wondrous peace of sleep." Dagens Nyheder went so far as to say that the composer "actually seems to want to make his music cacophonous", while Københavns Adresseavis comments that "the composer’s striving to find fully realistic expression in music, combined with his penchant for originality, leads him into a chaos of distorted, disharmonic note combinations." But Vort Land seems to have understood Nielsen's intentions: "All credit must go to this music, because it testifies to both an urge towards independence and a decided honesty. And at bottom this choral work possesses a shuddering authenticity which can only move, because it comes from a true artist’s heart..." When the work was subsequently performed at a concert of Nielsen's works on 12 November 1905, Socialdemokraten called the piece "one of Carl Nielsen’s most beautiful works" but Charles Kjerulf, writing in Politiken is far more critical: "The gravest charge against the composer in this respect was in the central section of Søvnen, the one that depicts the nightmare. This mare rides along literally in the wildest hunt of the falsest notes, which the choir cannot even hit. Every instant one gets different false notes instead, but it has no great influence on the result. During the minutes such a movement lasts, even the most well-intentioned Danish music-lover is on the point of renouncing Carl Nielsen and all his works." When the work was performed some 13 years later on 11 February 1918, Dagbladet wrote: "Søvnen probably sounded rather inoffensive to those who have become used to the far freer and more personal expression that Carl Nielsen’s imagination finds today; all the same it is such a beautiful and evocative work that one was glad to see it unearthed from the archives." Music Søvnen is a work in three movements. The first and last describe in which the composer's elysian Brahmsian style is present depict gentle and restful sleep free of worry. This blissfulness is contrasted in the middle movement by an eldritch cabalistic rite revealing the terror of a nightmare that is associated with claustrophobia and other fears of being held captive, or falling down a deep chasm. The cantata ends in a murmurous glow. Nielsen's study of the music of Max Reger greatly influenced this composition, particularly the nightmare section. References Compositions by Carl Nielsen Cantatas 1904 compositions