A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts.
Knud Jeppesen was a Danish musicologist and composer. He was the leading scholar of the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, about whose life and music he wrote numerous studies.
Carl August Nielsen was a Danish composer, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his country's most prominent composer.
Robert Wilfred Levick Simpson was an English composer, as well as a long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster.
Carl Nielsen's Concerto for Clarinet and orchestra, op. 57 [D.F.129] was written for Danish clarinetist Aage Oxenvad in 1928. The concerto is presented in one long movement, with four distinct theme groups.
Symphony No. 6 "Sinfonia semplice", FS 116, was Danish composer Carl Nielsen's last symphony.
Symphony No. 5, Op. 50, FS 97 is a symphony composed by Carl Nielsen in Denmark between 1920 and 1922. It was first performed in Copenhagen on 24 January 1922 with the composer conducting. It is one of two of Nielsen's six symphonies lacking a subtitle, the other being his Symphony No. 1.
Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76, also known as "The Inextinguishable", was completed by Danish composer Carl Nielsen in 1916. Composed against the backdrop of World War I, this symphony is among the most dramatic that Nielsen wrote, featuring a "battle" between two sets of timpani.
The Danish National Symphony Orchestra, is a Danish orchestra based in Copenhagen. The DNSO is the principal orchestra of DR. The DRSO is based at the Koncerthuset concert hall in Copenhagen.
The Royal Danish Academy of Music, or Royal Danish Conservatory of Music, in Copenhagen is the oldest professional institution of musical education in Denmark as well as the largest, with approximately 400 students. It was established in 1867 as Kjøbenhavns Musikkonservatorium by Niels Gade – who was also the first rector –, J.P.E. Hartmann and Holger Simon Paulli on the basis of a testamentary gift from the jeweler P.W. Moldenhauer, and with inspiration from the Leipzig Conservatory and a conservatory founded by Giuseppe Siboni in Copenhagen in 1827. Carl Nielsen was a teacher in the period 1916–1919 and the rector during the last year of his life.
Erik Oluf Tuxen was a Danish big band leader, composer and arranger, who worked for most of his life in Denmark. From 1936 until his death by cancer on 28 August 1957 he was conductor at the Danish National Symphony Orchestra of Danish Radio.
Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op. 7, FS 16, is the first symphony of Danish composer Carl Nielsen. Written between 1891 and 1892, it was dedicated to his wife, Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen. The work's première, on 14 March 1894, was performed by Johan Svendsen conducting the Chapel Royal Orchestra, with Nielsen himself among the second violins. It is one of two symphonies by Nielsen without a subtitle.
Symphony No. 2De fire Temperamenter, Op. 16, FS 29, is the second symphony by Danish composer Carl Nielsen, written in 1901–1902 and dedicated to Ferruccio Busoni. It was first performed on 1 December 1902 for the Danish Concert Association, with Nielsen himself conducting. As indicated in the subtitle, each of its four movements is a musical sketch of a humor of the four temperaments: choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic, and sanguine. Despite its apparent concept of program music, the work is a fully integrated symphony in traditional symphonic structure.
Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann was, together with his son-in-law Niels W. Gade, the leading Danish composer of the 19th century, a period known as the Danish Golden Age. According to Alfred Einstein, he was "the real founder of the Romantic movement in Denmark and even in all Scandinavia". J.P.E. Hartmann was the third generation of composers in the Danish musical Hartmann family.
August Winding was a Danish pianist, teacher and composer.
Fynsk Foraar, for soloists, chorus and orchestra, Opus 42, is Carl Nielsen's last major choral work. Written to accompany a prizewinning text by Aage Berntsen, it was first performed in Odense's Kvæghal on 8 July 1922 where it was conducted by Georg Høeberg.
The L-groups was a resistance group tasked with assassination of Danish collaborators and German forces occupying Denmark during the Second World War. The precursor to the group was established in 1940, but it was most active from 1944 to the end of the war. The group carried out at least 18 assassination operations and killed between 20 and 30 people. In 1945 the group was hard hit by arrests and killings of its members and further suffered a very high death-rate in the years immediately after the war with suicides and accidents killing a number of members. The group had strong ties to the Danish police, with 5 of its members being police officers.
The Symphony No. 2, Op. 14, is a three-movement orchestral composition written from 1938 to 1939 by the Swedish composer Dag Wirén. Despite its numbering, the Second Symphony represents Wirén's first contribution to the form as a professional. Swedish conductor Sixten Eckerberg premiered the new symphony with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Gothenburg on 13 October 1940. Although the public received the premiere positively, the critics cautioned that the new work was mildly derivative of Carl Nielsen. At 30 minutes, the Second is the longest of Wirén's four essays in the genre, as well as, stylistically, the most late-Romantic and pastoral of the set.
