Underrated Classical Music: Rued Langgaard Symphony no. 1

 In the coming season, the Berlin Philharmonic will play Rued Langgaard's first time since they premiered it in 1915! I cannot overemphasize how exciting I find this development.

What's remarkable about this pitch perfect imitation of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony is not just the music, of which Tchaikovsky would have been quite proud, but that it was written by a seventeen-year-old! This is, quite simply, an imitation of a fluency that can only be done by an adolescent of genius, assimilating previous models before he finds a voice of his own.

It was to be the only success of Langgaard's career, whom after a prodigious childhood spent it shunted off to the hinterlands of northern Denmark, ignored even by his own countrymen. There's little sense in the first symphony to prepare us for Langgaard's later musical voice. All it does is to make us aware of a musical talent which is nothing short of genius. Like Mendelssohn in the Octet, this is an adolescent composer clearly announcing himself to the world as a master. A master he would remain, but as ever with life, he became a composer of an entirely different sort.

Except for Henry Cowell, I doubt the twentieth century has a more underrated composer than Rued Langgaard. What I increasingly look for in an artist is a 'world vision', not just vision, not just a point of view, but a manner of summing up the entire world of experience. Langgaard has that world vision nearly to the extent of the very greatest of the 20th century. The Langgaardian view is not entirely unlike Sibelius - not pastoral so much as darkly and violently natural, but Langgaard evolved in very different directions from Sibelius in ways we will articulate in other posts. Langgaard has a sort of modernism which is almost entirely conceptual rather than rhythmic or harmonic, and consequently came up with forms utterly unlike any composer who ever lived. Ignorance of his staggering achievements inhibit the potential quality of all music thereafter. If this message board gets people to listen to some Rued Langgaard, this venture will have been a colossal success. The quality of the music will speak for itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W7BI-C80Vw