Setting the Scene?

Abstract

This discussion offers the first detailed scholarly engagement with Carl Nielsen’s tone poem Pan and Syrinx – Pastoral Scene for Orchestra (1917–18), Op. 49 – a work which, despite Nielsen’s ambivalent relationship with programmes, holds a unique place in his orchestral output. Consideration of its programmatic and theatrical characteristics, alongside more abstract interpretations, reveals some of the significant ways in which Nielsen brought the tone poem genre into close dialogue with the larger-scale symphonies. Drawing on current literature on musical form in his music (particularly notions of decay, irony and collapse), my article advances a particular understanding of ‘space’, in which varying rates of motion, contrasting energetic states and characterisation are expressed. This perspective brings a new understanding of the work’s consciously anti-climactic conclusion based on irreconcilable dualities – a counterpart to the regenerative processes in such works as the Fifth Symphony. Overall, it argues for a dualistic perspective on Nielsen’s output more broadly, as overt programmatic intentions helped shape his original orchestral voice.