About this Piece

The often raging Fourth Symphony, finished in 1916, might be interpreted as a reaction to World War I. Nielsen, however, did not suggest this specifically, but pointed to a universal conception when he said, “Music is life, and, like life, inextinguishable.” Music and life, Nielsen might have said, are inexplicable. 

In his own life, Nielsen, like Mahler, maintained a career as a conductor, and, like his Austrian counterpart, composed compulsively between public appearances. Since he was immersed daily in the music of other composers, there are glimpses in his own works of music from Brahms, Dvořák, Sibelius, and others, but still fewer than one might expect. “The Inextinguishable,” consisting of four interlinked movements, is complex in the way it accumulates ideas and sonorities from these figures, but ultimately simple in the reaching of its desired goal. 

The first movement hurls out a thrust of demonic energy that seems incapable of being contained; first the winds, with timpani interjections, insist repeatedly upon a declamatory three-note motif before rushing into a vigorous triplet figure. When they enter, the strings eliminate the third note of the motif, and from this point on, both the three-note motif and its economy-size version are important, elemental presences in the movement. The initial extended outburst is finally calmed by a descending, repeated-note figure in flutes, then clarinets. In time, the latter instruments present a gentle secondary theme in Sibelian thirds, employing that composer’s familiar melodic grace notes. This theme assumes the nature of a motto: It gives rise to material in the third movement, and in the finale, it becomes the symphony’s conciliatory element. After much tumultuous working out, violins, urged on by timpani, lead into an allegretto that, with its Brahms-like woodwind and string pizzicato scoring, takes on the character of an intermezzo. 

The clarinets alone clear the path toward the third, slow movement. It begins intensely—a broad song in violins over throbbing timpani presenting material that will also figure prominently in the finale. Agitated repeated notes, a Nielsen fingerprint, dot the dramatic landscape. The bridge to the fourth movement, an avalanche of violin activity, leads to the main theme—a synthesis of the first movement’s lyric theme and portions of the slow movement. 

The finale has its early moments of exaltation (marked “Glorioso” in the score) interrupted by a fierce drama in which two pairs of timpani are impressively deployed. The climax of the work (expressive of its inextinguishableness, if you will) is carried to ultimate triumph by the motto theme (the first movement’s secondary, clarinet theme) intoned by winds, brass, and low strings. These closing pages are in the grand 19th-century symphonic tradition, powerful and engaging. —Orrin Howard