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Miguel Serrano

Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, known as Miguel Serrano (10 September 1917 – 28 February 2009), was a Chilean diplomat, writer, occultist, and fascist activist. A Nazi sympathiser in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he later became a prominent figure in the neo-Nazi movement as an exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism.

Born to a wealthy Chilean family of European descent, Serrano was orphaned as a child and raised by his grandmother. After an education at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, he developed an interest in writing and far-right politics, allying himself with the National Socialist Movement of Chile. During the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral until 1943, Serrano campaigned in support of Nazi Germany and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories through his own fortnightly publication, La Nueva Edad. In 1942, he joined an occult order founded by a German migrant which combined pro-Nazi sentiment with ceremonial magic and kundalini yoga. It presented the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as a spiritual adept who had incarnated to Earth as a savior of the Aryan race and who would lead humanity out of a dark age known as the Kali Yuga. Serrano became convinced that Hitler had not died in 1945 but had secretly survived and was living in Antarctica. After visiting Antarctica, Serrano travelled to Germany and then Switzerland, where he met the novelist Hermann Hesse and psychoanalyst Carl Jung; in 1965, he published a reminiscence of his time with the pair.

In 1953, Serrano joined the Chilean diplomatic corps and was stationed in India until 1963, where he took a keen interest in Hinduism and wrote several books. He was later made ambassador to Yugoslavia and then Austria, and while in Europe made contacts with various former Nazis and other far-rightists living on the continent. Following Chile's election of a Marxist President, Salvador Allende, Serrano was dismissed from the diplomatic service in 1970. After Allende was ousted in a coup and Augusto Pinochet took power, Serrano returned to Chile in 1973. He became a prominent organiser in the Chilean neo-Nazi movement, holding annual celebrations of Hitler's birthday, organising a neo-Nazi rally in Santiago, and producing a neo-Nazi political manifesto. He wrote a trilogy of books on Hitler in which he outlined his view of the Nazi leader as an avatar. He remained in contact with neo-Nazis elsewhere in the world and gave interviews to various foreign far-right publications.

In 2008, Serrano was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (Premio a la Trayectoria) from the Universidad Mayor of Santiago. After Savitri Devi, he has been considered the most prominent exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism within the neo-Nazi movement. In that movement, he gained respect for his devotion to the cause even among neo-Nazis who regarded his ideas as far-fetched.

Childhood: 1917–1938
Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández was born on 10 September 1917. On his maternal line, he was descended from the countesses of Sierra Bella. His mother, Berta Fernández Fernández, died when Serrano was five years old, while his father, Diego Serrano Manterola, died three years later. He had two younger brothers and a sister, who were then all raised by his paternal grandmother, Fresia Manterola de Serrano, moving between a Santiago townhouse and a 17th-century country mansion in the Claro Valley.

Between 1929 and 1934, he studied at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana. The school had been heavily influenced by Prussian staff members who had arrived in the late 19th century, with Serrano attributing his later Germanophilia to this early exposure to German culture. At the school he moved in literary circles. A close friend of his was Hector Barreto, a poet and socialist. Aged 18, Barreto was killed in a brawl with uniformed Nacistas, members of the National Socialist Movement of Chile, a fascist group inspired by the example of the Nazi Party in Germany. This event encouraged Serrano's involvement in left-wing politics as he began to take an interest in Marxism and the Chilean Marxist movement. He wrote articles for leftist journals like Sobre la marcha, La Hora, and Frente Popular. His uncle, the poet Vicente Huidobro, encouraged him to join the left-wing Republicans in the ongoing Spanish Civil War, but he did not do so.

Nazism and occultism: 1939–1952
Serrano grew critical of Marxism and left-wing politics, instead being drawn to the Nacistas after their failed coup in September 1938. By July 1939, Serrano was publicly associating himself with the Nacista movement, now organised as the Popular Socialist Vanguard. He began writing for their journal, Trabajo, and accompanied their leader, Jorge González von Marées, on his speaking tours across Chile. At the outbreak of the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral, Serrano expressed support for Nazi Germany; from July 1941 he launched a fortnightly pro-Nazi publication, La Nueva Edad. Among the magazine's regular contributors were the journalist René Arriagada, General Francisco Javier Díaz, and Hugo Gallo, who was the cultural attaché at the Italian Embassy. Through this work, Serrano developed close links with the German Embassy in Chile and its personnel.

Although Serrano had initially shown little interest in Nazi attitudes towards Jewish people, he became increasingly interested in antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews manipulating world events. Two Chilean artists gave him a Spanish language translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a text purporting to expose this alleged international Jewish conspiracy. According to the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, it was this discovery of the Protocols which "marked a crucial point in the development of Serrano's Nazism". From November 1941, he began printing excerpts from the Protocols in La Nueva Edad.

