Rued Langgaard

“[Nielsen’s] entertaining book provides the perfect compass for exploring Langgaard’s musical landscape.” (Das Orchester)

"He is known as Denmark's strangest composer. A fascinating book reveals new facets of the man Rued Langgaard." (Seismograf.org)

"With successful momentum and overview, a really good and rousing reading experience." (Publimus.dk)

Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) is an outsider and a tragic figure in Danish music history. He came into conflict with the zeitgeist, the scene gave him the cold shoulder - and he was forgotten. After his rediscovery in the 1990s, he now occupies a place in international musical life. The Deutsche Oper Berlin, for example, scored a unique success with his opera of doom Antikrist.

This book is an introduction to the extraordinary life and work of the composer and musician. Bendt Viinholt Nielsen, the leading Langgaard scholar, begins with the child prodigy Rued, who even at a very young age had a profound understanding of music’s role in the cosmic struggle between good and evil. This vision was Langgaard’s artistic driving force, but it brought him into sharp conflict with the anti-Romantic Danish musical scene of his time, in which the agenda was set by Denmark’s most important composer of the day, Carl Nielsen. Today we regard Langgaard as an original and headstrong composer, simultaneously a retrospective Romantic and a strangely modern artist whose unconventional musical ideas often point far beyond his time.

With the new knowledge of Langgaard's physical and psychological challenges and his unhappy youthful love for the mystical Dora, who was to shape his musical work for most of his life, Bendt Viinholt Nielsen's tale of fate brings us closer than ever to the man behind the exceptional music.

The original Danish edition was published in 2023. This German edition is a revised and slightly expanded edition.

Translated from the Danish by Peter Urban-Halle.

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