition of the performance materials by musicians in Innsbruck who were preparing a performance of Nielsen's opera, Maskarade, launched a barrage of polemics in the Danish newspapers about the damage being done to the cultural reputation of Denmark and to its "national composer." This eventually spawned an initiative to commission a complete scholarly edition of Carl Nielsen's works. The then-cultural minister, Jytte Hilden, asked the Music Department of the Royal Library to devise a comprehensive plan, and promised adequate funding for the project. By 1993 the plan was ready. It was decided to include all complete works by Nielsen in an edition that would be both practical and scholarly. The volumes in four series--stage music, instrumental music, vocal music, and Juvenilia et addenda--would follow the same template of a general preface; an introductory commentary about each work's origin and its reception in Carl Nielsen's lifetime (1865-1931); relevant facsimiles; the musical scores; and a critical commentary with an evaluation of all sources. Sketches, unfinished works, and Nielsen's reworking of others' works, and, with a few exceptions, of his own, were not to be included. One big decision--that is, adopting the policy of a practical edition--meant that the music would be printed without editorial remarks so that each score would represent one interpretation of the existing sources, with alternate interpretations made possible by printing all variants among sources in the critical commentary in the same volume as the score. Finally, the text for all general commentary would be bilingual (Danish and English), with the critical editorial commentary in English. In what were nearly ideal conditions, the editorial work was housed primarily in the Royal Library in close proximity to the bulk of the source material. The date of completion, originally set for 2003, was later revised to March 2009. The Carl Nielsen Yorker is now complete and available in thirty-five volumes.

The completed edition will contribute to the surge of Nielsen scholarship produced since the early 1990s, such as the catalog of the Carl Nielsen Collection in the Royal Library by Birgit Bjornum and Klaus Mollerhoj (1992); John Fellows's three-volumes of edited and annotated texts by Nielsen, Carl Nielsen til sin samtid (Carl Nielsen to His Contemporaries, 1999); establishment of the Carl Nielsen Studies (2003--), of which four volumes have so far appeared; several symposia involving Nielsen scholars (in Birmingham, Manchester, and Copenhagen), with another one in the planning stages; and an edition of Nielsen's complete letters. Recent and forthcoming monographs by French, American, English, and Danish authors reflect the wide range of views that propels this ongoing activity. A promised full-length biography is in progress, and recordings of works based on the newly-edited scores have begun to appear.

The volumes are beautiful, the design both modest and elegant, the engraving of the highest quality. It is a work that features unusual consistency in all details. The commentary is rich in particulars, with citations from letters, reviews, program notes, articles and essays about the music, performances, and concert life, as well as pertinent quotations from Nielsen the composer, the essayist, and the private person. For instance, we learn briefly about Nielsen's interest in Jens Peter Jacobsen's poetry between the late 1880s and 1893, what he writes to his girlfriend in 1888 regarding poetry and music, about the performance of one of the songs from opus 4 in 1890 in Odense, two years before it was published, and about Nielsen's old teacher, Orla Rosenhoff, who reported in a letter how he had followed the development of these early compositions "from sketches to full compositions." One gains an enriched sense of musical life in Denmark as lived by Nielsen and the principal characters whose paths intersected his in one way or another, be they family, friends, performers, patrons, publishers, teachers, promoters, or reviewers. In the case of the Juvenilia et addenda, the commentary is printed in the same volume as the scores, but in the case of the Sange it is found in a separate volume of 538 pages that addresses both the first two volumes of mostly solo songs, and the third one of mainly choral a cappella pieces. In addition to the introductory commentary, volume III:7 also has facsimiles, a list of all persons who were associated in some way with the songs, English translations--meant to be sung--of all texts, an English title index, and texts of songs in translation (some in German) published before Nielsen's death in 1931. Finally, in addition to the list of all sources and variants, and critical notes, one finds indexes of both authors and titles. A careful reading through all the volumes discovered only three tiny misprints, hardly enough to be mentioned.

