ABSTRACT
Danish composer Paul von Klenau (1883-1946), who left his native country in 1902, enjoyed a long and distinguished career as composer, conductor and polemicist in Germany before returning to Denmark for personal and health reasons in 1939, where he remained until his death in 1946. In Germany, he was well-known not least for his operas and after the Nazi takeover in 1933 he maintained a good relationship with the German music establishment. Such an association provoked hostility in Denmark which was intensified following the German occupation of the country and still persists up to the present day. In 2001, a totally unknown Ninth Symphony by Klenau for orchestra, chorus and four soloists was discovered in private ownership in Vienna (probably the largest symphony written by a Danish composer). The work was written in 1945 and 1946, begun a few months before the end of the war. It is a linking of a four-movement symphony and a four-movement (war?) requiem to a liturgical requiem text and a free text of unknown provenance. In this chapter, Klenau’s Ninth is discussed in musical and philological terms against the background of its first performance in March 2014 and in relation to Klenau’s reception as an ‘outsider’ in Denmark because of his alleged Nazi sympathies.
