300 pages with Carl Nielsen’s music to Aladdin in print

20th December 2000

Another major work by Carl Nielsen is now available in print: the incidental music to Adam Oehlenschläger’s Aladdin or the Wonderful Lamp, written for the lavish performance over two evenings at The Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, in 1919. Apart from the two operas, Aladdin is the most extensive score by Nielsen, containing some of his best music – in spite of the rather traumatic conditions under which it was written, because of the handling of the music by the director of the performance in 1919. Subsequently, the suite of seven dances became one of the most frequently performed of Nielsen’s works, amongst other things because the composer himself included it in his repertoire as a conductor, and because it was published in a separate edition ten years after the his death.
But now the complete score is available in print – thoroughly revised and annotated – rendering the music in toto as Nielsen wrote it for the performance in 1919. Here the dances may be studied in their dramatic context and, furthermore, one can form an impression of the long melodrama-sections where Oehlenschläger’s text is recited to background music. And finally the edition gives a precise synopsis of the play, including the role of the music, all of it based on the 1919 performance for which it was written. The scholarly introduction deals with the history of the work, its reception, and the fate of the music in the composer’s lifetime.
The edition of Aladdin is volume I/8 of the collected edition of Carl Nielsen’s works, based at The Royal Library in Copenhagen, and is edited by the “corresponding editor” of the Carl Nielsen edition, David Fanning (Manchester University).
Niels Krabbe, Head of the Carl Nielsen Edition.