The Music of Louis Andriessen

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Author: Yayoi Uno Everett

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The Music of Louis Andriessen

For much of his career, the internationally known and still active Dutch composer Louis Andriessen has been understood as an iconoclast who challenged and resisted the musical establishment. In keeping with the objective of the series, this book examines Louis Andriessen’s compositions as a case study for exploring the social and aesthetic implications of new music. Everett chronicles the evolution of Andriessen’s music over the course of five decades: the formative years in which he experimented with serialism, chance, and collage techniques; his political activism in the late 1960s; ‘concept’ works from the 1970s that provide musical commentary on philosophical writings by Plato, St Augustine and others; theatrical and operatic collaborations with Robert Wilson and Peter Greenaway in the 1980s and 1990s; and recent works that explore contemplative themes on death and madness. Everett’s analysis of Andriessen’s music draws on theories of parody, narrativity, intertextuality, and cultural studies that have gained currency in musicological discourse in recent years. yayo i u n o e v e r e t t is currently Associate Professor in Music at Emory University, Atlanta, and specializes in the analysis of post-1945 art music, semiotics, and contemporary Japanese music. Her work has appeared in many journals including Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie, Music Theory Spectrum, Music Theory Online, and Contemporary Music Review.

Music in the Twentieth Century g e n e r a l e d i t o r Arnold Whittall This series offers a wide perspective on music and musical life in the twentieth century. Books included range from historical and biographical studies concentrating particularly on the context and circumstances in which composers were writing, to analytical and critical studies concerned with the nature of musical language and questions of compositional process. The importance given to context will also be reflected in studies dealing with, for example, the patronage, publishing, and promotion of new music, and in accounts of the musical life of particular countries. Recent titles Kyle Gann The Music of Conlon Nancarrow Jonathan Cross The Stravinsky Legacy Michael Nyman Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond Jennifer Doctor The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 1922–1936 Robert Adlington The Music of Harrison Birtwistle Keith Potter Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass Carlo Caballero Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics Peter Burt The Music of Toru Takemitsu David Clarke The Music and Thought of Michael Tippett: Modern Times and Metaphysics M. J. Grant Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics: Compositional Theory in Post-War Europe Philip Rupprecht Britten’s Musical Language Mark Carroll Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe Adrian Thomas Polish Music since Szymanowski J. P. E. Harper-Scott Edward Elgar, Modernist Yayoi Uno Everett The Music of Louis Andriessen

The Music of Louis Andriessen Yayoi Uno Everett

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521864237 © Yayoi Uno Everett 2006 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2006 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 978-0-511-34888-4 ISBN-10 0-511-34888-6 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 ISBN-10

hardback 978-0-521-86423-7 hardback 0-521-86423-2

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Steve and Morris

Contents

List of music examples and figures Acknowledgements xiii List of abbreviations xv

page ix

Introduction 1 1 Dutch music in the twentieth century 12 Developments prior to World War II 13 Developments after World War II 20 2 Formative years 29 Formative years: neo-tonality and serialism 30 Toward textural music, alea, and improvisation 40 Collage and syncretism 45 3 Politics and “concept” works 59 Collaborative opera and collage 61 Embodiment of solidarity: agitated chant, “collective” unison, and minimalism 66 “Concept” works: dialectical commentary on text 76 Ideology, reception, and authenticity 92 4 Toward the metaphysical in art (1981–88) 100 Dialectics of time and velocity 102 De Materie (1984–88): the genesis of a non-opera 114 Metaphysics of being and becoming 139 5 Ramifications 144 The “hard-edged” aesthetics of The Hague school 145 The making of an American “guru”: from California to New York City 149 Analytic explorations: from bebop to Bach 154 New music community as a heterotopian site 163 6 Operatic collaboration with Peter Greenaway 170 Rosa: subverting the narrative 172 Writing to Vermeer 183 On the interface between music and drama 200

viii

Co n te n t s

7 Contemplative works 207 Form and expression in the Trilogy of the Last Day 209 Beyond the Trilogy: exploration into madness and hell 231 8 Epilogue 239 Music as commentary: parody and beyond 240 Politics of reception 242 Bibliography 247 Index 258