Juvenilia et addenda includes complete works by Nielsen, both long and short, including very early ones dating before the composer's debut work (Suite, op. 1, for string orchestra) as well as some that have not been definitively dated. The interest of this volume rests in the mixed nature of its forty-nine compositions. Many of these provide an opportunity to study the young composer's development, including the early string quartet Nielsen apparently took with him for his first meeting with Niels Gade, the head of the Copenhagen Conservatory. We find pieces of chamber music, specifically more movements for string quartet, a piano trio, a duet for violins, a couple of romances and a sonata for violin and piano, a fantasy for clarinet and piano, and a version of the Canto Serioso for cello and piano that also exists in a version for horn and piano. There are also piano pieces, piano arrangements of orchestral works (dances from incidental music for Aladdin and excerpts from The Mother), counterpoint exercises, and an appendix with very short autographs, principally musical greetings. Interesting occasional pieces include two cantatas: one (on a text by I. C. Nielsen) in commemoration of the painter P. S. Krayer, calling for a four-part chorus of two tenors and two basses, soprano and baritone soloists, with piano accompaniment; and another (on a text by Hans Hartvig Seedorff Pedersen) for the centenary of the Polytechnic College for a narrator, male choir, strings, and piano. Theatrical pieces include a large work from 1895-96, Snefrid, which is a two-act piece in seventeen movements for four reciting actors and piano quintet on a text by Danish poet Holger Drachmann. Each act has an instrumental prelude and a concluding piece; the first ends with "Elskovsmusik" (Love Music) and the last with "Sorgemusik" (Funeral Music). According to the newspapers, performances in the provinces of this "literary entertainment" were positively received despite one reviewer's disappointment about the use of formal evening dress instead of "impressive historical costumes with corresponding accessories" (p. xxxix)--another fascinating glimpse into turn-of-the-century musical life to be found in the commentary.

Like the other volumes, the presentation of the music and the scholarly apparatus in the three volumes of songs are impeccable. Unfortunately, however, it is not possible to be truly positive about the translations of the songs into English in the editorial volume. This is a real problem, as it greatly reduces the possibility that a selection of Carl Nielsen's songs may eventually be absorbed into the repertoire of singers around the world. Not that the translations are sloppy or clueless; to the contrary, considerable ingenuity went into the work of finding suitable formulations for elusive Danish phrases, and certain guiding principles were rigorously observed. It is just that these are not the results of a genuine process of poetic re-creation, nor solutions tested by interpretive singers.

The first of three key principles evident in the translations is, in fact, a good one: the number of syllables must match that of the original texts. This decision suits the composer's own tendency to avoid repeating vowels (thus creating melismas, or worse, stuttering) which is virtually a hard and fast rule in his popular songs. This approach does not, however, guarantee compliance with the formal shape of the original poems, because any choice between feasible words affects overall rhythm and balance. An example is the translation of J. P. Jacobsen's vignette "Alle de voksende Skygger" (no. 220), in which the text is progressively thinned out so as to end with only two words in each of the last two lines, whereas the translator leaves three words in each of these two lines. Even though the syllables match, a significant feature of the text is missing. This weightless poem is also burdened by the words chosen by the translator to describe the clouds, that is, their "gloom-laden dreams" instead of Jacobsen's simple "heavy dreams" (literally, "tunge dromme"), and in the first line already, "developing shadows," rather than his "growing shadows" (also literally, "voksende Skygger").

In Nielsen's greatest popular success, "Jens Vejmand" (no. 22), the varied refrain is--in all six stanzas--initiated by the stinging irony of the line: "Det er saamaend Jens Vejmand" (That's just Jens the roadman), or, as the translator has it, "It's poor old John the roadman." However, for no obvious reason, the two last stanzas change this formulation, to "Yes, that was John the roadman," and "Now here lies John the roadman." These have the correct number of syllables, but break the hypnotic repetition that decidedly contributes to the steadily building pathos of the text.

The second guideline is to preserve rhymed meter. Again, this is a sound principle. In practice, however, it often leads to an overly clever reconstruction of texts in order to fit in a good rhyme. Admittedly, the translator frequently finds ingenious solutions to the inherent obstacles; yet often enough the process introduces convoluted sentences into straightforward texts. Take Jeppe Aakjaer's "Jeg baerer med Smil min Byrde" (no. 97), which is the vision of a young shepherd. A plain description of the sunrise, something like: "See the sun rising from the earth/framed by the oxens' horns," ends up as the quite contorted "As vault of darkness is riven/'tween ox-horns sunlight is born," all this to rhyme with "driven" and "corn." Another poem by this author, "Som dybest Brond gir altid klarest Vand" (no. 138), that is, "As the deepest well always gives the clearest water," is translated "Like purest waters rise from deepest spring." Aakjaer's naturalism is ill served by shifting "deep" from the "well" to the "spring," merely to justify a rhyme ("spring" and "thing"). In another stanza, the substitution of "songs and sins" for "cries and songs" ("Graad og Sang") arbitrarily introduces a notion of sin that is foreign to the poem, again for the sake of a rhyme ("sins" and "kin's").

