Skip to page content

Carl Nielsen

composer

About this Artist

Born: 1865, Sortelung, Denmark
Died: 1931, Copenhagen, Denmark

"Music is Life and, like it, is inextinguishable."

Nielsen was involved in popular and classical music from childhood, later becoming a member and then conductor of the opera orchestra at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen. His comic opera Maskarade made him a national hero in 1906, but he is best known as the composer of six characterful symphonies. Like many of the composers whose work spanned the turn-of-the-century, Nielsen combined many progressive ideas and techniques with a reverence for inherited traditions. The result was a bold, idiosyncratic style that has won an ever-widening circle of admirers.