Music examples and figures

Ex. 2.1: Ex. 2.2a: Ex. 2.2b: Ex. 2.2c: Ex. 2.3a: Ex. 2.3b: Ex. 2.3c: Ex. 2.4a: Ex. 2.4b: Ex. 2.5: Fig. 2.6a: Ex. 2.6b: Ex. 2.7: Fig. 2.8a: Ex. 2.8b: Ex. 2.8c: Ex. 3.1: Fig. 3.2: Ex. 3.3a: Ex. 3.3b: Ex. 3.3c: Ex. 3.3d: Ex. 3.4a: Ex. 3.4b: Ex. 3.4c: Ex. 3.4d: Ex. 3.5: Ex. 3.6a: Ex. 3.6b: Ex. 3.6c: Fig. 3.6d: Fig. 3.7: Fig. 3.8: Ex. 3.9a:

Sonata for flute and piano (mvt. I) page 32 tempo scheme in Séries for two pianos page 34 Séries for two pianos (mvt. I) page 35 Séries for two pianos (mvt. V) page 36 principal motives in Nocturnen page 37 Nocturnen (mvt. I, reh. C) page 38 Nocturnen (mvt. III) page 39 Ittrospezione II for orchestra (1963) [Quartet 1] page 41 opening of Ittrospezione III (“Concept II” 1965) page 43 Registers for piano (1963) [systems 1 and 5] page 44 quotations found in Anachronie I page 47 Anachronie I (reh. I) page 48 Anachronie II (reh. N) page 50 interplay of gestures in Contra Tempus page 51 opening of Contra Tempus (mvt. I) page 52 Contra Tempus (opening of mvt. II) page 53 “H is for Hate” from Reconstructie page 65 cover photo for “Andriessen [goes] on the road with the ‘red’ [leftist] orchestra” Photo (TIFF) page 68 Dat gebeurt in Vietnam (opening) page 69 opening of Il Principe (reduction, mm. 3–9) page 70 opening of Workers Union (1975) page 71 section F of De Staat (reh. 37, piano parts only) page 71 phase-shifting device in De Volharding (reh. C) page 73 chordal changes within Hoketus page 74 opening rhythmic pattern from Hoketus (sec. C) page 74 concluding section of Hoketus (sec. E, reduction) page 75 transition to Gesualdo’s motet in Il Principe (reh. 8) page 78 De Staat, first vocal entry (reh. 5) page 83 De Staat, second vocal entry (reh. 31) page 83 De Staat, third vocal entry (reh. 45) page 84 inversion of signifiers between text and music page 84 list of mottos and scalar constructs in De Staat page 86 montage technique in De Staat page 87 opening motive in Mausoleum (cimbalom part) page 89

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L i s t o f fi g u re s a n d e x a m p l e s

Ex. 3.9b: Fig. 3.9c: Ex. 4.1a: Ex. 4.1b: Ex. 4.2: Fig. 4.3: Fig. 4.4a: Ex. 4.4b: Ex. 4.4c: Fig. 4.5: Fig. 4.6a: Ex. 4.6b: Fig. 4.7a: Ex. 4.7b: Ex. 4.7c: Ex. 4.7d: Ex. 4.7e: Fig. 4.8a: Fig. 4.8b: Fig. 4.9a: Ex. 4.9b: Ex. 4.9c: Fig. 4.10a: Ex. 4.10b: Ex. 4.11a: Ex. 4.11b: Ex. 4.11c: Ex. 4.11d: Ex. 4.12a: Ex. 4.12b: Ex. 4.12c: Ex. 4.12d: Ex. 5.1: Ex. 5.2a: Ex. 5.2b: Ex. 5.2c: Ex. 5.3a: Fig. 5.3b:

