Rued Langgaard

Rued Langgaard was a Danish composer and organist. Langgaard expressed himself in a late Romantic idiom but also wrote radically experimental works. In his own self-image he existed in an oppositional relationship to the leading Danish composer of the time, Carl Nielsen, and throughout his life he felt overlooked as both composer and organist. Langgaard has written 16 symphonies and several major orchestral works. He was a Protestant, however at times attracted to both theosophical philosophy and mysticism. Many of his significant works bear distinctive and evocative titles such as Music of the Abyss (1924), Fantasia of Madness (1949), Flood of Sun (1951), Antichrist (1923-1930) and Music of the Spheres (1918).