Friedrich Kuhlau (1786 – 1832): Elverhøj
Although most people outside of Denmark have probably never heard of Elverhøj, for most Danes the work is a part of their cultural DNA. A national pageant, commissioned by Frederik VI of Denmark in 1828, it was a great hit in its day, and has rarely been out of favour since.
In Copenhagen’s National Theatre alone it has been performed on more than a thousand occasions. For a long time, it was the first work children were taken to see at the theatre. It has twice been made into a movie (in 1910 and 1939), while its overture was memorably used during a 1970s crime-heist comedy, now regarded as one of the most iconic scenes in Danish film.
The music that accompanies the pageant has proved to be equally popular. Part of it was even made into one of the country’s national anthems. And yet the composer of this quintessentially Danish work was a German émigré who spoke little of his adopted country’s language. For good measure, he made extensive use of Swedish folk-tunes throughout its score.
Perhaps such details are typical of Elverhøj’s composer, Friedrich Kuhlau, an artistic figure who can be hard to pin down. He became something an establishment figure in Denmark and yet remained a man apart in other ways. He never married or appeared to have any romantic connections to speak of – a contemporary remarked that “he lacked many of the relationships and motives that are most congenial and encouraging to mankind. Music was his truest, almost his only female companion through the reefs of life”.
Unlike so many others involved in Copenhagen’s cultural life, Kuhlau never lived within the city’s old walls, always preferring to reside in the nearby town of Lyngby. He could be non-conformist and somewhat austere. One of his favourite pastimes was writing canons (where the same melody is simultaneously played by several different parts but with different starting-points) – he loved nothing more than setting canonic puzzles for musical friends. But he was also a sociable man, a bon viveur who enjoyed good food, fine wine and expensive cigars. Against the odds, he made a success out of a life often characterized by struggle, as well as bouts of genuine ill-fortune.
Some of that ill-fortune would mark his early life in Uelzen, Lower Saxony. Although his father worked as a professional oboist in a military band, his salary was so poor that the family often struggled to afford the basics. At the age of nine, Friedrich was sent out by his mother on a snowy night to collect some water from the town fountain. Along the way, he slipped on some ice, falling on the jug he was carrying which then shattered into his face. During a long and painful convalescence (with his injuries eventually leaving him blinded in one eye) he found consolation in playing a piano which his parents had pushed up against his bed. Once he had recovered, his parents scraped together enough money to provide him his first piano lessons.
It wasn’t long before Friedrich was flourishing at his musical studies, even as he was forced to contribute to his own upkeep. While still at school, he would often spend his evenings out on the streets with a collection tin, earning money from passers-by for his singing.
At the age of 15, he moved to Hamburg, taking further piano tuition while eking out a living from performing and from the publication of some of his earliest compositions. More ill-fortune arrived in the shape of Napoleon, who annexed the German city in 1804 and remained for the next decade. Despite his disability, Kuhlau was eventually summoned to serve in the French army, at which point he decided he’d had enough. Having convinced the authorities he was off on a concert tour, he promptly fled to Copenhagen, arriving under an assumed name in 1810. For the first few weeks he hid himself indoors in the Danish capital, afraid that the French military might come looking for him.
Kuhlau never again lived in the land of his birth. But his forced relocation would turn out surprisingly well. Having eventually emerged from hiding, he was soon giving his debut piano recital in Copenhagen (including the premiere of a new Piano Concerto he had written) and finding himself warmly welcomed by his adopted country.
In fairness, Denmark had long adopted an open-door policy towards talented German musicians arriving from the south. But Kuhlau would make a sufficiently good impression that he was soon attracting royal attention. In 1813 he was granted both Danish citizenship and appointed Royal Court Musician by Frederik VI – his duties included writing official cantatas plus one opera every second year.
Prestigious the position might have been, but it was also unpaid. There were also serious question marks over the state of the country Kuhlau now found himself in. Denmark’s economy had been flattened by a recent, disastrous war with the British, while it had also just lost its old sovereign rule over Norway.
It might have looked as if Kuhlau had arrived at the worst possible moment. But even as the country stagnated politically, its cultural life was about to blossom as never before. The first half of the nineteenth century, an era now known as Denmark’s Golden Age, would produce a particularly rich seam of artists and intellectuals, including the well-connected, influential sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, the painter Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (a man who practically created a Danish art school in the 1820s), the famous theologian and existentialist philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, and that quirky purveyor of literary fairytales, HC Andersen.
But the Danish Golden Age would also be the age of Friedrich Kuhlau, and he would handsomely repay the hospitality of his adopted country. He began by attempting to revive Denmark’s flagging operatic tradition, which at that time was largely stuck in pre-Mozart repertoire. Kuhlau’s 1813 Singspiel, Røverborgen (The Robbers’ Castle), was a complete breath of fresh air, bringing with it dazzling melodies and brilliant, pictorial orchestration, owing much to recent developments in French Opéra-comique. The work was a great success at its first performance.