The third inherent principle is the preference for "poetic" language. It is manifest in the frequent replacements of ordinary words by more lofty ones, and of plain descriptions by more elegant phrases. It is hardly possible to miss the translator's delight in relatively unfamiliar words--ones that will occasionally have the reader reach for the dictionary--over standard terms. Take, for example, Thoger Larsen's beloved midsummer song (no. 285). One may ask why "meres of blue" and "orbs of mothers" are preferable to the original's "blue lakes" and "eyes of mothers"? Unfortunately the number of such instances are legion, all of which generate an excess of artifice that is at odds with a general tenet in the writing of Nielsen's favorite poets, many of whom were engaged in a broad movement to free poetry from long-established stylistic conventions (such as mythological references, standard phrases, traditional themes). Thus, in Steen Steensen Blicher's poem about his native country (no. 254), his strong and direct statement, "Any other country is a prison compared to you," becomes the exquisitely convoluted: "With thy allure unseen we always meet/Each other country unlike thee a prison." Likewise, "Your sons will always faithfully long for you" becomes the hard-to-unscramble "Thy offspring's longings have for thee arisen."

These shortcomings, bad enough when reading the translations, will be amplified when they are sung. Singers find their way into a song--as did the composer before them--via the text. No matter how good the melody and the original text, it is impossible to perform an incomprehensible translation. A singer perusing the volume containing the texts would be deterred already by the first stanza of the first song (by J. P. Jacobsen), unable to make sense of the line, "Sprinkled by the spheres' cascades, a-sounding fluty" ("fluty" might be a real word, but still an odd one). How could one comfortably sing the opening of the second stanza: "There she will throne reclining, almost dreaming" (the verb, "throne," though uncommon, is comprehensible, but how can one "throne" while "reclining"?). How can one make sense of the poem when the translation ignores the play on the main character's name, Asali, which in Danish suggests "salig," that is, blessed?

The translation of "Underlige Aftenlufte" (literally, "Mysterious evening winds") by Adam Oehlenschlager (no. 90) fails on more than one account. Thus, the "Odd and unknown evening breezes" are asked: "Say, whereunto do you wind?" (the unfamiliar "wind" being picked to rhyme with "mind"; the laborious "whereunto" to fill in three syllables). In this song, Nielsen, against his usual practice, greatly extends the duration of the next-to-last syllable of each stanza, which is effective because the poet in each case has placed emotional stress precisely on the last word. But already in the second stanza the translator seems to throw up his hands and ends with the impossible lines: "In my Hertha's holts no user/nor tonight a childlike snoozer." "No user" of the unfamiliar "holts" is confusing enough, but the prospect of droning on "snoo-oo-oo-zer" is unbearable. In the seventh stanza, the last word becomes "wee-ee-ee-ping," and in the eighth, "wai-ai-ai-ling." It would be hard to keep the audience focused, which would be unfair to both the poet and the composer of this fine song.

All this is not to say that the translations lack skill and inventiveness, but rather that they do not serve singers and audiences well. One could imagine the publication of a selection of Nielsen's most accomplished songs--a singer's songbook--in which the translations were reworked, not just in a spirit of diplomatic "correctness," but creatively. Another element that would add to the attractiveness of such an edition would be the inclusion of word-by-word translations and transcriptions of the original texts using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), thus enabling singers to perform the songs in Danish. It bears mentioning that voice departments of most colleges and universities now require knowledge of the IPA. Perhaps this should be the work of a team of poets and singers, each working with texts that appeal to them individually, perhaps ones with which they are familiar?

JEAN CHRISTENSEN

University of Louisville

AND JESPER CHRISTENSEN

EDITED BY JOHN WAGSTAFF