Serrano also developed an interest in forms of religious or spiritual practice, including both Western esotericism and Hinduism. In late 1941, Gallo suggested that Serrano could support the German and Italian war effort not just through his publications, but also on the etheric Inner Planes, introducing him to an esoteric order sympathetic to Nazism. Serrano later claimed that this order had been founded near the start of the 20th century by a German migrant known as "F. K." Serrano was initiated into the group in February 1942.

F. K. claimed that the group owed its allegiance to a secretive Brahmin elite who resided in the Himalayas. It practiced combined kundalini yoga with ceremonial magic and expressed a pro-Nazi position. It espoused a belief in an astral body which could be awakened through various rituals and meditative practices. The group revered the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as the savior of an Aryan race and presented him as a shudibudishvabhaba, an initiate of immense willpower who had voluntarily incarnated onto Earth to assist in the overthrow of the Kali Yuga, a present dark age for humanity. F. K. claimed that through the astral realm, he was able to establish a connection with Hitler, during which they had various conversations.

As the Second World War ended in defeat for Nazi Germany in 1945, Serrano was convinced that Hitler had not committed suicide in Berlin as was claimed by the victorious Allies. Instead, Serrano believed that Hitler had escaped and was living in Antarctica, either in a secluded warm environment on the continent or under the ice cap itself. This idea had been suggested to him by F. K.—who claimed that he remained in astral contact with Hitler—but was also widely rumoured in the Latin American press. In 1947, Ladislao Szabó's book Hitler est vivo had been published, exerting an influence on Serrano. Szabó's book alleged that a U-boat convoy had taken Hitler to safety in Queen Maud Land. In 1947–48, Serrano travelled to Antarctica as a journalist with the Chilean Army. In 1948, he wrote his own short book, La Antártica y otros Mitos, which repeated Szabó's claims about Hitler's survival.

In 1951, Serrano travelled to Europe, and in Germany visited various sites associated with the Nazi Party, including Hitler's Berlin bunker, Hitler's Berghof home, and Spandau Prison, where Rudolf Hess and other prominent Nazis were then imprisoned. During this trip he also visited Switzerland, where he met and befriended the writer Hermann Hesse and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

Diplomatic career: 1953–1970

In 1953, Serrano—following a number of other family members—joined the Chilean diplomatic corps. He hoped to gain a posting to India, a land which he considered to be a source of great spiritual truths. He was successful in this, and remained in India until 1962. In this period, he visited many Hindu temples and searched for evidence of the secretive Brahmanical order into which F. K. had alleged initiation. In his role as a diplomat, he met various prominent figures, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and the 14th Dalai Lama. It was while in India that he wrote and published two books: The Visits of the Queen of Sheba (1960), which had a preface by Jung, and The Serpent of Paradise (1963), which discussed his experiences in the country. Serrano had engaged in further correspondence with Jung between 1957 and 1961. In 1965 his book, C. J. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships, was published.

Leaving India, from 1962 to 1964 he was posted as the Chilean ambassador to Yugoslavia. From 1964 to 1970 he then served as his country's ambassador to Austria, for which he lived in Vienna. During the latter posting, he also represented Chile at the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, both of which were based in Vienna. While in Europe, he had sought out a number of individuals linked to Nazism and to the far-right more broadly; these included visits to the Ahnenerbe co-founder Herman Wirth, the designer and occultist Wilhelm Landig, the poet Ezra Pound, and the Traditionalist thinker Julius Evola. He established friendships with a number of individuals involved in the old Nazi movement, including Léon Degrelle, Otto Skorzeny, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Marc "Saint-Loup" Augier, and Hanna Reitsch. He also discussed issues with the ancient astronaut proponent Robert Charroux.

In the 1970 Chilean presidential election, the Socialist Salvador Allende was elected president. Later that year, Serrano was dropped from the country's diplomatic service. Rather than returning to Chile, he moved to Switzerland, renting an apartment in the Casa Camuzzi—where Hesse had lived from 1912 to 1931—at Montagnola in the Swiss Ticino.

Later life: 1973–2009
The loss of his diplomatic position, coupled with the establishment of a Marxist government in Chile, led Serrano to take a revived interest in Nazism. He began reading a number of recently published books that purported to identify links between Nazism and occultism. In 1973, his book El/Ella: Book of Magic Love was published. After Allende was ousted in a September 1973 coup and a right-wing military regime under Augusto Pinochet took power, Serrano returned to Chile. He nevertheless found that the Pinochet administration was not interested in his neo-Nazi and Esoteric Hitlerist ideas. In 1980, his book Nos: A Book of the Resurrection was published, a form of autobiography influenced by Jungian psychology. He also produced a trio of books that came to be known as his "Hitler Trilogy": El Cordón Dorado: Hitlerismo Esotérico (1978), Adolf Hitler, el Ultimo Avatãra (1984), and Manú: "Por el hombre que vendra" (1991).

