Nielsen & Shostakovich

[quintett op.57]

I've listened Nielsen 6 yesterday evening and I'm currently enjoying Shosta 7, they're still great pleasures for me.
Nielsen & Shostakovich Symphonies cycles are among the most marvellous ever.

I find many similarities between them. This led me to believe Shostakovich was strongly influenced by the dane, especially by his last 3 symphonies.
But a GMGer told me he probably hadn't heard much of Nielsen's works, maybe none.


What do you know or think about this?

[Pedal C]

I am very fond of both composers, but I too think it is unlikely that Nielsen influenced Shostakovich.  I know that Shostakovich studied Mahler's works and Nielsen was sure to have caught wind of Mahler by the time he started with his symphony cycle, so perhaps Mahler is the link between these two great composers.

[not edward]

I don't think there's really much Mahler in Nielsen...his music always seems to me to be a very individual, idiosyncratic development of Brahmsian tradition.

I'd agree there's many similarities between the later works of Shostakovich and Nielsen, but I have a feeling this is a case of two composers finding similar solutions to different problems.

[karlhenning]

Well, I agree that both their cycles are very strong.

They share a penchant for clarity of texture, which is to some degree a reaction against late Romanticism.  And we do see this in early Shostakovich, when he was still a boy in Petersburg/Petrograd, and probably had not had any occasion to be at all aware of Nielsen.  Nielsen never recorded any of his own music, and I don't believe anyone took his music outside of Denmark in his lifetime.  An enormous influence on Shostakovich, through his great friend Sollertinsky, was Mahler;  still, whatever the specific nature of Shostakovich's "absorption" from Mahler, there is a quasi-Classical specificity to the Russian's work which contrasts with Mahler's frankly expansive Romanticism.

[karlhenning]

I don't think there's really much Mahler in Nielsen...his music always seems to me to be a very individual, idiosyncratic development of Brahmsian tradition.

I'd agree there's many similarities between the later works of Shostakovich and Nielsen, but I have a feeling this is a case of two composers finding similar solutions to different problems.

Agreed.

[greg]

I don't think there's really much Mahler in Nielsen...his music always seems to me to be a very individual, idiosyncratic development of Brahmsian tradition.

I'd agree there's many similarities between the later works of Shostakovich and Nielsen, but I have a feeling this is a case of two composers finding similar solutions to different problems.

Agreed.

me too, i think it's more of a coincidence.