Symphony no. 6

Glass's last symphony, op. 60, was completed in 1924 and carries the Danish title Skjoldungeæt, referring to the Scyldings, the legendary royal line of Danish saga known from Beowulf. It is the only one of the six to turn towards national mythology, and it closed a symphonic project begun thirty years earlier. Glass lived until 1936, by which time Nielsen's language had defined what Danish music was taken to be and his own late-Romantic manner sounded like a survival. Recordings from the 1990s onwards have brought the cycle back into circulation.