He increasingly associated with old Nazis living in Chile as well as with their neo-Nazi sympathisers. In May 1984 he attended the funeral of Walter Rauff—a member of the Waffen SS who had played a role in organising the early stages of the Holocaust and who had fled to Chile after the Second World War—and there gave the Nazi salute. In 1986 he published a political manifesto for Nazism in the Southern Cone of South America. He began organising annual celebrations of Hitler's birthday at a rural retreat in Chile. In September 1993, he led a neo-Nazi rally in Santiago—dressed in what had become his trademark black leather coat—in honor of the Nazi Rudolf Hess and the Nacistas summarily executed by Chilean police officers following their 1938 coup attempt. As well as playing a role in organising the Chilean neo-Nazi movement, Serrano maintained correspondences with neo-Nazis elsewhere in the world, such as the American Matt Koehl.

Serrano was the subject of an extensive interview in the Greek far-right magazine ΤΟ ΑΝΤΙΔΟΤΟ. Here, he sought to engage a younger audience by contrasting his millennial vision of Nazism with his perception of the corruption of modern liberalism. He was also the subject of a feature in The Flaming Sword, a magazine issued by the Black Order, a neo-Nazi Satanist group established by the New Zealander Kerry Bolton. Bolton had also written his own study of Serrano's Esoteric Hitlerism, and the Black Order's occult framework was influenced by Serrano's ideas. Despite the interest that Nazi Satanists took in Serrano's work, he was critical of attempts to combine Satanism with Nazism, in 2001 stating that individuals who did so "will only damage our sacred fight with all the kookiness from California, like Satanism". He added that "Many Satanists do not know that they are manipulated, psychotronically, in fact hypnotized, when not infiltrated by the CIA, Mossad and other such secret organisations."

By the early 1990s, Serrano's Esoteric Hitlerist ideas were spreading among modern Pagans, gaining particular popularity among far-right members of the Pagan religion of Heathenry in the United States. The American Heathen Katja Lane of the Wotansvolk group secured the rights to publish English translations of Serrano's work, with Wotansvolk becoming the main promoter of Serrano's writings in the Anglophone world through their 14 Word Press. One of the prominent far-right Heathens to be influenced by Serrano's ideas was Jost Turner. Another American occultist to cite an influence from Serrano's ideas was Michael Moynihan, who also cited having been influenced by Evola, Muammar Gaddafi, Michael Bakunin, and James Mason.

In 1994, Serrano, a close friend of Degrelle, wrote a book dedicated to him titled Nuestro Honor Se Llama Lealtad. Serrano had three children with his first wife. On 28 February 2009,   Serrano died after suffering a stroke in his apartment in the Santa Lucía Hill sector of Santiago, the capital. During his funeral at the General Cemetery, the procession paused at Irene Klatt Getta's crypt, where his coffin and the crowd of over 100 people stopped momentarily before continuing.

Personal life
At the age of 25, Serrano married Carmen Rosselot Bordeau on September 11, 1942, in Santiago. They had their first son, José Miguel Diego, in 1943. He currently works as a journalist for La Tercera newspaper. In 1944, their daughter Carmen was born, and in 1948, they had another son, Cristián Alvaro. In 1951, Serrano met Irene Klatt Getta in Santiago, who played a significant role in his life and to whom he dedicated a large part of his work. However, in 1952, Irene died. Serrano expressed, "From that day, I destroyed everything, any possibility of another love like that, even my own marriage. I have never been able to love anyone like Irene. I only loved Irene."

According to Andrea Sierra's article in El Mercurio, Serrano referred to Irene as "Allouine" and considered her the only person he truly loved. In 1985, Carmen Rosselot Bordeau died. Sierra's article mentions Rosario Duarte as Serrano's first wife, while the official Serrano website does not mention her but acknowledges Serrano's marriage to Carmen Rosselot Bordeau and a subsequent marriage to María Isabel Pérez Quintela.

In 2000, Serrano married his second wife, María Isabel Pérez Quintela, also known as Sabela P. Quintela, who currently serves as his literary executor. The wedding took place in Valparaíso. Following Serrano's death, Quintela inherited two apartments in Santa Lucía Street, Santiago, in front of Santa Lucía Hill: Santa Lucía 282, apartment 71, and Santa Lucía 382, 6 "C". Sabela first met Serrano in Spain in 1989 and moved to Chile in 1994. During those years, they shared a house in Valparaíso located at Avenida Alemania 5558.

Reception and legacy
The historian of religion Mattias Gardell described Serrano as "one of the most important occult fascist ideologues in the Spanish-speaking world". The historian of religion Arthur Versluis noted that Serrano was "the most important figure" in esoteric Hitlerism after Savitri Devi.

According to Goodrick-Clarke, Serrano's "mystical Nazism" was "a major example of the Thulean mythology's successful migration to South America in the post-war period". Goodrick-Clarke thought it "likely that old Nazis welcome[d] Serrano's enthusiasm and unswerving loyalty to their hero, Adolf Hitler", even if they found the Esoteric Hitlerist mythology that he promoted to be farfetched. Conversely, Goodrick-Clarke thought, for younger neo-Nazis, "a coloring of pop mythology, Hinduism, and extraterrestrial Aryan gods adds sensational appeal to the powerful myths of elitism, planetary destiny and the cosmic conspiracy of the Jews."

