A life of music: Carl Nielsen Museet
Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) is widely regarded as Denmark’s pre-eminent classical composer. His life and work also reflect the arrival of the modern industrialised world and with it the changing social and political landscape of Denmark and Europe. Prolific and charismatic, Nielsen echoes his contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók in his determination to re-write classical music with respect to the enormous changes and shifts in perception he was witnessing. In over 450 works, ranging from folk songs to symphonies and operas, he articulates a new world of musical possibilities that embody his mantra that “Music is Life”.
It is in this context that we had the privilege of working with musicologists from Copenhagen University, Odense City Museums’ commissioner, exhibition designers Event and video designers The Workers and Philip Davies to help create a permanent museum dedicated to Nielsen’s life and work that adjoins Odense’s concert hall.
Event’s winning concept for the museum takes to heart the essence of Nielsen’s inquisitiveness and multifaceted vision for music as a central organising theme for the galleries:
Our design tackles the inherent challenge of giving precedence to audio in a physical and visual setting. Careful not to distract from the music, we developed a subtle motif that gently guides visitors through the space. Across three movements, Nielsen’s life force is represented as a current of energy — like a pulse of electricity, lighting up everything it touches. As the light pulses through the space, it changes. The experience begins with a spark — Nielsen’s inspiration and the ingredients that built him. Then it develops into a constellation of light, each fragment of light representing a fragment of Nielsen’s musical repertoire. Finally, the light culminates into one complete whole — the moment of immersion where visitors ‘step into’ Nielsen’s music. — Event
This radical conception of the museum experience as a piece of spatial theatre, whereby the physical design seeks to put visitors almost ‘in the scene’ of Nielsen’s musical inspirations and catalysts also meant taking an equally radical approach to how the museum uses his music to soundtrack the spaces themselves.
Event brought us on board to help them realise all aspects of the music and sound experience across the museum. We worked from kick-off until delivery, helping to join the dots between the music, the technology, the concept and the spaces themselves, ensuring that the dramaturgy of the experience unfolded for visitors as an immersive musical journey.
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Working with musicologists and the entire catalogue of Nielsen’s work over a period of 2 years, we created a series of experiential, multi speaker immersive music and sound collages specific to each of the galleries and their narratives. Inspired by the way filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and Stanley Kubrick would often draw on previously recorded music to help frame scenes and narratives in their films, we looked to frame Nielsen’s music as if it were part of an impressionistic cinematic soundtrack to a film that is his life, the set and scenography of which you are amongst in the museum.
The overall result has been met with praise from all quarters, with Denmark’s national newspaper eulogising:
… the experience of entering the music, following it around and finally being enveloped by it, drifting off with it into a nebulae of the cosmos, makes the new Carl Nielsen Museum a complete success … How do you exhibit music? Like this! — Politiken
If you’d like to find out about more soundscape projects we’ve created or contact us about an idea, check out our website and contact us here.
