Howard Hanson’s First Symphony is known as the “Nordic” for it evokes the sounds and feeling of the cold and winds of Scandinavia.
Like many folks in his hometown of Wahoo, Nebraska, he was proud of his Swedish heritage, and he knew from experience about brutal cold and biting wind.
The orchestration paints this world with striking clarity.
Piccolos slice through the texture like high, swirling gusts. Flutes and clarinets stretch out long, icy lines that suggest frozen expanses. The strings unleash sudden, turbulent storms—rapid, tense scales whipping across the musical horizon—while brass and lower strings anchor the scene with a cold, resonant weight.
Those sounds feel familiar to anyone in the Great Lakes region. Whistling occurs when air rushes over edges or through narrow gaps, setting up vibrations that resonate at different pitches.
Fast-moving air produces shifting frequencies, and when it strikes surfaces of various shapes, the result can be a moan, a hum, or a piercing whistle.
Musical instruments rely on the same physics, which is why Hanson’s depiction of wind feels so instinctive and true.
Ironically, Hanson composed this symphony not in a cold climate but in sunlit Italy while studying orchestration with Ottorino Respighi. Yet he insisted that his deepest influences were Scandinavian composers like Grieg and Sibelius.
The Nordic shows similarities to our beloved Romantic Symphony, but its spirit lies in the cold, wind‑swept landscapes of Nebraska, the Great Lakes, and, most of all, the Nordic countries of Hanson’s ancestors.
