Rued Langgaard: Sfinx, BVN 37
Exoticism from an ignored Dane
performed by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Dausgaard
Photo by Matthew Stephenson on Unsplash
Rud Immanuel Langgaard was born in Copenhagen on 28 July, 1893 into a musical family. The two notable names in his musical education were Gustav Helsted (whose name I recognize only because I wrote about a string quartet of his many years ago) and Carl Nielsen, the most famous of Danish composers.
You can read the rest on Wikipedia.
Apparently he was, at least according to some, and based probably more on his music at the time than his personality, a bit of an oddball. He wrote 16 symphonies, and some of them have odd titles for the works overall or just to movements, such as Wireless Caruso and Compulsive Energy and Daddies rushing off to the Office, from the 14th symphony, ‘The Morning.’ Other titles of his numbered symphonies include Faithlessness, Deluge of Sun, Leaf Fall, and Heaven Storming. He obtained his first permanent job at the age of 46 and died at the age of 59, “still unrecognized as a composer,” says Wiki, even with over 400 compositions to his name.
His is the somewhat typical story of someone’s genius or talent being recognized only after they’ve passed, but we’re not addressing any of the larger scale works today. We welcome him to the site today with a small piece of his that dates from 1913 but was apparently started as early as 1907. It’s a morsel that lasts less than seven minutes but is a rich example of colorful, dramatic writing that one would think might compel listeners to go seek out what else he wrote. Hopefully for you it will.
Background
I don’t know what background there is to this work or what would hav prompted him to write it: a trip to Egypt, a compelling image in an encyclopedia, a fairytale from childhood, not sure. However, there’s a useful inscription on the opening of the score by Victor Rydberg, as follows (originally in Danish, but translated into German and English):
It soars aloft o’er eternity’s billowing sands,
a mystical Tower, ethereal, crystal-clear it stands.
It stretches its roots sheer fathoms deep,
no dream, no mortal eye thither can sweep.It raises its walls to heaven’s starry spheres,
and beyond, far beyond where no star appears.
Its dome rears aloft o’er immortal space
where thought does but swoon while following its trace.
Which gave me the impression that this isn’t about the awkwardly-proportioned sphinx in the desert that we’ve all seen, but maybe just a general concept of some mysterious alluring object, an obelisk or, as it says, tower that strikes wonder and amazement in the viewer.
And this very short piece captures that feeling very well. There’s no weird modal anything to try to suggest Middle Eastern or foreign music; that would be a bit on-the-nose. Rather, it’s the magical, awe-inspiring feeling of seeing something strange and foreign but fascinating and beautiful.
Music
The piece lasts a mere seven minutes, so it’s nothing more than a sketch, an impression, an image of a feeling, but in a vocabulary that evokes Wagner or Strauss, although not nearly as complex or ornate as the latter may have given us in his own early days.
There’s no story, no narrative, no programmatic content (at least that I’m aware of). The piece just does what it says on the tin: it gives us something of the atmosphere that the composer felt regarding the idea, and perhaps one that we might feel were we to behold the Sphinx or something equally special with our own eyes.
Low voices open and close the piece with a sort of earthy foundational stairstep-type climb, something coming into view from afar, upon which the orchestra builds. In a sense, then, the orchestra itself feels pyramidal, with the upper voices standing out from the greater mass only here and there with some flourishes.
There’s a central section that doesn’t arrive as much as also come into view that features timpani and different brass voices giving a fanfare-like dotted and triplet motif that’s the most outward, forward thing in this piece, but it ultimately closes the way it opened, very softly.
There’s not really anything extravagant here, nothing groundbreaking or shocking, but also nothing gimmicky or cheap. We’re offered a small little concert opener type piece that would easily captivate the concert hall and leave behind in its silence a still, magical atmosphere that I myself would love to experience.
Coda
And it is that kind of effect, despite the vast geographical change we’re about to experience, that I like about this program’s lineup. Egypt or the Sphinx or whatever have nothing to do with what comes next, but there’s an exoticism, a majesty, a magic to Langgaard’s writing that leads us beautifully into the next piece on the program, which is linked after the score. Please enjoy.
Score
Links
Next: Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you