The historian Rafael Videla Eissman proposed that a plaque commemorating Serrano be erected on the western side of the Cerro Santa Lucía, although in June 2014 the municipality of Santiago rejected the idea. In February 2016, the newspaper La Segunda published an interview with Serrano's grandson, Sebastián Araya, in which he discussed his relationship with his grandfather. In December 2017, the author and journalist Gonzalo León published a fictionalized novelisation of Serrano's life.

Ideas
Serrano termed his philosophy Esoteric Hitlerism, which he has described as a new religious faith "able to change the materialistic man of today into a new idealistic hero", and also as "much more than a religion: It is a way to transmute a hero into God."

In 1984 he published his 643-page tome, Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra (Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar), which is dedicated "To the glory of the Führer, Adolf Hitler". In this arcane work, Serrano unfolds his ultimate philosophical testament through elaborate esoteric and mythological symbolism. He insists that there has been a vast historical conspiracy to conceal the origins of evolved humankind. Serrano's epic vista opens with extragalactic beings who founded the First Hyperborea, a terrestrial but non-physical realm, which was neither geographically limited nor bound by the circles of reincarnation. The Hyperboreans were asexual and reproduced through "plasmic emanations" from their ethereal bodies; the Vril power was theirs to command, the light of the Black Sun coursed through their veins and they saw with the third eye. Serrano contends that the last documents relating to them were destroyed along with the Alexandrian Library, and that, latterly, these beings have been misunderstood as extraterrestrials arriving in spaceships or UFOs. However, the First Hyperborea was immaterial and altogether outside our mechanistic universe.

The latter is under the jurisdiction of the Demiurge, an inferior godlet whose realm is the physical planet Earth. The Demiurge had created a bestial imitation of humanity in the form of proto-human "robots" like Neanderthal Man, and intentionally consigned his creatures to an endless cycle of involuntary reincarnation on the earthly plane to no higher purpose. The Hyperboreans recoiled in horror from this entrapment within the Demiurge's cycles. They themselves take the devayana, the Way of the Gods, at death and return to the earth (as Bodhisattvas) only if they are willing.

Determined upon a heroic war to reclaim the Demiurge's deteriorating world, the Hyperboreans clothed themselves in material bodies and descended on to the Second Hyperborea, a ring-shaped continent around the North Pole. During this Golden Age or Satya Yuga, they magnanimously instructed the Demiurge's creations (the Black, Yellow and Red races native to the planet) and began to raise them above their animal condition. Then disaster struck; some of the Hyperboreans rebelled and intermingled their blood with the creatures of the Demiurge, and through this transgression Paradise was lost. Serrano refers to Genesis 6.4: "the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them". By diluting the divine blood, the primordial miscegenation accelerated the process of material decay. This was reflected in outward catastrophes and the North and South Poles reversed positions as a result of the fall of a comet or moon. The polar continent disappeared beneath the deluge and Hyperborea became invisible again. The Hyperboreans themselves survived, some taking refuge at the South Pole. Serrano regards the mysterious appearance of the fine and artistic Cro-Magnon Man in Europe as evidence of Hyperboreans driven southward by the Ice Age. In the then-fertile Gobi Desert, another group of exiled Hyperboreans established a fantastic civilization.

The world thus becomes the combat zone between the dwindling Hyperboreans and the Demiurge and his forces of entropy. But Serrano claims that the Golden Age can be reattained if the Hyperboreans' descendants, the Aryans, consciously repurify their blood to restore the divine blood-memory:

"'There is nothing more mysterious than blood. Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light. I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that – but not the light of the Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun, but of the light of the Black Sun, of the Green Ray.'"

title: Miguel Serrano


text:
Qu'Appelle River Dam

The Qu'appelle River Dam is the smaller of two embankment dams along the South Saskatchewan River that created Lake Diefenbaker in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The bigger of the two dams is Gardiner Dam, which is the largest embankment dam in Canada and one of the largest in the world. Construction of both dams began in 1959 and was completed in 1967. Lake Diefenbaker is the largest lake in southern Saskatchewan.

The dam is the source of the Qu'Appelle River and it keeps the flow of water down the river relatively constant. Formerly, the Qu'Appelle River dried up in many places every summer at the conclusion of the spring freshet from the Rocky Mountains. Constant, steady flows down the Qu'Appelle River are important as downstream there are several smaller dams and reservoirs that supply water for irrigation, industry (such as the Mosaic potash mine at Belle Plaine), and drinking water for cities such as Regina and Moose Jaw. The dam is 3100 m long, 27.4 m high, and, along with the Gardiner Dam, holds back a reservoir that contains 9400000 dam3 of water.

Qu'Appelle River
During the time of glaciation on North America, the retreating glacier would block the flow north and would force the water flow down the Qu'Appelle River. When the glaciers retreated further, water would then flow north. Before the Gardiner Dam was built, spring flows were high enough to allow water down the Qu'Appelle but would dry up later in the fall. Now as the Qu'Appelle Dam always retains the water of Lake Diefenbaker, water is released into the Qu'Appelle River in order to maintain flows throughout the entire year. This serves the farmers along the Qu'Appelle who use it for irrigation and watering their livestock.

