Four Centuries of Great Music November 20, 2022 The Symphony Through the Centuries Episode 14

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are continuing our series on Symphonies through the Centuries with episode 14.  In this episode we will explore a symphony from end of the 19th century by an American composer and the beginning of the 20th century with a Danish composer.  

We start with composer George Templeton Strong, an American born composer who received much of his formal music training in Leipzig and Wiesbaden, Germany.  It was in Wiesbaden where he became close friends with American composer Edward MacDowell and where he completed his Symphony No.2 in G minor in 1888 and dedicated it to MacDowell.

Strong’s Symphony No.2 in G minor Opus 50, entitled Sintram: The Struggle of Mankind Against the Powers of Evil, is one of his best known works .  It was inspired de la Motte Fouqué's romance and drawing inspiration from Albrecht Dürer's famous Ritter, Tod und Teufel (The Knight, Death and the Devil).   It is in 4 movements
I. Ziemlich Langsam, Rasch
II. Langsam
III. Die Drei George Templeton Strong: Entsetzlichen Gefahrten: Tod, Teufel Und Irrsinn (Sehr Lebhaft)
. Kampf und Sieg (Rasch, Feierlich)


Most of this second half of today’s Four Centuries of Great Music is Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 4, Op. 29 The Inextinguishable.  

Carl Nielsen is widely recognized as Denmark’s most prominent composer.  For many years, he appeared on the Danish hundred-kroner banknote.

Brought up by poor yet musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age and studied piano and violin as a child. He played trombone and bugle in a military band before attending the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen from 1884 until December 1886, where he studied violin and composition.  He performed as  a second violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra for 16 years while continuing his composition and then moved onto a post teaching at the Royal Danish Academy and continued to work there until his death.

Although his symphonies, concertos and choral music are now internationally acclaimed, initially he was only well known in his native country and other parts of Scandinavia.   His early music was inspired by composers such as Brahms and Grieg, but he soon developed his own style, first experimenting with progressive tonality and later diverging even more radically from the standards of composition still common at the time.

Although most known for his symphonic and choral works, his chamber music has also gained a lot of traction in the later part of the 20th century.

Nielsen maintained the reputation of a musical outsider during his lifetime, internationally. It was only later that his works firmly entered the international repertoire, accelerating in popularity from the 1960s through  the efforts of Leonard Bernstein among others. In Denmark, Nielsen's reputation was sealed in 2006 when four of his works were listed by the Danish Ministry of Culture amongst the greatest pieces of Danish classical music. Between 1994 and 2009 the Royal Danish Library, sponsored by the Danish government, completed the Carl Nielsen Edition, freely available online, containing background information and sheet music for all of Nielsen's works, many of which had not been previously published.

His wife was artist Anne Marie Brodersen who traveled for long periods of time.  It is said that Carl “was susceptible to opportunities with other ladies” while stay at home to raise their three young children while continuing his composition and role as violinist for the Royal Danish Orchestra.  Anyone who has seen the equestrian statue in Copenhagen commissioned and designed by Anne Marie might think that it was her payback for his philandering.

The second symphony is in 4 movements  that are played attacca subito, without breaks.

The first movement  marked allegro begins with a fierce tutti pitting D minor against its flat seventh, C, in an almost antiphonal manner. After the tutti, the clarinets introduce in A major the lyrical theme that will culminate the work.

The second movement, marked Poco allegretto,  for woodwind in G major, is more an intermezzo than the expected slow movement. The third movement, marked Poco adagio quasi andante is the slow movement which opens with a cantilena from unison violins, then builds to a climax before concluding with a single oboe playing over trills in the upper strings.

The clashes of the first movement reappear in the final movement, marked allegro, in which two sets of timpani duel from either side of the orchestra. This passage calls on the two timpanists to change the pitch of the timpani while playing. At the very end E major emerges as the key to conclude the work.


George Templeton Strong was a good friend of American composer Edward MacDowell.   We are concluding today’s Four Centuries of Great Music with the  symphonic poem Hamlet from MacDowell’s Hamlet and Ophelia Op 22

Here performed by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Krueger from the album MacDowell: Symphonic Poems    Bridge Records