Even by composer standards, Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) was a little bit of a strange bird. Despite a promising start – born to musical parents, a precocious childhood, meetings with major conductors, and a symphony performed by the Berlin Philharmonic – his personal and creative eccentricities worked against him.
Langgaard followed his personal muse deep into the realm of late Romanticism at a time when most of the musical world was exploring modernist territory. Though he was given a state grant at 30, he failed to secure a permanent job until the age of 46, as an organist at the cathedral in Ribe, the oldest town in Denmark – which somehow seems appropriate for this most anachronistic of Danish outsiders.
An eccentric, shabby figure with wild hair, Laangaard died in Ribe 13 years later, in 1952, just shy of his 59th birthday, still largely unrecognized as a composer.
His reputation would not begin to gain traction for another 16 years. In all, he composed over 400 works, including 16 symphonies – which bear evocative titles such as “Yon Hall of Thunder” and “Deluge of the Sun” – and an opera, “Antikrist.”
It was in 1968 that no less a personage than György Ligeti found himself on a jury alongside Danish composer Per Nørgård. In this capacity, he examined a large number of new scores by Scandinavian composers. Unbeknownst to his fellow jurors, Nørgård had slipped in the score of Langgaard’s “Music of the Spheres.” Ligeti became captivated by what he found. When the ruse was revealed, he exclaimed, with a twinkle in his eye, “Gentlemen, I have just discovered that I am a Langgaard epigone!”
Langgaard had anticipated some of the technical aspects – tone clusters, layers, and so forth – which would appear in Ligeti’s avant garde experiments of the 1960s, in works such as “Atmosphères.”
I hope you’ll join me for “Rued Awakenings,” an hour of Rued Langgaard, including “Music of the Spheres,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu
Category: Daily Dispatch
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Music of the Spheres on “The Lost Chord”
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Sherbet for Schubert on “Sweetness and Light”
Franz Schubert’s birthday. A day to vacillate between smiles and tears. Is there any other composer whose music so perfectly reflects the delicacy and transience of feelings? It is the language of poetry and yearning.
Personally, I prefer my Schubert bittersweet. Nevertheless, this week on “Sweetness and Light,” most of the music will be of an extroverted, even buoyant character. Okay, maybe it’s impossible for me get through the hour without a touch of emotional ambiguity. I’ll sneak in one of my favorite lieder around the midpoint. Otherwise, it’s a potpourri of ballet music, transcriptions, and some high-spirited marches for piano four-hands.
It’s sherbet for Schubert on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!
Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:
https://kwax.uoregon.edu/
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IMAGE: Always refreshing: orange Schubert -
Film Composers Think Inside the Box on “Picture Perfect”
Before “Harry Potter.” Before “Jurassic Park.” Before “E.T.” Before “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Before “Superman.” Before “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Before “Star Wars.” Before “Jaws.” Before even John Williams… there was Johnny Williams.
Well before Williams became America’s most famous living composer, he was busy honing his craft as an orchestrator, an arranger, a session pianist, and a composer in the bush league of television. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear some of “Johnny” Williams’ music for “Lost in Space.”
Also on the program will be selections from “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” by Bernard Herrmann, the theme from “Wagon Train” by Jerome Moross, and a medley of well-known television music by Jerry Goldsmith.
Don’t touch that dial! Movie composers think inside the box, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies (and television), now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu -
Life of (Havergal) Brian
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Havergal Brian’s Symphony No. 1, the “Gothic Symphony,” composed between 1919 and 1927, is the longest symphony ever written.
It’s certainly one of the largest, requiring multiple choirs and orchestras. The work calls for vocal soloists, two double choruses, brass bands, and a much-enlarged symphony orchestra, including 32 woodwinds, 24 brass, two timpani, assorted other percussion (requiring 17 players), celesta, two harps, organ, and a greatly expanded string section. In addition, two horns, two trumpets, two tubas, and one set of timpani combine in each of the four brass bands – a total of nearly 200 players. And that’s before factoring in the singers!
The composer had to paste multiple sheets together in the writing of the piece in order to accommodate its titanic demands. Brian dedicated the work to Richard Strauss, who declared it magnificent.
A contemporary of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, Brian dropped out of school at the age of 12 and went to work in a coal mine. He also worked for timber firms and as a carpenter’s apprentice, the whole while nursing a secret desire to write music.