There are multiple dams and lakes along the Qu'Appelle River as it meanders through the glacial meltwater-carved Qu'Appelle Valley en route to its mouth at the Assiniboine River in Manitoba. These lakes and dams provide a stable water source for consumption and recreation. Some of these include Eyebrow Lake, Buffalo Pound Lake, Craven Dam, the Fishing Lakes, Crooked Lake, and Round Lake.

Tourism and access
Public access to the Qu'Appelle Dam is from a scenic viewpoint that provides views of the dam itself, Lake Diefenbaker, and the Qu'Appelle Valley. A short road from Highway 19 leads to the viewpoint. Along the top of the dam runs the Canadian Pacific Railway; the dam was designed with this type of loading in mind.

Douglas Provincial Park (named after former premier of Saskatchewan Tommy Douglas) extends from the dam to the community of Mistusinne to the north. Lake Diefenbaker has over 800 km of shoreline and around the lake there are many communities, parks, and recreational facilities, such as campgrounds, beaches, golf courses, and marinas.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Qu'Appelle River Dam


text:
Clarinet Concerto (Nielsen)

Carl Nielsen's Concerto for Clarinet and orchestra, op. 57 [D.F.129] was written for Danish clarinetist Aage Oxenvad in 1928. The concerto is presented in one long movement, with four distinct theme groups.

History
In 1921, Nielsen heard the Copenhagen Wind Quintet rehearsing some music by Mozart. He was struck by the tonal beauty and musicianship of this group, and he soon became intimately acquainted with its members. That same year, he wrote his Wind Quintet expressly for this ensemble. The last movement of this work is a theme and variations depicting in music the personalities of the five players and their respective instruments, much in the manner that Elgar portrayed his friends in the Enigma Variations.

Nielsen planned to carry the idea further; he wanted to write a concerto for each of his five friends. Only two of these compositions ever came into being. For Gilbert Jespersen, who succeeded Paul Hagemann as flautist of the Copenhagen Quintet, he wrote his Flute Concerto in 1926; two years later, he composed his Clarinet Concerto for the group's clarinettist, Aage Oxenvad. The latter work, completed August 15, 1928, was first heard in a private concert at the summer home of Carl Johan Michaelsen, in Humlebaek, on September 14, with Oxenvad as soloist and Emil Telmányi conducting. The same performers gave the premiere in Copenhagen on October 11 of that same year, when it met with a decidedly mixed reception. Since that time, it has gained much wider acceptance.

The Clarinet Concerto was conceived during the most difficult period in Nielsen's life. He was sixty-three, and had achieved considerable renown throughout Scandinavia; yet he was disappointed that his music had not reached a wider audience, he was deeply concerned with the unsettled state of the world, and he knew that his days were numbered. Perhaps this accounts for the bitter struggle which occurs throughout this concerto—a war between the tonalities of F major and E major. Every time hostilities seem to be at an end, a snare drum incites the combatants to renewed conflict. Another explanation for this is that the clarinetist for whom he was writing the concerto had a bi-polar disorder. Therefore, the concerto was poking fun at his constant mood swings.

This is how things went according to sources close to Nielsen: Carl Nielsen’s friend Carl Johan Michaelsen had to urge him several times before he started composing a second concerto for a member of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet. This time it revolved around clarinettist Aage Oxenvad. Nielsen started composing in the spring of 1928. On 15 August he completed the score at Damgaard. Emil Telmányi had already started on an arrangement for piano for the benefit of Oxenvad, who grumbled that Nielsen must be able to play the clarinet since he had systematically used the notes that are most difficult to play.

The Concerto was performed for the first time on 14 September at a private concert in Carl Johan Michaelsen’s summer villa Højtofte, in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen. The soloist was Oxenvad, to whom the Concerto is dedicated. Twenty-two members of the Chapel Royal were conducted by Emil Telmányi. The first public performance took place in Copenhagen on 11 October with the same players, and received a generally positive reception. Politiken wrote:

“... he has liberated the soul of the clarinet, not only the wild animal aspect but also its special brand of ruthless poetry.... This work could hardly have found a more homogeneous interpretation. Oxenvad’s sonority is in tune with the trolls and the giants, and he has soul, a rough and stocky primordial force mixed with naive Danish mildness. Certainly Carl Nielsen must have had his particular clarinet sound in mind while composing this Concerto.”

Structure
Eschewing the large classical concerto form, Nielsen has cast the Clarinet Concerto in one continuous movement. It begins with a firm Allegretto un poco, relieved by a somewhat more songful second theme. There is much stormy strife between the soloist and the orchestra and between the two principal competing keys. This is followed by a Poco adagio, interrupted several times by quicker, more disturbed sections. The final part is an energetic Allegro vivace, but a return to the Adagio brings the work to what Robert Simpson calls an ending of "calm severity," with the key of F major ultimately triumphant.

