Symphony No.11 "Ixion" - Rued Langgaard

Danish National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Dausgaard.

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Langgaard's Symphony No.11 was composed between December 1944 and January 1945, being premiered much later on a radio broadcast on July 29 of 1968, performed by the Odense Symphony Orchestra conducted by Aksel Wellejus. Langgaard sent the score many times to the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, but it was rejected again and again until he died in 1952.

The story of the Greek mythological figure Ixion can be read in its most complete form in Pindar, but he is also mentioned by other poets including Homer and Ovid. Ixion had killed his father-in-law and, as a result, had to go into exile. However, Zeus took pity on him and invited him to Olympus as a guest. There Ixion became so infatuated with Hera, the wife of Zeus, that he could not resist the temptation to try to seduce her. This was a clear transgression of the terms of his invitation to the banquet, and as a punishment Ixion was tied to a flaming wheel which rotates for all eternity in the air in Tartarus, the deepest region of the underworld. The gods also ordered that Ixion was constantly to shout: “You should show gratitude to your benefactor”.

The work marks a turning-point in Langgaard’s artistic development, since here he moves in earnest into an area where art and concept, absurdity and provocation can hardly be distinguished from one another. The work is an obvious comment on the composer’s isolated and absurd existence. Beyond this narrow autobiographical interpretation, it seems very reasonable to view the work in the light of the world war that was culminating when the composition was written. The original title "Eternal War" can be viewed in this context. But it is also relevant to place the work in the context of musical history, as a provocative contribution to a current aesthetic debate on music in Denmark. This debate had been launched by Knudåge Riisager in 1940 in the Danish Music Review, in an article with the polemical title “The symphony is dead — long live music!” Riisager thought that "the monumental musical work" had outlived its role after the Romantic epoch, a stance with which Langgaard must have been in profound disagreement.

The piece consists of a fragmentary waltz theme that is repeated 11 times. The whole orchestra plays fortissimo and at first one senses few changes; but the thematic periods are in fact of different lengths and there is constant modulation. Towards the end, four extra tubas enter, which Langgaard wanted placed in front of the orchestra. They play (in unison) a seventh-chord motif which, with note lengths of 5, 7, 9 and 12 crotchets, crosses the rhythms of the waltz music. Could this be the last trump? Does the flourish at the end mark the death of the symphony and the end of Romantic music? Or is the symphony just a desperate composer’s expression of powerlessness? The work is open to interpretation.

Picture: "The Torture of Ixion" (XVIII Century) by the Italian painter Giovan Battista Langetti.

Sources: https://bit.ly/3yc7sPb and https://bit.ly/3y4YbbH

Unfortunately the score is not available.

Видео Symphony No.11 "Ixion" - Rued Langgaard канала Sergio Cánovas