Short Biographic Notes On Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius

Carl Nielsen was a Danish composer, and a direct contemporary of Jean Sibelius, who was born 9th June 1865. He is widely regarded as Denmark's greatest composer. He came from a large and poor peasant family and was thus exposed to plenty of traditional folk songs. This background, and the influence of the music of Brahms and Grieg led his early music to be in a nationalistic popular and dance style. He also studied Renaissance polyphony, the influence of which can be heard in his music.

He joined the Royal Orchestra as a violinist in 1891, and for six years from 1908 was conductor. After this he became director of Copenhagen Conservatory where he had previously studied, teaching music theory. During this time he was also conductor at the Musikforeningen (Musical Society), Denmark's most important concert venue at this time.

Nielsen is especially admired for his six symphonies, where a technique called progressive tonality (beginning in one key and ending in another) is crucial to his symphonic development. This was innovative for a time where symphonies were centered around a 'home' key, and would start and end as such. The composer was looking to find new ways of constructing a symphony, away from the four movement style. Nielsen's fifth symphony for example is made of two movements, but each has such a contrast of tempo that they would usually be considered four movements, except for the common dramatic and thematic material. Nielsen's concertos, particularly for clarinet and violin, are also fondly remembered.

Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer, the most famous ever produced by that country, and born in the same year as Nielsen. He studied in Helsinki, Berlin and Vienna, and traveled abroad extensively during the first 30 years of the 20th century, visiting the Scandinavian countries, U.K, France, Germany, Canada and the U.S.A. After this time his output declined greatly, and he published few major works in the last 30 years of his life.He had early aspirations as a violin virtuoso but abandoned this idea around the time of finishing his studies in Vienna.

His is mostly known for his nationalistic tone poems from 1890-1900, including Finlandia, written in 1899, and the core of his work - the seven symphonies. Nature was a huge inspiration, even by Nordic standards, with many of his works being inspired by the Finnish landscape, such as the Sixth symphony, the tone poem Tapiola, and the scenes reminiscent of flying geese in the Fifth symphony.

Like his contemporary Carl Nielsen, Sibelius studied renaissance polyphony, the influence of which can be heard in his early works. He also featured modal style in some of his works, such as the six symphony, which is mostly in Dorian mode. His other innovations include seeking use of new chord patterns, such as tritones (an interval of three whole tones), and doing away with traditional sonata form techniques such as contrasting themes, and instead utilized unbroken development of musical fragments.