In his admirably thorough study of Carl Nielsen and his music, Robert Simpson points out what inventive use the composer made of tonality, and this at a time when other composers threw it over for atonality.

Despite the storm and stress in the concerto, the composer has kept his forces down almost to chamber music proportions. In addition to the solo clarinet, the only other instruments called for in the score are two bassoons, two horns, snare drum and strings. Because of the prominence of the snare drum line in the piece, a snare drum is still called for in the piano reduction.

Celebration concert
The Clarinet Concerto was one of the three items chosen for the gala concert in Copenhagen celebrating the 150th anniversary of Carl Nielsen's birth. Accompanied by Danmark Radio's Symphony Orchestra conducted by Juanjo Mena, the soloist was the Finnish clarinetist Olli Leppäniemi (born 1980).

Recordings on 78RPM

 * Louis Cahuzac. Nielsen, Columbia LDX 7000-02 © 1947, (p) 1947

Recordings on LP

 * Louis Cahuzac. Nielsen, Columbia ML-2219 © 1947, (p) 1947
 * Josef Deak. Carl Nielsen, Turnabout Vox TV34261 © 1969, (p) 1969
 * Stanley Drucker. CBS 72639, Columbia MS-7028, (p) 1967
 * Ib Eriksson. clarinet Concerto, Decca LXT-2979, Decca ACL-292, London LL-1142 © 1954, (p) 1954
 * Benny Goodman. Nielsen..., RCA SB-6701, RCA LSC-2920 (p) 1966
 * John McCaw. Nielsen, Unicorn UNS-239 © 1971, (p) 1971
 * Albert Sandström. Clarinet Concerto, Primo 011 © 1979, (p) 1979
 * Kjell-Inge Stevensson. Nielsen, EMI SLS-5027 (c) 1975, (p) 1975
 * Kalev Velthut. Clarinet Concerto, Melodija C10 28491 002 © 1989

Recordings available on CD

 * Kevin Banks. Concerto, Naxos 8.554189 © 1998, (p) 1997
 * François Benda. Feuerwerke, FONO FSM FCD 97 212 © 1995, (p) 1995 (1993 recording)
 * François Benda. GENUIN GEN88128 © 2008, (p) 2008 (reissue of 1993 recording)
 * Walter Boeykens. Nielsen, Harmonia Mundi 901489 © 1994, (p) 1994
 * Louis Cahuzac. Nielsen, the Historic Recordings, Clarinet Classics cc0002 © 1992, (p) 1947
 * Philippe Cuper. Copland/Francaix/Nielsen, ADDA 581315 © 1993, (p) 1992
 * Stanley Drucker. The Royal Edition no 61 of 100, Sony Classical SMK 47599 © 1993 (p) 1967
 * Ib Eriksson. clarinet Concerto, Dutton Laboratories CDLXT 2505 (c) 1954, (p) 1954
 * Martin Fröst. Nielsen & Aho clarinet concertos, BIS SACD-1463 (c) 2007, (p) 2007
 * Benny Goodman. Nielsen..., RCA Classics (Classical Navigator 88) 74321 29255 2 (c) 1995, (p) 1966
 * Janet Hilton. Concertos, Chandos CHAN 8618, (c) 1988 (p) 1988
 * Kojo Kullervo. Nielsen/Eglund/Crusell, Finlandia 4509-95873-2 (c) 1993, (p) 1993
 * John Kruse. Nielsen, Kontrapunkt 32254 (c) 1997, (p) 1997
 * John McCaw. Nielsen, The concertos, Regis RRC1208, s.d. (re-issue of Unicorn 1971)
 * Spyros Mourikis. Nielsen, P2musik DR ISCR DK-QHA—98-001 (c) 1997 (p) 1997
 * Arne Møller. Nielsen, Classico CLASSCD 514 (in album CLASSCD 514–15) (c) 1965, (p) 1965
 * Robert Plane. Clarinet Concerto, BBC MM205 (c) 1999, (p) 1999
 * Håkan Rosengren. Clarinet Concerto, Sony SK 53 276 (c) 1991, (p) 1991
 * Olle Schill. Concerto, BIS CD-616 (in album CD-614-16) (c) 1985 (p) 1985
 * Kjell-Inge Stevensson. Nielsen, EMI Classics 0946 3 81503 2 9 (c) 1975, (p) 1975
 * Andreas Sundén. Carl Nielsen Solo Concertos, Daphne 1056 (c) 2018, (p) 2018
 * Richard Stoltzman. Lutoslawski/Nielsen/Prokofiev, RCA Victor Red Seal 09026-63836-2 (c) 2001, (p) 2001
 * Niels Thomsen. Nielsen, Chandos CHAN 8894, (c) 1990, (p) 1990
 * John Bruce Yeh. clarinet Concerto Centaur CRC 2024, (c) 1985, (p) 1985
 * Sabine Meyer. Carl Nielsen: Clarinet & Flute Concertos; Wind Quintet, Warner Classics, 2007
 * Sebastian Manz. "Nielsen & Lindberg Clarinet Concertos" Berlin Classics 0301351BC © 2020, (p) 2019

