Notes for: August 9, 2016
The music of Carl Nielsen has long been a concert staple in his native Denmark — in fact, his portrait appears on the Danish hundred kroner note. His music has also been popular in the other Nordic countries as well as in Britain. In more recent years, thanks to conductors Eugene Ormandy, Leonard Bernstein and Herbert Blomstedt, his music is now frequently heard in the United States.
Nielsen is particularly admired for his six symphonies and his concertos for violin, flute, and clarinet. This work, Serenata in vano, reflects a lighter side of musical expression. He developed his musical gifts as a working musician. In 1889, he joined the orchestra of the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, playing as a second violinist for many years. In 1908 he became the orchestra’s associate conductor, and he held that position until his resignation in 1914 to devote himself to composition.
In the summer of 1914, the principal bass player, Ludvig Hegner, and some of his colleagues formed a touring chamber music group featuring the Beethoven Septet. Hegner asked Nielsen to compose a work using some of the Septet’s instruments, combining strings and winds. The result was this light-hearted work in a single movement, but with three sections depicting the “vain” efforts of some musicians to serenade an uninterested young woman.
The composer summarizes the action in a tongue-in-cheek program note:
Serenata in vano is a humorous trifle. First the gentlemen play in a somewhat chivalric and showy manner to lure the fair one out onto the balcony, but she does not appear. Then they play in a slightly languorous strain (poco adagio), but that hasn’t any effect either. Since they have played in vain (in vano), they don’t care a straw, and shuffle off home to the strains of a little final march, which they play for their own amusement.