Carl Nielsen - Symphony No. 2 "The Four Temperaments"), Op. 16 (1902)

Carl August Nielsen (9 June 1865 - 3 October 1931) was a Danish composer, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his country's most prominent composer.
Symphony No. 2 "The Four Temperaments", Op. 16 (1901-02)
Dedicated to Ferruccio Busoni
1. Allegro collerico
2. Allegro comodo e flemmatico
3. Andante malincolico
4. Allegro sanguineo
San Francisco Symphony conducted by Herbert Blomstedt
Description by Rovi Staff [-]
Nielsen's Symphony No. 2, Op. 16 (1901-02) was inspired by a depiction of the four temperaments or "humours" -- long used to describe one's personality and physical characteristics -- on the wall of a village inn on the Danish island of Sjaeland. The composer fashioned a symphony based on the temperaments, cautioning that his treatment of them was not intended to be programmatic; instead, these four states merely provide an outline of the moods in the work. Nielsen described the musical depictions in the symphony's four movements thus: "... [T]he impetuous (Allegro collerico), the indolent (Allegro flemmatico), the melancholy (Andante malincolico) and the cheerful (Allegro sanguino). But the impetuous man can have his milder moments, the melancholy man his impetuous or brighter ones, and the boisterous, cheerful man can become a little contemplative, even quite serious -- but only for a little while. The lazy, indolent man, on the other hand, only emerges from his phlegmatic state with the greatest of difficulty, so this movement is both brief (he can't be bothered) and uniform in its progress."
In addition to displaying the composer's masterful talent for sonic portraiture, the symphony also demonstrates one of Nielsen's highly individual techniques, which he called "progressive tonality": a series of adventurous modulations that bypass the formal key relationships characteristic of most Classical and Romantic symphonies. Nevertheless, the influence of Brahms is clearly in evidence, especially in the third movement. After a few early performance, the symphony was not often heard until the 1960s, when Nielsen's genius began to receive wider recognition.