Recordings on SACD

 * Martin Fröst. Nielsen & Aho clarinet concertos, BIS SACD-1463 (c) 2007, (p) 2007

First recording

 * Louis Cahuzac, Nielsen, the Historic Recordings, Clarinet Classics cc0002 (c) 1992, (p) 1947

title: Clarinet Concerto (Nielsen)


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Ambilineality

Ambilineality is a form of kinship affiliation of cognatic descent that relies on self-defined affiliation within a given social system, meaning individuals have the choice to be affiliated with their mother's or father's group. Common features of societies that practice ambilineality are a shared set of land, communal responsibilities, and collective ownership of some segments of wealth and debt in their societies. This system of descent is distinct from more common genealogical structures in that rather than determining affiliation and descent using the standard determinants of biological and genealogical relation, it instead relies heavily on voluntary affiliation with one's group, oftentimes being determined by factors including residence.

Societies practicing ambilineal descent are especially common in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. Polynesian cultures and Micronesian cultures are often ambilineal, including, for example, Samoans, Māori, Hawaiians and people of the Gilbert Islands. The indigenous peoples of Northwestern North America are also followers of ambilineality; and it is also found among the Southern Yoruba people residing in West Africa.

Family
Ambilineality is a cognatic descent system in which individuals may be affiliated either to their father's or mother's group. This type of descent results in descent groups which are non-unilineal in the sense that descent passes either through women or men, contrary to unilineal descent, whether patrilineal or matrilineal. Affiliation to a descent group will be determined either by choice or by residence. In the latter case, children will belong to the descent group with whom their parents are living.

Property relations
Generally, an ambilineal descent group consists of known descendants who can trace their line of descent, through either the male or female line, to the individual who was given usage rights over the land.

The grantee's descendants have absolute usage rights to a portion of land. If they are residents, they are to be appointed to leadership and administration positions relating to the governance of the land. Those living descendants of the chosen ancestor who follow these claims to land comprise an ambilineal descent group with corporate interests in the land granted to the ancestor.

Similarly, inheritance is acquired through mother and father and property is transmitted through both sons and daughters, as all genders have the right to inheritance.

Kinship system
As a kinship system, ambilineality uses genealogy to trace descent either through the mother or the father. There is no set order in an ambilineal system to which the last name is chosen, and individuals may use both parents as links to a kin. In several cultures, such as the Tiwa, the choice of whether to associate with the male or female family is a personal decision.

The choice of which familial line to trace descent may be influenced by culture. Societies may have a law or cultural customs determining whether to trace descent through the mother or father for a child's surname. This choice and tradition influences practices of the culture regarding which kin to associate with. Emphasis on descent through the female line came about because of people's interest in whitening their lineage since Brazilian women frequently married white European immigrants. Brazil did have an ambilineal system, but there was an underlying matrilineal emphasis. This was particularly common in the first hundred years of European colonization, particularly in Brazil. It was due to the Iberian concept of “purity of blood” (Spanish: limpieza de sangre) and their dislike of “infected” races such as Jews or Moors.

Social functions
In an ambilineal descent system the members can choose and change their affiliation or clan. This means that membership in an ambilineal group is associated with more freedom and is less binding and restricting than in unilineal descent groups. The flexibility of the descent group enables people to exercise a greater choice in their behavior towards kinsmen, especially distant kins. Furthermore, a person can choose whether or not they will honor their group responsibilities.

The ambilineal system also gives way to a more variable group membership and a more flexible group structure. Oftentimes people use the ability of choice to realign themselves with the more powerful or higher status option. For example, in the Togan people of the Northern Gilbert Islands it is common for a couple, with differing social status, to join the descent group with the higher status.

Naming system/surnames
The naming system in an ambilineal descent system allows for either using the mother or father's last name for the children or both, which is common in Latin America. Many societies have laws or strong cultural norms which dictate a child's surname. For example, in the U.S., it is the cultural custom for a child to have the father's surname, but in cases where the parents are not married, it is common for the child to take the surname of the mother. In the U.S., due to divorces and subsequent marriages, the surnames of children can also change.

There is an ambilineal naming system in Spain and many Latin American countries, but with an implicit patrilineality. Children have both their mother and their father's surnames, but grandchildren use their father's and mother's paternal surnames. In Brazil, the choice of surnames also has ambilineal tendencies. It depends on the personal desires of the parents or the person themselves, and modifying them was common in the first hundred years of colonization. However, it was the cultural tendency to use both the mother and the father's surnames following the general Spanish practice.

In the Tiwa, it is a “personal choice” whether to live in the mother or father's home, indicating which “clan” they will join. Based on this choice, the children inherit the mother or father's surname when born into the respective clans. These choices reflect the understanding of belonging and identity.

Kinship terms
There have been disagreements on the topic of kinship terminology in ambilineal descent systems. While ambilineal kinship terminology is oftentimes described as either generational or using cross-generational relative age criterion, there is some push back on these ideas.

