He also wrote over fifteen symphonies. I have not listened to any of them yet. I would expect these to be quite accessible 20th century symphonies.

 

Never heard of him and will go check his works out then.

 

I've listened to his symphonies. Some of them are pretty good, some of them are very poor. I wouldn't describe any of them as masterpieces, but if your only bar for judging something is whether or not it's "accessible" (as in, listenable? I guess) then I guess we can just go around calling everything a masterpiece now.


EDIT: I recommend symphonies 1, 2 and 4-6 for anyone interested.

 

I've listened to his symphonies. Some of them are pretty good, some of them are very poor. I wouldn't describe any of them as masterpieces, but if your only bar for judging something is whether or not it's "accessible" (as in, listenable? I guess) then I guess we can just go around calling everything a masterpiece now.

EDIT: I recommend symphonies 1, 2 and 4-6 for anyone interested.

I explored his music once and found it was pretty uneven. Music of the Spheres was the one piece that had staying power.
He was also a nutcase who was obsessively jealous of Carl Nielsen.

 

He gets mentioned here pretty often. I've never heard anything by him. I can't explain it, exactly, but I haven't developed an interest yet. One of these days, I'll look him up.

 

I don't think RL gets mentioned much at TC. This poll has only four responses, two mentioning not having heard of RL. The voters are a few.

 

Never heard anything of his.

 

He reminds me a little of Holst - not the music itself, but the unevenness of quality. I've heard some Langgaard works which bear the indelible stamp of genuine inspiration and others that sound so innocuous and one-dimensional it's hard to believe that they are by the same composer. Maybe not underrated, but certainly inconsistent.

 

A lot of late romantics are actually being revived now - Zemlinsky, Schreker, Korngold, Franz Schmidt. Even maybe Rudi Stephan. Check these guys out. Giants compared to Langgard

BTW Art, did you check out Pfitzner like I told you that time? Wrote an opera about Palestrina and was really worked up and angry about atonality - you'd love him

 

Pfitzner's Palestrina

Surprisingly good opera considering the relative obscurity of the composer. I like it (the music) quite a bit, it's very pretty and it's got all the polyphonic lushness one could ask for.

 

Yes, in the sense that we need more international recordings to explore more facets of his works, though most of them have become available in local, Danish ones.

That said, a good deal of the works are less valuable and the text/musings of the "Antichrist" opera & his religious universe outdated.

I´d recommend symphonies 4 (Frandsen or Stupel), 5 (Stupel), 6 and 10 (Stupel), "Music of the Spheres" (Frandsen), or the many-facetted piano music (Insektarium, The Fire Chambers, Sonata Le Beguinage, various idyllic pieces) for a start.

 

Y'know Art, another way to think about your "Is bla-bla underrated" polls is just to to accept that you currently like a bunch of music other people aren't very interested in - marginal stuff at best. You'd do better familiarising yourself with the main rep of the 20s and 30s rather than search the back alleys for the "accessible" - especially if you have an interest in a career in music down the track

 

There are some very fine moments in Palestrina - end of the first act especially. The DG recording with Kubelik/Gedda/Fischer Deskau still sounds pretty good. Art - you should check it out, buddy

 

I've mentioned it other times, but while a lot of people knows it for Music of the spheres because it sounded like Ligeti fifty years before the hungarian composer the piece I like the most is the brief Insektarium, that collection of absolutely original and surreal piano miniatures that in my opinion is truly a work of genius.

 

Music of the spheres sounds like half baked sibelius with Scriabin interludes for colour. Comparisons to ligeti are spurious

 

There's a story about Music of the Spheres. Per Norgard knew the piece, and thinking that it was very similar to what Ligeti was doing, during a council where they were searching for new works to perform he hid the score between those Ligeti was examining. When Ligeti finished to read the music he said "I'm a Langaard epigone".

 

The Frandsen recording catches the atmosphere better than Rozhdestvensky, and has a much better Finale.

 

A very hard question...
His early work are truly brilliant: his First Symphony is very good, I like his opera Antichrist. And I find it shameful that his Music of the Sphere remains so unknown and underrated: written in 1918 (when RL was 25!), it is a real masterpiece, ahead of Langgaard's time.

But his later works, especially his five last symphonies or so, are -I'm sorry to say so - bad. No avant-garde spirit any more, just pseudo-romantic indigestible pump. (At least this is my impression.)

He was actually overshadowed by the Danish composer, Carl Nielsen, which partly explains why he is not played very often. Yet, he is for me an ambiguous composer. His matserworks deserve a greater recognition. For the rest, I am not sure...

 

I know this won't be popular, but I really like his 11th symphony "Ixion". It lasts less than 10 minutes and it's hardly a symphony in any sense; but as a piece of music, I enjoy it thoroughly.

 

I've heard a variety of Langgaard's works. I do enjoy his symphony 10 and 11 as well as the violin concerto, but I don't consider him underrated or a composer I want to hear much more from.

 

A work I'm curious to hear about, as another sort of "outlier", is Messis. It's a lengthy "drama for organ". I assume ptr's heard it, at least?

These outliers like Music Of The Spheres, Antikrist, and the Insektarium seem to be the bulk of his value. His symphonies are nice, but between Sibelius and the host of other "post-Sibelius" composers around, they can seem unnecessary.

 

A work I'm curious to hear about, as another sort of "outlier", is Messis. It's a lengthy "drama for organ". I assume ptr's heard it, at least?

You assume correctly, I have even heard it performed live by Flemming Dreisig in Copenhagen, I've since listened to his recoding on DaCapo perhaps twice. The organ being Langgaard's instrument it is quite idiomatically written but like in a lot of his music there are periods of "treading water".. I personally think that Dreisig's excellent playing makes this music more interesting then might be on paper.. The sonic's of this production is awesome portraying the Marcussen organ of Vor Frue Kirke brilliantly!

/ptr

 

Langgaard has been of great interest to me in the past 9 months or so. I have fallen in love with his idiom. My focus has been on the symphonies, solo piano music, and string quartets. I just recently discovered he has a piano concerto - based on a theme his father wrote! - and look forward to listening to it later. I find him to be wholly original and enjoyable. I would compare my feelings towards his oeuvre to Ives or Tveitt.

 

Do you know his opera Antikrist? Some of his best and most visionary music is there.

 

His 2nd symphony is one of my favorites - especially the 2nd/slow movement...some utterly stunning stuff in this.

 

Meh. Rated fine. Def no Nielsen or Nørgård.

 

I would place Langgaard and Holmboe between them and you have the Mount Rushmore of Danish classical music. A perfect musical lineage. One of the finest.