In the composer's workshop

'Recycling'

As an example of 'recycling', it can be shown how a section of the beginning of Sonata for Piano (1916) - later designated Fantasi-Sonate (Fantasy Sonata) - was used again in 1947-49 in a work for piano entitled Vanvidsfantasi (Fantasia of Madness).

In Vanvidsfantasi, the passionate Schumann-inspired work from 1916, which was a composition in one movement lasting 20 minutes, was 'taken to an extreme'. Langgaard used only a few excerpts from the original work in the first movement of the fantasia, which is in three movements. Vanvidsfantasi 'is about' the madness of Schumann's last years, undoubtedly a parallel to Langgaard's own situation as a rejected composer in Ribe 100 years later. The fantasia therefore contains an interpretation - forced almost to the point of madness - of Langgaard's own Schumann- inspired youthful composition, to which, moreover, he added as an underlying text Heine's mournful poem, "Lehn deine Wang..." - a poem which had also been put to music by Schumann.

This example of the score of Vanvidsfantasi is reproduced by permission of Engstrøm & Sødring A/S.

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