Anthropologists have found that in ambilineal systems (such as those in Samoa) membership is often based on kinship criteria, but that one's role or label within the ambilineal group can be based on non-kinship criteria. This means that to determine if an individual is kin or not, genealogical criteria are often used, but once the individual is determined to be kin other (non-kinship) criteria will be used to designate a specific kin term. These kin distinctions within a group do not have any significance on the individual station as kinsmen. Because ambilineal sometimes do not have role allocation based on the “differentiation of kin-types” and kinship terminologies are based on such non-kin criteria some scholars have argued that in these groups kinships terms should not be used as terms of address.

Brazil
In Brazil, ambilineality is seen in choosing the surname of children, where it is common that a child takes both parents' surnames. During the first hundred years of colonization, it was common for families to trace lineage through matrilineal descent because of their interest in whitening their lineage. The Portuguese were concerned about the purity of blood, (see: limpieza de sangre) because of Jewish persecution and brought these ideas to Brazil. The European immigrants were primarily males until the 1800s; therefore, "mixed-blood" daughters could whiten their lineage by marrying and having children with white European immigrants. Over time, the generations became whiter and could, therefore, amass more power in Brazilian society. The Portuguese husbands provided more whiteness for the offspring, but the children would typically adopt the maternal surname if the wife's family were wealthier and more established. This is particularly true when the wife came from one of the more prominent families. Taking the mother's name identified the child as part of the family and gave access to the same power of the family.

Ethiopia
The Christian Amhara trace their descent ambilineally. They are considered as kin relatives from both the mother and father's side. Any Amhara is thus the descendant of a set of lineages which multiply rapidly back through the generations. The Amhara confer rights of inheritance on both sexes, recognize inheritance though both father and mother, and transmit goods through both sons and daughters. Whereas men and women have equal rights in theory, in practice, this does not always hold.

Ambilineal descent also occurs amongst the Tegrefifin speakers who border the Amhara to the north although they have a clear bias in favor of the men. Nevertheless, their rules of inheritance and descent mean that Christian Ethiopians lack the patrilineal, narrow descent groups of western Christianity, and have a set of rules for transmitting property which tends towards radical fragmentation.

Amongst the Christian Abyssinians, marriage happens outside the first seven degrees of consanguinity and work hard to live up to this rule. The laity seldom marry in church, instead marrying by secular contract under customary law. Polygyny was common amongst the Abbysnian nobility, characterized by rough equality. They lacked a strong sense of legitimacy or bastardy for children. Moreover, amongst Ethiopians, women had the right to initiate divorce and to take a share of the property from their marriage upon divorce.

Abyssinian families are distinguished from other traditional Christian families by their prevalence of divorce and a pronounced ambilineality. However, they also have a strong culture of monogamy amongst Christian priests and their lay counterparts.

India
In the Tiwa (Lalung) people who live at the Assam-Meghalaya border area in India, ambilineal descent is evident through their marriage and residence practices. At marriage each couple has the choice to join the wife or husband's clan. There are no set rules as to which house a couple occupies after marriage but, among the Tiwa people, gobhia (husband joining the wife's house) is more common than poari (wife joining husband's house). Any children born to the couple belong to the group chosen at the time of marriage. This means that an individual inherits the mother's name if born into her house or the father's name if born into his house.

There is a spiritual dimension to ambilineal descent in Tiwa culture. Membership and affiliation to a descent group is expressed via surname (and domestic belonging/residence associated) as well as connection to deities. The Tiwas believe that there are numerous deities that inhabit the home. At birth a child inherits the house's descent group and the bonds that have been established between the god inhabiting the home. This affiliation with the deities serves as a principal criteria for lineage identification because the individual is associated with all of the houses within the descent group that are worshipping the same group deity. For example, two individuals who have the same surname could claim unrelatedness if they do not worship the same group deity.

In Polynesia
In Polynesia, numerous groups are found to have ambilineal descent systems. In the Northern Gilbert Islands ambilineal descent systems are evident in both Butaritari and Makin. In both groups ambilineal descent is understood through land ownership, occupation, and inheritance. Membership in an ambilineal descent group, often called a ramage, includes those who can trace their descent (through either the female or male line) to the founder of the group, as well as individuals who can trace their descent to the founder and have inherited land rights to a part of the founder's estate. In this system an individual is not a member of every group they can genealogically trace kinship to. Rather, membership depends on land possession within the group. Upon marriage, couples have the choice in which group they want to join.

Ambilineal systems are also found in Samoa, Tonga and with Māori people in New Zealand. Similarly to Butaritari and Makin, land ownership and inheritance is the basis for membership and affiliation in a descent group, but in these three systems membership is most often based on the male line. In this system, both the mother and father can be used for affiliation with a particular descent group, but emphasis is placed on the father. While it is most desirable for membership into the father's group female links are also used especially when aligning with the female line brings increased power, wealth, or social standing.

title: Ambilineality