Typological Model of the Basso Ostinato in Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony

Danish composer Carl Nielsen was the only European symphonist from the first half of the 20th century to be endowed with a peasant mentality. Being active in the midst of the aesthetical and technical changes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and being opposed both to Romanticism and to the art of the fin de siècle, he possessed his own perception of what music can express and what is the Alpha and Omega of music. The article researches the realization of the baroque typical model of the basso ostinato in the Fifth Symphony. In the description and method of analysis of the present model of Nielsen’s symphony, the author bases herself on the research of Irina Alexeyeva, a representative of the influential Russian musicological school of Professor Liudmila Shaymukhametova. The article makes use of materials of Nielsen’s epistolary to various addressees, as well as sources in Russia and other countries having to do with evaluation of Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony. Keywords: Carl Nielsen, Anna-Maria Nielsen, Fifth Symphony, the typological model of the basso ostinato, semantics, baroque, organum

Art · Art history · Symphony · Diverse Musicological Studies · Music Technology and Sound Studies · Musicology and Musical Analysis