Kuhlau’s career then stalled, partly because his operatic efforts had annoyed several more traditionally-minded figures on the Copenhagen opera scene (Kuhlau would get his revenge by writing satirical canons about them). Kuhlau’s subsequent offerings in the genre were deemed to be too long or too undramatic, sometimes both. His undeniably charming Lulu (1824) was criticized for using a plotline too similar to that of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
Kuhlau was already in his forties by the time the opportunity came to write the music for which he would be always remembered. Frederik VI’s daughter was getting married in November 1828, and the king wanted a pageant to celebrate the occasion. While poet and playwright, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, was drafted in to write a dramatic, fantastical comedy, Kuhlau was asked to provide incidental music to accompany the action.
Consisting of five acts, Elverhøj’’s complicated plot involves a land of mysterious elves alongside, rather incongruously, one of Denmark’s most famous and charismatic Renaissance kings, Christian IV. Christian arrives at his god-daughter’s wedding and discovers that nothing – not even his goddaughter’s identity – is quite what it appears. His detective-like investigation takes him to a mysterious land known as Elverhøj (Elves’ Hill), from which he is officially forbidden. Using his clear-sighted, regal wisdom (in contrast with the native elves’ constant scheming and obfuscation), Christian gradually sorts out a mystery involving two young girls from either end of the social scale, whose identities had been swapped at birth.
Kuhlau’s hour-long score which accompanies the music consists of operatic songs, as well several instrumental dance pieces and a lively, colourful overture* which opens the piece. The grandiose melody featured at the end of the overture was later made into the national anthem “Kong Christian stod ved højen mast” (King Christian Stood by the Lofty Mast).
*The overture was also famously choreographed into a comic scene from the 1976 film, Olsen-banden ser rødt (The Olsen Gang Sees Red). A gang of thieves break into the basement of Copenhagen’s National Theatre (in search of a stashed antique) at the same time as Elverhøj’s overture is being performed. With orchestral score to hand, the musically literate criminals synchronize their drilling and dynamite explosions in perfect time to cymbal clashes, drum rolls and dramatic tutti chords from the orchestra, so as to escape detection.
King Frederik VI was so pleased after the first performance of Elverhøj that he rewarded the work’s two co-creators handsomely. Kuhlau’s share was 400 rigsdaler and a position of honorary professor at the National Theatre.
The success that Kuhlau enjoyed from the work should have marked the beginning of the high point of his career. Sadly, and quite unexpectedly, it would prove to be his swansong. The ill-luck that had dogged his early years now returned in a vengeance.
His finances, never secure at the best of times, were in trouble again by the end of the 1820s. In 1830, he suffered the heartache of losing both of his parents in quick succession (Kuhlau had for many years been supporting them with his earnings). Then a fire swept through his home in Lyngby in early 1831, destroying most of his possessions, including all of his unpublished manuscripts. At home at the time, Kulhau survived the blaze but only just. He suffered serious smoke inhalation which would gravely undermine his health and lead to his early death a year or so later at the age of 45.
He had done just enough to secure his legacy and future reputation in Denmark (he would be afforded a full state funeral by his adopted country, attended by thousands). It was also a blessing that he had managed to get so much of his music into print during his lifetime. Despite the disastrous fire, more than two hundred of his works survive.
Suggestions for further listening
A full recording of Elverhøj can be found here.
Aside from his operas, Kuhlau also wrote a good deal of music for piano, flute and chamber ensembles.
Beethoven was a major inspiration on the formative part of his career – Kuhlau’s Piano Concerto in C Major (1810) is clearly modeled on Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto (written in the same key), while retaining its own individual freshness and charm. Beethoven’s influence is also discernible in some of Kuhlau’s chamber music, such as his fine Piano Quartet in G Minor op 108 (1829). Kuhlau would do much to introduce the older man’s music to Danish audiences, appearing as a soloist in all five of Beethoven’s piano concertos.
The two composers eventually became good friends in the 1820s, on familiar enough terms to share a few merry and bibulous evenings. On one occasion, Beethoven took up one of Kuhlau’s musical challenges, writing a short canon to words that affectionately punned Kuhlau’s name.
Outside of Denmark, Kuhlau is best known for his prodigious output of flute music, even as this has led to the mistaken belief, still held by many today, that he played the instrument to a professional standard.
That was far from the case, as Kuhlau himself tried to clarify during his lifetime: “I play this instrument [the flute] very little, but I know it thoroughly” he once said. He wrote so much for the instrument because it was in-demand and publishers paid well for new repertoire. His best works in the genre (which are all quite classical in style) include his Three Flute Quintets op 51 and his Flute Sonata op 69.
Kuhlau’s habit of finding flute music a rewarding occupation went back to his childhood. One of his neighbours, a herbalist and amateur flautist, would reward the young boy with almonds and raisins every time he wrote a new piece for his instrument.