Andy Jackson wants to be recognized as the leaden expert when it comes
to Nielsen.  He challenges James Zehn, whose English is awfully good or
are he an expatriate American, and Tim Mahon pops up, too, with his arcane
questions.  Hi, Tim, great to meet another Nielsen nut on this list.

>Ok Guys, what is FS 135? When was the Cobbler's Wedding Waltz written?
>First with the correct replies gets the title.

Our Swedish Nuttingale goes first:

The Carlerino Lullaby Waltz was composed 1868 by Carlerino Nielsens
invisible friend Igor Nielsen.  Can I have the title now, mister Jackson?

To which is all the gravity I can shovel into the wheelbarrow, I answer:

Mozart was a child prodigy at five.  Mendelssohn at 11.  Stravinsky at
1:30.  If Nielsen had written this Sinfonia Semplice, i.e., "the Cobbler
Wedding Waltz" in 1868 he would have been writing music at three, before
he could control his bowels much less his fingers.

Seriously, I remember reading that his father let him play at local
weddings on Funen and was somewhat disturbed that he wouldn't keep to the
simple tunes, but improvise his own.  Perhaps, that's the origin of the
"the Cobbler's Wedding Waltz," although I doubt it.  Perhaps, he composed
it in honor of the Odense Bakery League.  It is probably buried in a huge
collection of wonderful pieces he wrote for the Danish Folk Education
Movement, including hymns, dances, simple songs of everyday life.  This was
very important to him and his contribution to the music ordinary Danes
played, sang and listened to he continued composing until his death in
1932.  The greatest is truly great.  It is "Springtime In Funen," a
oratorio he wrote for some fishmonger's society.

FS 135 probably refers to one of his art songs in the tradition of Weyse,
but because the best of them are so great really is in the tradition of
Mendelssohn and Schubert (see below, far below), of which there are
literally hundreds.  Their quality is consistently high, although the very
best number at 20 to 30, something often missed by those who don't go
beyond the symphonies and the wind quintet.  Since Folk in Danish is the
same as English and Song is Sang, it could be that someone catalogued them
as FS and not opus like the rest of his music.  That is only a guess.

Then we get to Tim Mahon's fruitcake answer in this small contest among
Nielsen cognoscenti.

"The Cobbler's Wedding Waltz (and not a lot of people know this) is
actually an early draft of another piece by an altogether different
composer.  Written by a fellow by the name of Franz, it was first played
in a piano reduction at the head of a coalmine shaft in the Ruhr valley.
Regrettably, the podium collapsed halfway through the performance, sending
the piano plummeting down the shaft and ending in the unfortunate demise
of a passing miner.  The composer, wishing to memorialize the regrettable
event, renamed the piece, which we know today as "Shoe Bert's First
Sympathy in A Flat Miner."

Tim, is this the part of the leitmotiv for that awful joke, "What happens
when you throw a piano down a mine shaft? You end up with a flat miner.
You have to learn to write like Hemingway.  Get simply and quickly to the
point, no matter how bad it is.  But don't Bb because of my answer, or
think you should B# because of yours.  Just try to B (where is that damned
key?), well you know, natural.  (-:).

Maybe we could start a contest naming Nielsen's unnamed symphonies, which
doesn't leave many, only the first and fifth.  How about sub-titling the
Fifth the "Drum Roll In Time Of War" in honor of Haydn who I think Nielsen
would have relished being associated with, although being an opera composer
he had a natural affinity to Mozart.

In Nomine Nielsen
Andrew Carlan