Violin concerto
1st movement
By Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen
Allegro moderato
The movement develops as a process of free association. It
opens with a theme borrowed from a song written by the composer in his younger days, and
ends in a glissando setting that offers a foretaste of what is to come in the last
movement of the work.
The way from the first theme to the glissando setting passes through a number of thematic
representations. Some of these are presented in variations and keep surfacing throughout
the movement (like the "Lystige fætter Kaj" theme - see below), whilst others
come to fruition in a single passage or section, where they make their mark on the
movement for a time, and then disappear completely (like the introductory "Dag går
på hæld" theme and the theme, "Den vilde brud").
It should be mentioned that the names given to the three themes are taken from a
description of the music written by Nørgård himself:
Foreground-background in the 1st movement
The first 59 bars of the movement are built up around the themes "Dag går på hæld" (The Day is Drawing to a Close) and "Lystige fætter Kaj" (Funny Cousin Kaj). As these titles indicate, it is not just a question of different melody lines - no, the two themes express quite different moods.
The Solo violin opens the movement with the theme
"Dag går på hæld", which spreads to the orchestra in lyrical mood until bar
21. At this point the break occurs: in from the right the "Lystige fætter Kaj"
theme rolls in at slightly too fast a tempo (it is played in quintuplets), tramping over
the lyrical landscape with its insistent, staccato, "A hunting we will go" style
of music (though the lyrical landscape remains seemingly unaffected).
And this is when things begin to get exciting!
Even though the new theme is something of an incursion, on the other hand it is not the kind of massive interruption one finds, for example, when a military band suddenly intrudes into a piece by Charles Ives. In addition, the "Cousin Kaj" theme is played by the soloist. If, when listening to the work for the first time, one allows oneself to be drawn along by the focus on the melody line this intrusion automatically provides, then the original music will slide into the background and become - well, an accompaniment to the second theme of the movement. And, when it comes to the fore again around bar 48, it will perhaps be experienced as a reprise; or there again, one might become aware at this point, before it disappears, that it has been around all the time.
The next time one listens to the music one can choose to delve deeper, and can perhaps let "Cousin Kaj" simple be a sort of ornament to "The Day is Drawing to a Close". One could also choose to reflect on the interaction between these two thematic worlds.
On the last bars of "The Day...", the soloist has moved on into a new theme, "Den vilde brud" (The Wild Bride), which dominates the movement up to about bar 112, at which point it seems to become worn out, due to a development (or maybe decline) on the part of the soloist - perhaps influenced by the constant confrontations with the "Cousin Kaj" rhythm, which is constantly interrupting, and gatecrashes again in the last part of the movement.
The "Wild Bride" theme can be used as an example of Nørgård's fascination with wringing new forms of expression out of a piece of melody by changing the stress. In an article written in 1987, for example, Nørgård identifies five different fragments of melody that can be drawn out of the "Wild Bride" theme, which is nine notes long. Three of these melodies arise by stressing every third note, the last two by stressing every second note. Four of these five interpretations present a diatonic, tonal, theme, while the last one offers a descending, chromatic line.
One theme, many motifs
In this way, the theme presents a double-sided aspect: on the one hand, it is a characteristic theme - and, moreover, in virtue of its wide-ranging structure, a typical Nørgård theme; while on the other hand it is a row of notes containing a number of different themes which the listener can choose to explore and bring forward as required - simply by listening.
Score samples © Edition WH