Nielsen was born the seventh of twelve children to a poor peasant family in 1865 at Sortelung near Norre Lyndelse, south of Odense on the island of Funen. His father, Niels Jorgensen, was a house painter and traditional musician who, with his abilities as a fiddler and cornet player, was in strong demand for local celebrations. Nielsen described his childhood in his autobiography Min Fynske Barndom (My Childhood on Funen). His mother, whom he recalls singing folk songs during his childhood, came from a well-to-do family of sea captains while one of his half-uncles, Hans Andersen (1837-1881), was a talented musician.  Nielsen gave an account of his introduction to music: "I had heard music before, heard father play the violin and cornet, heard mother singing, and, when in bed with the measles, I had tried myself out on the little violin". He had received the instrument from his mother when he was six. He learned the violin and piano as a child and wrote his earliest compositions at the age of eight or nine: a lullaby, now lost, and a polka which the composer mentioned in his autobiography. As his parents did not believe he had any future as a musician, they apprenticed him to a shopkeeper from a nearby village when he was fourteen; the shopkeeper went bankrupt by midsummer and Nielsen had to return home. After learning to play brass instruments, on 1 November 1879 he became a bugler and alto trombonist in the band of the army's 16th Battalion at nearby Odense.  Nielsen did not give up the violin during his time with the battalion, continuing to play it when he went home to perform at dances with his father. The army paid him three kroner and 45 ore and a loaf of bread every five days for two and a half years, after which his salary was raised slightly, enabling him to buy the civilian clothes he needed to perform at barn dances.

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Niels Jorgensen, was a house painter and traditional musician who,