Essential Langgaard
Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) was one of music's great one-offs – a composer bound by tradition who came to recognize no rules at all; a figure whose music is as inconsistent as it is rich and engrossing.
Read more…From boy genius in Copenhagen to 19-year-old symphonist with a Berlin Philharmonic premiere, Langgaard had the world at his feet. But it soon went very wrong. After the First World War, society changed and music with it. Langgaard didn't get the memo. Initially, he stuck to his luscious late-romantic guns. Later, as Carl Nielsen's stock rose, Langgaard got bitter – consumed with jealousy and misunderstanding, increasingly marginalized by a musical establishment who couldn't abide his irascible personality. At the same time, Langgaard's music only got richer – more heartfelt, more experimental, more unpredictable and more compelling. His music asked for pianists to hit the piano, for choirs to sing ironic hymns in honour of Nielsen, and for orchestras to play a six-minute symphony stuck on a single cadence. But there was tenderness in Langgaard's works, and the scent of love from a mysterious companion named 'Dora', who apparently brought some light into his life. His mastery of form and texture is glimpsed not only in symphonies, but in the choral miniatures and chamber works too.