Kyle Major <[log in to unmask]> tries to remember:

>>...that one of the great Nielsen scholars, whose name I can't remember but
>>wrote a book on the six symphs, also had quite a bit of difficulty with the
>>work.

 To which Andrew E. Carlan replied:

>Not one of the greatest, the greatest, Robert Simpson, who wrote the
>biography and analysis titled "Nielsen, the Symphonist." I recollect that
>Andy Jackson, our really erudite Nielsen buff on board noted a while ago
>that Simpson in his 1952 (?) book expressed less than enthusiasm for the
>Sixth.  I agree with him, as I've already written in this thread.  However,
>Andy pointed out that in a later edition (which I didn't even know existed
>Andy commented on it) Simpson revised his opinion.  I wonder whether he
>really did or such unpleasantness had become politically correct among
>the academicians.   ...

I would like to point out that I knew Robert Simpson [and he was no Jack
Kennedy, nor am I], during my London years (1970-76) ; we met at the time
Horenstein recorded the Simpson 3rd (June 1970). His declining health over
the past decade and death last year saddened me deeply.

He was a man of incredible personal and artistic integrity and totally
incapable of even "strategic" dissimulation on behalf of any cause, whether
Nielsen's or his own.  He resigned from his senior position at the BBC in
1980-probably several years short of drawing a full pension, in protest
over their programming policies and even wrote a vehemently polemic book
about that.

I can assure you that he would have not published in 1979 the revised
version of "Carl Nielsen, Symphonist" with as many changes as he did,
notably the new chapter on the Sixth, if he hadn't really changed his mind.
Please remember that in the 27 (!) years between editions, he would have
had many chances to hear different performances of the Sixth (along with
the remainder of the canon) live, recorded and broadcast, that the standard
of performance would have become much higher (with all due respect to your
personal preference for the historical Nielsen recordings) and hence the
work would have become first, much more familiar and eventually,
comprehensible, logical and analyzable.

In the preface to the 1979 edition, Robert Simpson admits that his first
essay on the Sixth was written from score study only (!) and that his
opinion started to change after producing Ole Schmidt's LSO recordings of
the symphonies in 1974, prompting him to reconsider the matter.  I was at
those sessions and I recall discussing the Sixth with him on the basis of
his 1952 chapter and asking him his impression of the Horenstein/Halle
Sixth which the BBC had taped.  It was evident that his viewpoint had
already started to shift, and he was utterly unabashed about this.

With regard to the remark "..why antagonize those who are writing that sort
of music today..." what exactly are you trying to say? What is "..that sort
of music..."? Music you personally don't like? New music that Nielsen (born
in 1865) didn't like in the 1920s? Music Robert Simpson didn't like? The
British musical establishment, such as there is of it, may have been at
times intolerant of innovation; the BBC's programming and commissioning
policies have gone all over the map in the past quarter-century, but the
musical scene is one of enormous breadth, accepting and enjoying-on its own
terms-the postRomantic tonalism of Simpson, Maw and others along with the
complex postmodernism of others.

Conspiracy theories abound.  Read about them in the Sunday Times and
elsewhere, take them with more than a grain of salt, but please don't
contribute to them.  I lived through the "style wars" of the last forty
years at ground level both as an academician and as a conductor; the
retrospective view on these matters from journalists a generation or so
younger than myself bears little relation to what I actually experienced.
I'm far more concerned with ignorance and impatience disguising themselves
as taste, and with the fatal confusion of style and content (with all due
respect to information theory).

Personally, I'm delighted that at the end of the century I can conduct and
listen to music of Nielsen, Schoenberg and my youngest composer friends
without having to move from one armed camp to another.

And last of all, who misspelled Nielsen's name in the Subject line?

Joel Lazar
Conductor, Bethesda MD
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