Though attracting early admiration from the likes of Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Thomas Beecham, and Sir Donald Francis Tovey, Brian was destined always to be a cult figure. But there were and are enough people out there who believe strongly enough in his music that most of his major works have been recorded.
Among them are 32 symphonies – 20 of them composed after the age of 80 and the last at the age of 93. Brian died in 1972, the result of a fall, two months shy of his 97th birthday.
The “Gothic” falls into two parts, subdivided into three movements each. Part One was inspired by Goethe’s “Faust,” and Part Two is a gargantuan setting of the “Te Deum” – combined they present a symphonic vision of the Gothic Age, a period of incalculable expansion in human knowledge. The music in Part Two is essentially modeled on Gothic architecture. It’s literally Brian’s conception of a cathedral in sound.
Have a couple of hours to spare? Check out Havergal Brian’s “Gothic Symphony,” on this, the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.——–
IMAGE: “Medieval City on a River” (1815), by Karl Friedrich Schinkel -
Belated Goodbyes
There’s been so much to occupy my attention these past weeks that I’ve neglected to pay tribute to three artists who enriched my life for decades through their recordings. In yet another attempt to avoid posting about the slow-motion collapse of the flabbergastingly politicized Kennedy Center (most recently given the eff you by Philip Glass), I thought now might be a good opportunity to remember them.
The Virginia-born Isaiah Jackson died on Christmas Eve at the age of 80. Jackson held music directorships with London’s Royal Ballet and Boston’s Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra. As a child of two, he fell on a milk bottle, severing the tendons in his wrist. His father, an orthopedic surgeon, prescribed music lessons as therapy, which he began at the age of 4. Jackson studied Russian history and literature at Harvard, from which he graduated cum laude. While there, he conducted Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte,” an experience that decided him, once and for all, on a career in music. He pursued further studies at Stanford and Juilliard. In between, he was a pupil of the celebrated pedagogue Nadia Boulanger.
Among Jackson’s other, numerous posts, he was assistant to Leopold Stokowski at the American Symphony Orchestra, associate conductor of the Baltimore Symphony and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestras, and music director of the Flint Symphony and Dayton Philharmonic Orchestras. He was a respected teacher, who served on the faculty of Berklee College of Music, and guest conducted, among others, the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Boston Pops, the Toronto Symphony, the Helsinki Philharmonic, and L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Hearing loss caused him to retire from the podium in 2006.
Three recordings of his of which I am especially fond are those of “Danzas de Panama” by William Grant Still, from an album devoted to the composer’s works; the Sinfonietta for String Orchestra and Timpani by Franz Waxman, better known for his film scores; and the Harp Concerto of Welsh composer William Mathias, with Ann Hobson Pilot the soloist, my preferred recording of the piece, which is a gem. All three of them were released on the Koch International Classics label.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiHN4lXshrA
John Wallace died on January 11 at the age of 76. Wallace was principal trumpet of the Philharmonia Orchestra from 1976 to 1995 and later served as principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. As a soloist, he introduced new works by Malcolm Arnold, Peter Maxwell Davies, Gunther Schuller, and James MacMillan. But perhaps he achieved his greatest fame through a series of recordings he made with the ensemble he founded, the Wallace Collection, which aired frequently during the good old days on classical radio. Of course, it didn’t detract from his celebrity that Wallace also played at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Here’s a Concerto for 7 Trumpets by Johann Ernst Altenburg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed2Ctagmzxw
Finally, the Japanese guitarist and prolific recording artist Kazuhito Yamashita died on January 25 at the age of 64. Yamashita was an early competition winner who achieved international recognition and performed with top artists, including James Galway, Michala Petri, and the Tokyo String Quartet. Quixotically, he chose to transcribe some of the most brilliantly orchestrated works in the repertoire, including Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” and Stravinsky’s “The Firebird,” for his instrument. He also gave first performances of over 60 new compositions. I owe Yamashita a great debt for introducing me, through this RCA release conducted by Leonard Slatkin, to Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s heartwarming guitar concertos. The slow movements are gorgeous. That for the First begins at 5:40 at the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y0cxGjGG4A
Thank you, gentlemen, and godspeed.
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