Langgaard's Lyre

[Sylph]

Excellent. Thanks!

[karlhenning]

Yes, keen to revisit that symphonies box!

[Sylph]

Yes, keen to revisit that symphonies box!

Why Langgaard's Lyre and not, say, Langgaard's Salpinx?

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Why Langgaard's Lyre and not, say, Langgaard's Salpinx?

Thanks, Sylph - I had never encountered this wonderful word before...

[Sylph]

  No problem! Too bad the sound of it is still being re-created.

[karlhenning]

Zowie, The End of Time is a blast!  Now I've got to reel in Antikrist . . . and Messis . . . and, oh! I see another recording of Sfærernes Musik . . . .

[CRCulver]

Zowie, The End of Time is a blast!

Thanks for the motivation to finally listen to that Chandos disc, as The End of Time is the first Langgaard piece I've listened since Music of the Spheres that I like. After the innovations of Music of the Spheres, the symphonies, the violin concerto and other pieces just sounded like dull, warmed-over early Romanticism. But The End of Time, though superficially Romantic, is one of the most unhinged pieces of music I've ever heard.

[karlhenning]

One digs the unhinged Langgaard, of course . . . it's hard on him to require that he be in Unhinged Mode all the time ; )

Today's episode of Brainspace comes courtesy of Luke, who pointed out that the score is on IMSLP:

The celestial and earthly chaotic music from red-glowing chords with which life plays with claws of beast of prey — with an iris-crown round its marble-face with the stereotypic – yet living – demoniac and lily-like smile.

[not edward]

Thanks for the motivation to finally listen to that Chandos disc, as The End of Time is the first Langgaard piece I've listened since Music of the Spheres that I like. After the innovations of Music of the Spheres, the symphonies, the violin concerto and other pieces just sounded like dull, warmed-over early Romanticism. But The End of Time, though superficially Romantic, is one of the most unhinged pieces of music I've ever heard.

I'm generally not enthusiastic about the symphonies myself, but I do think the 4th and 6th symphonies are both fine works and pretty deranged. The other unhinged Langgaard works I know are dotted randomly around these chamber music discs:

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[asin]B0000521CU[/asin]

(I think one could add the Ixion symphony, no. 11, plus the childishly petulant Carl Nielsen, vor store Komponist! to the unhinged list, though the latter isn't very good.)

[karlhenning]

(I think one could add the Ixion symphony, no. 11, plus the childishly petulant Carl Nielsen, vor store Komponist! to the unhinged list, though the latter isn't very good.)

Depends: what are we looking for? ; )

Seriously (if not very) . . . heard it for the first time on this The End of Time disc.  Of course, it's just one relatively short period, which draws to a monumental cadence . . . and is then repeated.  And again.  In its very modest way, I think it ingenious. (No, really.) It's part of the composer's intention, of course, that it should sound like a broken record . . . but the return to the opening works well . . . I found myself listening to, what, seven repetitions with fairly rapt musical attention.  Sure, there was an element of "We all know he's putting us on . . . ."

[karlhenning]

It's all very much on its hinges . . . all the same, enjoying a revisitation to The Morning (Symphony № 14) this, erm, morning.  Sweet and wholesome are movements 2 & 3 (Morning Stars Unnoticed & The Bells of the Marble Church, respectively).

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Upaaagtede Morgenstjerner is one of my favourite Langgaard movements, a ravishing piece for string orchestra.

[karlhenning]

And well, all right, the title Radio-Caruso og Tvangsenergi is a little off-hinge . . . .

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I remember that at the end of Symphony No. 12 the score reads The composer explodes. Langgaard did have problems of mental balance, to put it mildly. Still, I love his music. And isn't anyone who devotes his whole life transforming aesthetic possibility into reality a bit insane... 

[karlhenning]

I remember that at the end of Symphony No. 12 the score reads The composer explodes. Langgaard did have problems of mental balance, to put it mildly. Still, I love his music. And isn't anyone who devotes his whole life transforming aesthetic possibility into reality a bit insane... 

Oh, even less radical . . . isn't anyone who devotes his life to the creation of work which may never bring any material return a bit insane? ; )

That last movement of The Morning (Sun and Beech Forest) has a strong Tchaikovsky vibe . . . which of course immediately gets on my good side . . . .

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Oh, even less radical . . . isn't anyone who devotes his life to the creation of work which may never bring any material return a bit insane? ; )

Yes. And thank God there are people like us. 

[karlhenning]

Hear, hear!

[karlhenning]

[Cross-post]

In overall character, though, the way I hear Langgaard's Symphony № 13 is this: If an organist composed a half-hour festive organ postlude for use in concluding, say, a service on Easter Sunday . . . if such an organ postlude were transmuted into a symphony, this would be just such a symphony.

[Lethevich]

From the listening thread about the second symphony (amongst the recent flurry of messages there):

Unfortunately it'll be a few hours before I can hear Dausgaard in that "massive" movement (the version Stupel plays cuts it in half): I have to start preparing dinner (including some grocery shopping  )  But I'll be back.

There is the advantage of cogency to that cut... But see and hear for yourself. Langgaard gives us a different mix of elements in these two versions. You lose some material in the later version (Stupel), but it is compensated for.

Having just heard the earlier 2nd with the longer opening movement, during the playing of that I was thinking about how impressive I found it, and how surely any cuts would trivialise this, but by the end I kind of understood why he did this. The adagio I longed to go on for longer, and the final movement with a soloist is beautiful, but in a Straussian sense rather than a Mahlerian climactic closer. The original work is slightly unbalanced with the lengthy opener.

My desire for a longer slow movement was partly due to the shades of Brucknerian sublimity I sensed in it, but not just that. Langgaard, for all his self-indulgence, was not long-winded. Sometimes he went too far toward the ultra-concise in the later works (such as No.11 and 12), but the slow movement of the second symphony perhaps reveals that this tendency was there, in germination, from early on. It's a gorgeous movement, and many other composers would have milked such material a little more.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

You come to the same conclusion as me - the original version is indeed a bit unbalanced. That cut is very judicious, I think, and makes the final version a more satisfying whole. Although... I often skip the second movement, because the first is already so complete in itself!