Carl Nielsen - vor store komponist (Carl Nielsen - our Great Composer)

Among the driving forces behing Langgaard's hectic period of productivity towards the end of the 1940's seems to have been sheer pig-headedness, a form of protest against the musical world around him, and not least against Langgaard's private symbol for this, that is, Carl Nielsen. In 1948 Langgaard wrote the sarcastic choral work Carl Nielsen, vor store komponist (Carl Nielsen - our Great Composer), which of course he immediately sent in to the State Broadcasting Company as a suggested programme item. This composition is dedicated to "the world of music in Denmark", and consists of only 32 bars, which are to be "repeated for all eternity"! In a preface, the composer regrets that all his life he has had to accept the necessity of living and breathing in the world of Danish music, infected as it was by Carl Nielsen.

Langgaard felt himself surrounded by a "demonic wall" when he thought of the extent to which his own art was distributed and accepted. "In 2000 years - perhaps - there will perhaps be hope for my music!", he said. This faint hope is also expressed in one of his last notes, in which he referred to Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 4, Det uudslukkelige (The Inextinguishable), as a symbol of all that was evil: "Life will drown 'the unquenchable' in pure light and beauty of sound. Dixi..."

Professor Tage Nielsen remembers how Langgaard referred to Carl Nielsen in his later years...