Two of the most original Nordic viking composers, mavericks, outsiders on their own. If you were allowed to save just one of them, who would be?
From your response will come much responsibility haha. Don't tell yourself it coul be as silly as watching anime, or collecting snails. This is a proposta seria!! :laugh:
Too hard to choose from, they're so different ! Personally I like both a lot, but with reservations. No clear winner, then.
Sorry :-\
Langgaard for me. The SQs, Music of the Spheres, Antikrist, and Symphony No. 6 are enough to catapult him into a higher echelon. I like Leifs, but his music gets tiresome after awhile as his musical language, while distinct and completely his own, is quite limited and there's not much variation. I will say that some of my favorite works from Leifs are not his more well-known elemental tone poems like Hekla or Geysir, but works like Requiem, Réminiscence du nord, and Elegy, which showcase this composer in a different light and are more to my liking.
Interesting thread idea. As with André, it's difficult for me to choose as I like them both. I find that Langgaard's music is more inconsistent from my point of view and I tend to enjoy almost everything I've heard by Leifs. Having said that I rate works like Langgaard's symphonies 4,6 and 'Music of the Spheres' more highly than anything I have heard from Leifs.
Quote from: Symphonic Addict on November 30, 2019, 05:40:24 PMIf you were allowed to save just one of them, who would be?
Langgaard, no contest. Leifs is swell, but nowhere near Langgaard at his best.
https://www.youtube.com/v/kgwJnTZWfLI
Probably Langgaard from the admittedly little I've heard.
Because I've listened to most available Leifs compositions in a desperate attempt to like them and the great majority of the time I've just been disappointed. As Mirror Image puts it, the music ends up being tiresome. The works that are of any length end up outstaying their welcome because they are too unvarying.
The one Leifs album I got more out of was of chamber music.
Quote from: Rinaldo on December 01, 2019, 02:34:09 AM
Langgaard, no contest. Leifs is swell, but nowhere near Langgaard at his best.
https://www.youtube.com/v/kgwJnTZWfLI
I've been meaning to listen to this for a while. You putting it up this way finally got me there.
Okay, my answer is now most definitely Langgaard.
Definitely Langgaard, whose oeuvre is full of splendidly interesting and insightful works, with just one major exception. It would be too unkind to write that Leifs is mostly good for bombastic background music, but that's how his oeuvre feels sometimes, even if it isn't. However, it would be quite accurate to say that Langgaard's often-mentioned Sfærernes Musik merely consists of a bizarre mess - as I put it in the past, a series of vacuous crescendi - rather than being evocative of any sort of celestial music.
Quote from: Wanderer on December 01, 2019, 03:52:25 AMHowever, it would be quite accurate to say that Langgaard's often-mentioned Sfærernes Musik merely consists of a bizarre mess - as I put it in the past, a series of vacuous crescendi - rather than being evocative of any sort of celestial music.
Interesting that you hear it that way. When I listen to the work, it immediately transports me to some primordial times, maybe to the beginning of time itself, and then it's matter transforming and reconfiguring, with first stars igniting and burning out.. can't get any more celestial than that!
Nice responses thus far!!
In my case it would be Langgaard too. I feel most of his music resonates with me. To be honest, I couldn't live without his 6th Symphony, it's absolutely fantastic and thrilling like nothing else. That for mentioning only an example, because there are other many favorite works as other members have already mentioned. Nevertheless, he wasn't consistently succesful in a large part of his output. Had he written more modern-sounding works his recognition would be wider.
Otherwise, I like from Leifs his earthly sound, that primitive feel to it gives his music much distinction. His voice is instantly recognizable. But I also share the John and Madiel's opinion about him of being too repetitive, the rhythms he manages tend to be a bit monotonous. He composed some of the loudest and fun works I know (Hekla comes to my mind!), it partially benefits him.
Quote from: Rinaldo on December 01, 2019, 05:25:28 AM
Interesting that you hear it that way. When I listen to the work, it immediately transports me to some primordial times, maybe to the beginning of time itself, and then it's matter transforming and reconfiguring, with first stars igniting and burning out.. can't get any more celestial than that!
This makes sense to me.
I am not sure why these composers are juxtaposed. Liefs was Icelandic and Langgaard was Danish. I like Liefs string quartets more than any of Langgard's, but Liefs only wrote three, compared to Langaard's seven. However, I haven't listened to much music by either composer beyond the SQ.
As I had never heard of Leifs until seeing this thread it has to be Langgaard
Leifs, though by a small margin.
Quote from: Rinaldo on December 01, 2019, 05:25:28 AM
Interesting that you hear it that way. When I listen to the work, it immediately transports me to some primordial times, maybe to the beginning of time itself, and then it's matter transforming and reconfiguring, with first stars igniting and burning out.. can't get any more celestial than that!
I'm glad you manage to get some sense of the heavens out of this, in my perception, nebulously vapid vacuity of a score; to me it sounds too indulgent, artificial and calculated to resemble anything celestial - and not for unwillingness, given that the area of astronomy and astrophysics is one of my main interests. Perhaps it's a different view of the heavens that he was trying to convey or indeed be familiar with; I doubt that our clear and resplendent Mediterranean night skies would be familiar to a Dane.