the first vocal entry (baritone parts, reh. 26) page 90 formal outline of Mausoleum page 90 De Tijd (Section I: mm. 25–30) page 104 De Tijd, first instrumental interlude (mm. 89–93) page 105 Section IV (mm. 97–123) page 106 durational cycles and patterns in De Tijd page 107 chart of tempo acceleration page 110 cyclical structure of De Snelheid (mm. 20–61) page 111 comparison of two adjoining sections from De Snelheid (reh. 32/ reh. 4321 ) page 113 photo of Wilson’s production of De Materie page 117 tempo and proportional scheme for De Materie page 120 the central tetrachord and tonal plan for De Materie page 120 formal overview of Part I of De Materie page 121 opening hammer strikes page 121 L’homme armé in rhythmic augmentation (reh. 6) page 122 Gorlaeus’s entry (reh. 32) page 124 choral entry (reh. 49) page 124 formal correspondences between Part II of De Materie and the structural plan of Rheims Cathedral page 126 ballade in Part II of De Materie page 126 transformation of the ballade theme page 127 staggered entries of the ballade theme (reh. 2) page 127 double entries of the ballade (mm. 168–82) page 128 Andriessen’s sketch for the formal plan of De Stijl page 130 passacaglia theme based on a “funk” bass (reh. 1) page 131 saxophone and vocal entries (reh. 3) page 132 “T-cross” figurations (mm. 117–22) page 133 example of proportional canon (reh. 25) page 134 B-A-C-H motive in the manner of a chorale page 134 Part IV of De Materie (mm. 1–7) page 136 antiphonal chorus (reh. 7) page 136 choral entry on Kloos’s sonnet (reh. 14) page 137 the final appearance of the B-A-C-H motive (reh. 22–23) page 138 Misha Mengelberg’s Enkele Regels in de Dierentuin (“Some Rules in the Zoo,” 1996) page 146 Facing Death (mm.1–12) page 155 quotation from “Ornithology” (mm. 27–34) page 155 Facing Death (reh. 26, mm. 269–77) page 156 opening of Hout page 157 formal overview of Hout page 158


Ex. 5.3c: Ex. 5.3d: Ex. 5.4a: Ex. 5.4b: Ex. 5.4c: Ex. 5.4d: Ex. 6.1: Ex. 6.2a: Ex. 6.2b: Ex. 6.3: Ex. 6.4a: Ex. 6.4b: Ex. 6.5: Ex. 6.6a: Ex. 6.6b: Ex. 6.7: Fig. 6.8: Fig. 6.9: Ex. 6.10: Fig. 6.11: Ex. 6.12a: Ex. 6.12b: Ex. 6.12c: Ex. 6.13a: Ex. 6.13b: Ex. 6.13c: Ex. 6.14: Ex. 6.15a: Ex. 6.15b: Ex. 6.16: Fig. 7.1a: Ex. 7.1b: Ex. 7.1c: Ex. 7.1d: Ex. 7.1e: Ex. 7.1f: Fig. 7.2a: Ex. 7.2b:

third episode (mm. 195–97) page 159 Hout (third development, mm. 186–88) page 159 formal scheme of Zilver (Andriessen’s sketch) page 160 Zilver (reh.1, piano part only) page 161 Zilver (comparison of reh. 7 and 14) page 162 polyrhythmic and tonal relationships in Zilver (reh. 3–26) page 163 the Hout motif (L1) in Rosa (mm. 1–6) page 178 succession of chords in the overture (mm. 13–16) page 178 Rosa, scene 5 (reh.15) page 178 Madame de Vries’s motif of investigation (L2) page 179 Esmeralda’s lament based on Brahms’s waltz (L3) page 179 inverted form of L3 sung by Rosa (scene 11) page 180 Stravinskian chords as signifier of brutality (sc. 4, reh.11) page 180 Madame de Vries’s cabaret-style song page 181 parody of Latin tune (scene 6, reh. 6) page 181 large-scale chordal and pitch connections in Rosa page 182 Andriessen’s formal outline for Writing to Vermeer page 187 list of borrowed themes and motives page 188 Andriessen’s sketch for the motives page 189 thematic and textual correspondences in Writing to Vermeer scenes page 190 harmonic units (H1–H3) associated with Catharina and children page 191 stadpijpers motive associated with Maria page 191 chordal complex associated with Saskia page 192 varied fragments of SW1 and textual correspondences page 193 Saskia’s presentation of SW1 (scene 4, sec. 6) page 193 SW1’ in augmentation (scene 5, reh. 35−8 ) page 194 quote from Jurriaan Andriessen’s Magnificat (scene 4) page 195 harmonization of the piccolo line (scene 1, reh. 1) page 197 harmonization of SW2, “Ick voer al over Rhijn” page 197 quote from Stravinsky (scene 6, reh. 15−2 ) page 198 Andriessen’s sketch for “The Last Day” page 211 “The Last Day” (mm.1–8, reduction) page 212 “self-transposing” canon at the rhythmic ratio of 4:3 page 213 vocal entry (reh. 12) page 214 “black hole” (reduction, reh. 20) page 214 rhythmic augmentation of the folk song (reh. 39+2 ) page 216 Andriessen’s sketch for “Tao” page 219 T1 from “Tao” (mm.1–10, reduction) page 220

