Ludolf Nielsen - Life

Life

Nielsen was born in Nørre Tvede, Denmark, although his family lacked any musicians Ludolf took to music at a very young age. After a few years of taking violin lessons from local fiddlers, when he was eight he played at local festivals and other country occasions. In his mid-teens, he moved to Copenhagen, which exposed him to a much more musical society. When he was 19, Ludolf won a scholarship to the Danish Royal Academy of Music from a contest. There, he studied violin, piano, and music theory. Supposedly, his composing talents were self-taught. When he was about 20, Nielsen started composing music, and the Tivoli Orchestra hired him as a violinist. Some of his works were performed in 1899, but his first major success was with the symphonic poem Regnar Lodbrog which gained him an additional scholarship that let him spend time in the musically rich city of Leipzig, where he composed a few string quartets and had them published. He returned to Copenhagen and was conductor of the Tivoli Orchestra. In 1902, he composed his First Symphony, and between 1903 – 1905 a tone poem From the Mountains. Just after his marriage in 1907 Nielsen composed a Romance for Violin (1908) and his Second Symphony (1907 – 1909). Like many other artists, World War I had a very profound effect on Nielsen, for years he didn't write anything until 1914 with his Third Symphony in C. After the War, he became a private music teacher for a period of time, then returned to composing. The two most important works from this period are his ballet Lackschmi (1922) and the orchestral suite Skovvandring (Forest Journey), then Nielsen wrote almost 100 Lieder. Between 1926 and 1939, Ludolf worked as a programmer for the Danish National Radio Corporation and, with the exception of a few radio plays, he ceased composing. On October 16, 1939 at the age of 63 Nielsen died in Copenhagen.