Rued Langgaard

Danish composer and organist Rued Langgaard was born into a musical family in Copenhagen on 28 July 1893. At the age of five he began to study piano with his mother, and later with his father and a private teacher, and his talent emerged quickly. He studied organ and violin from the age of ten, at eleven he appeared in public as an organist and improviser, and at twelve began to study music theory. His first compositions were published when he was thirteen, and he made his public debut as a composer aged fourteen, at a public concert in Copenhagen, with the choral work Musae triumphantes.

Apart from gaining assistant organist jobs, he found it difficult to find work as an organist or to be recognised as a composer, although his first symphony, Mountain Pastorals, was played in Berlin in 1913 by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Max Fiedler.

Eventually he received a state grant, from the age of thirty, and when he was forty-six he became organist at Ribe Cathedral in southwest Jutland. Rued Langgaard died in Ribe, aged fifty-eight, on 10 July 1952. Recognition as a composer came sixteen years later, when his best-known work, Music of the Spheres, was rediscovered.

His unconventional and modern-sounding music was in a dramatic, late-Romantic style, influenced by Wagner and Richard Strauss, and had large mood swings. He wrote over four hundred works, including sixteen symphonies, much other orchestral music, more than a-hundred-and-fifty songs and an opera, Antikrist.

 

A selection of articles about Rued Langgaard

Spotlight. A Curate's Egg - Gerald Fenech strongly recommends early recordings of orchestral music by Rued Langgaard. '... performances are consistently uplifting ...'

Resounding Echoes by Robert McCarney - The Be All and End All

Resounding Echoes by Robert McCarney - The blood-dimmed tide

CD Spotlight. Enigmatic yet Fascinating - Music by Rued Langgaard for violin and piano, heard by Gerald Fenech. 'The conclusion of a visionary cycle that is worthy of serious attention.'

DVD Spotlight. A powerful work - Rued Langgaard's opera 'Antikrist', investigated by Robert Anderson. '... interpreted with total commitment ...'

Record box - Danish pastry. Basil Ramsey listens to symphonies with hang-ups

CD Spotlight - A luminous pearl. 'The performances on this disc are excellent.' The symphonies of Rued Langgaard, with Peter Dale