The Early Works of Niels W. Gade: In Search of the Poetic. (Book Reviews: Composers).(Book Review)

The Early Works of Niels W. Gade: In Search of the Poetic. By Anna Harwell Celenza. Aldershot, Hant, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2001. [xvi, 251 p. ISBN 0-754-60401-2. $74.95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.

Along with the "new" and the "critical" musicologies of the last two decades, another movement has arisen which might best be described as "advocative" musicology. Like their colleagues in the aforementioned camps, advocative musicologists are dedicated revisionists whose approaches appear to have been inspired by those of third world, minority, or feminist writers. And like them, these crusaders oppose the musicological status quo, targeting firmly entrenched ideas whose origins are obscure and whose natures are repressive, notions which have been sustained so long by unquestioning scholarship and popular opinion that they seem to have become generally accepted as fact.

Advocative musicologists, however, differ from their confreres in that their motivation tends to be more personal than political or cultural. They battle on behalf of composers who have been burdened with misleading images or who have been marginalized, unjustly looked down on, or associated with inappropriate interpretive ideologies. Recognizing these, to them, unacceptable misconceptions, advocative musicologists counter with thorough reimagination and systematic research on original documents, marshaling historical evidence and musical analysis contextualized by sociology and aesthetics.

This recent monograph by Anna Harwell Celenza stands out as a fine example of such advocative musicology. Celenza champions the cause of Niels Gade (1817-1890), a prolific composer who was the leading figure in Denmark's musical landscape during the second half of the nineteenth century, yet remains insufficiently known and understood outside his country today. Her book, The Early Works of Niels W. Gade: In Search of the Poetic, which is the first in-depth study of the composer's life and music available in English, offers a detailed sketch of the artist and traces the genesis and early development of his style.

Nine chapters are divided into three parts. Part 1, "The Formative Years (1817-38)," establishes essential historical and cultural context. Its first chapter, "Childhood and Early Musical Training," introduces Gade, giving us a good sense of his personality and the circumstances of his upbringing. In addition, it describes the events and influences that shaped his artistic identity. Among the latter was the music criticism of Robert Schumann. Readers may be surprised to learn that shortly after the appearance of the first issues of Schumann's Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik in 1834, Gade and others in Copenhagen were quick to take notice. Celenza writes,

Here the Davidsbund of Schumann's imagination eventually inspired the creation of a 'real' Davidsbund that included the city's most promising musicians, actors, and dancers. (p. 13)

Chapter 2, "Emergence as a Serious Composer," traces the beginnings of Gade's professional career as a violinist and his initial efforts at composition. Prompted by his teacher, A. P. Berggreen, Gade made arrangements of Danish folk songs and even incorporated traditional melodies into some incidental music. Yet, he ultimately found himself drawn away from such prosaic sources to the more personal, subjective stimuli he termed "poetic."