xi

xii


Ex. 7.2c: T2 from “Tao” (reh. 7, reduction) page 221 Ex. 7.2d: pianto motive (T3) in the solo piano (reduction, Ex. 7.2e: Fig. 7.3a: Ex. 7.3b: Ex. 7.3c: Ex. 7.3d: Ex. 7.3e: Ex. 7.3f: Ex. 7.4a: Ex. 7.4b: Ex. 7.5:

reh. 13+6 ) page 222 appropriation of the “death” motive in Bizet’s Carmen page 223 formal comparison (based on Andriessen’s sketch) page 225 primary motive (reduction, reh. A) page 226 development of the primary motive (reduction, reh. 9+4 ) page 227 secondary motive (reh. 21) page 227 recapitulation (reh. K+3 ) page 228 vocal entry (reh. 37) page 229 “Una canzona si rompe” from La Passione (reh. 5) page 233 “O Satana” from La Passione (reduction, mm. 473–82) page 234 Inanna’s aria (Act I, mm. 54–60) page 235

Acknowledgements

This book would not have come into existence without the support of so many people who assisted me with the project during the last five years. The impetus for writing this book came from witnessing cultural politics in Amsterdam as a visitor in the late 1980s and the meetings I had with Louis Andriessen to discuss his views on politics, philosophy, and music since 1998. I am deeply indebted to Louis for his generosity and willingness to engage in analysis of his music at different stages in completing the manuscript. I also acknowledge special debts to the following colleagues and friends in the Netherlands: Frits van der Waa, Emanuel Overbeeke, Pay-Uun Hiu, Ger van den Beuken, Mirjam Zegers, Jacqueline Oskamp, Henk Borgdoff, and Barbara Bleij. For translation of various sources from Dutch to English, I thank Maria Zomerdijk, Eva van Leer, Frits Emanuel, Catherine Marin, Frans de Waal, and Ila and Willem Hoogstraten for their assistance. I am especially grateful to Ila and Willem for volunteering so much of their time to help me understand various aspects of Dutch history and culture. The research fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation (2002) and Emory University’s Research Committee Grant (2003) enabled me to carry out the writing of the manuscript and conduct research in the Netherlands for an extended period. I thank Kofi Agawu, Joseph Straus, and Stephen Crist for writing letters in support of obtaining internal and external grants during the initial phase of research. In shaping the manuscript, I am deeply indebted to Arnold Whittall for his advice on the proposal and responses to each chapter as I wrote them. I also owe many thanks to Robert Adlington, Frits van der Waa, and Jonathan Bernard for their insights and critical comments on the manuscript. For general editorial work, I am grateful to Heather Diamond and Jennefer Callaghan and to Christopher Walter for his assistance in the preparation of musical examples. I am also grateful to my colleagues Stephen Crist and Kevin Karnes at Emory University for their guidance and suggestions. I thank my former colleague Richard Toensing for introducing Andriessen’s music to me in his composition seminar at the University of Colorado in 1995. Last, but not of least importance, I thank Steve Everett, James and Charlene Everett, and Hideo and Shoko Uno for their support and encouragement every bit along the way.

