Carl Nielsen

Carl Nielsen

Carl August Nielsen , , widely recognised as Denmark's greatest composer, was also a conductor and a violinist. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age...

's Chaconne, Op. 32, is among the composer's most frequently played compositions for piano.

Background

In a letter to his daughter Irmelin dated 19 December 1916, Nielsen, who was spending Christmas alone because of difficulties in his marriage with Anne Marie

Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen

Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen was a Danish sculptor. Her preferred themes were domestic animals and people, with an intense, naturalistic portrayal of movements and sentiments. She also depicted themes from Nordic mythology...

, wrote that he was composing a large Chaconne for piano. "You probably know," he explained, "that the passacaglia

Passacaglia

The passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....

 and chaconne

Chaconne

A chaconne ; is a type of musical composition popular in the baroque era when it was much used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short repetitive bass-line which offered a compositional outline for variation, decoration, figuration and...

 forms are more or less the same: a fundamental theme or bass that is varied in numerous ways." He hoped with his work for the piano would emulate Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

's beautiful Chaconne for solo violin. On 18 January 1917, he informed Irmelin that the work was finished, telling her he thought is was "a really big piece, and I think effective."

Premiere and reception

The piece was premiered by Alexander Stoffregen on 13 April 1917 at a concert primarily devoted to Nielsen's songs. Nielsen considered his performance "a great success". The reviewers were generally positive. Vort Land spoke of "an interesting work, but one which needs to be heard several times before one can become completely familiar with its details." Axel Kjerulf in Politiken qualified it as "a fresh and characterful work" but Emilius Bangert, writing in Hovedstaten, found it "very heavy and rather stale, not least in its abstruse piano writing". The most enthusiastic praise came from Gustav Hetsch n Nationaltidende: "It held the audience’s attention the whole time with its many surprises, especially at the beginning, which we would like to have heard again in order to gain a better appreciation of the connections and details. Unfortunately, however, it was not the beginning but the much more easily assimilable conclusion that was repeated after the applause. This much is nevertheless clear: that Nielsen has here produced an interesting and original work in a new field for him."
On 11 February 1918, Christian Christiansen

Christian Christiansen (musician)

Christian Christiansen was Danish pianist and organist born in 1884.He was known as a strong supporter of Carl Nielsen's music and used to perform it while touring in Europe....

received an ovation when he played the piece during a concert of Nielsen’s orchestral works. Charles Kjerulf described the work as "a genuine Carl Nielsen piano-experiment... Everything is just calligraphy, lines and curves, but it’s the most attractive, neatest, old-fashioned ornamentation."

Music

The Chaconne, an extremely dynamic work, was Nielsen's first piano composition in 16 years. Following a simple opening theme, always in constant motion the piece develops through a crescendo, finally winding down at the end. The 20 variations forming the composition's core have an extensive range, sometimes reflecting Bach's influence, but more often presenting highly complex contrasts. The duration of the piece is approximately 9 minutes.