An haphazard and illogical way of working

From the middle of the 1940's, Langgaard as a rule only composed short movements, which he then later often put together to make larger compositions. These conglomerations of various pieces of music might also change over a period of several years, as new movements would be written and incorporated into already established works. In the course of this process, the composer would appear to have regarded the works as concluded after each change that he made.

An extreme example of the illogical and apparently haphazard genesis of a composition is that of Sonata No. 3 for violin and piano, the title page of which is reproduced below (as was often the case, the information given by Langgaard on the title page is misleading).

The development of this work went through 6 phases. Originally, in 1945, it comprised only one movement (= most of the 1^st Movement of the final version).
In 1946 a second movement was added (= the 5^th Movement of the final version).
In 1948 another movement was inserted (= the 3^rd Movement of the final version), and later that same year the 1^st Movement was expanded by the addition of an introduction and an identical middle section. Later in 1948 another movement was added (= the 4^th Movement of the final version).
Finally, in 1949, the introduction was removed from the 1^st Movement, a conclusion was added to it, and it was incorporated into the final version as an independent 2^nd Movement. This means that the 1^st Movement is followed by a 2^nd Movement which, apart from the conclusion, is identical with the middle section of the 1^st Movement!

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