Good News In History, November 26
Good News In History, November 26 104 years ago today, Rued Langgaard’s “ Music of the Spheres ” (Sfærernes Musik) premiered at Konzerthaus in Karlsruhe, Germany. Replicating a variety of outer spatial senses through the careful and considered multi-movement work, it includes several methods of orchestral composition well ahead of its time. Several of the movements project the sense of vast space and distance, particularly through the positioning of a small, secondary orchestra off stage. READ more about the work, and listen to it… (1921) Rued Langgaard The piece was inspired by a line from a Danish poem translated as, “the stars seem to twinkle kindly at us, yet the writing of the stars is cold and merciless.” Langgard vacates much of the middle tonal range in favor of extreme basso and treble clusters. This lack of depth seems to mimic outer space. Strings repeatedly stay on single notes, rising and falling in volume as if capturing the orbit of a celestial body. By playing directly on th…