xiv

Ack n ow l e d g e m e n t s

Excerpts from Andriessen’s scores are reprinted by permission of the following publishers: Sonata for flute and piano (Ex. 2.1), Séries (Exx. 2.2b and c), Ittrospezione II (Ex. 2.4a), Ittrospezione III (“Concept II”) (Ex. 2.4b), Contra Tempus (Exx. 2.8b and c), Anachronie II (Ex. 2.7), Il Principe (Exx. 3.2b, 3.5), Workers Union (Ex. 3.3c), Registers (Ex. 2.5), Reconstructie (Ex. 3.1), and De Volharding (Ex. 3.4a) are reprinted by permission of Donemus, Amsterdam. Nocturnen (Exx. 2.3b, 2.3c), Anachronie I (Ex. 2.6b), De Staat (Exx. 3.3d, 3.6a and b), Hoketus (Exx. 3.4b through d), Mausoleum (Exx. 3.9a and b), De Tijd (Ex. 4.1a through c), De Snelheid (Exx. 4.4b, 4.4c), De Materie (Exx. 4.7b through e, 4.8b, 4.9a through c, 4.10b, 4.11a and b, 4.11c and d, 4.12a through d), Facing Death (Exx. 5.2a), Hout (Exx. 5.3a through d), Zilver (Exx. 5.4b–d), Rosa (Exx. 6.1, 6.2a, 6.2b, 6.3, 6.4a, 6.4b, 6.5, 6.6a, 6.6b), Trilogy of the Last Day (Exx. 7.1b through f, 7.2b through e, 7.3b through f), Writing to Vermeer (Exx. 6.12a through c, 6.13a through c, 6.14, 6.15a and b, 6.16), La Passione (Exx. 7.4a and b), and Inanna (Ex. 7.5) are reproduced with the permission of Boosey and Hawkes, Inc., New York. The unpublished example for Dat gebeurt in Vietnam, sketch for De Stijl (Fig. 4.10a), “The Last Day” (Fig. 7.1a), and sketch for “Tao” (Fig. 7.2a) are reprinted by permission of Louis Andriessen. The unpublished example for Enkele Regels in de Dierentuin (Ex. 5.1) is reprinted by permission of Misha Mengelberg. The photo of Robert Wilson’s production of De Materie by Jaap Pieper (Fig. 4.5) is reprinted by permission of Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam. The newspaper photograph of Andriessen (Fig. 3.2) is reprinted by permission of De Volkskrant.

Abbreviations

m. = measure mm. = measures MM = metronome marking oct = octatonic scale wt = whole-tone scale Reh. = rehearsal number or letter Reh. 9+4 (4 measures after reh. 4) 0’00” = timing (minute/second) that accompanies a compact disc recording of Andriessen’s music listed under bibliography

Instrumental abbreviations (for Donemus and Boosey & Hawkes scores): afl = alto flute asax = alto saxophone bcl = bass clarinet bgtr = bass guitar bsax = baritone saxophone bsn = bassoon cel = celesta cl = clarinet cimb = cimbalom cemb = cembalo corA = cor anglais [English horn] crot = crotales cwb = cowbells db = double bass dbcl = double bass clarinet egtr = electric guitar ehrp = electric harp epno = electric piano fl = flute glsp = glockenspiel gtr = guitar hrn = horn hrp = harp hpsd = harpsichord kb = keyboard mar = marimba ob = oboe

xvi

L i s t o f a b b re v i a t i o n s

org = organ Horg = Hammond organ perc = percussion picc = piccolo pno = piano sax = saxophone ssax = soprano saxophone str = strings syn = synthesizer tb = tuba tbls = tubular bells timp = timpani trb = trombone tpt = trumpet tsax = tenor saxophone vib = vibraphone vla = viola vlc = cello vln = violin wblk = woodblock xyl = xylophone

Registral designation of pitch is based on the system established by the Acoustical Society of America, e.g. C1 = lowest C on the piano, C4 = middle C, etc. To facilitate reading, pitch classes are designated by letter names. [] = pitch classes in normal form {} = unordered pitch classes < > = ordered pitch classes or interonset duration

Introduction

On a hazy July morning in North Adams, Massachusetts, I walked into the third floor of MASS MOCA, where a group of young students had gathered to rehearse Louis Andriessen’s Workers Union1 (1975) at full intensity. The relentless rhythm of the band, consisting of vibraphone, brake drums, electric guitar, violins, piccolo, piano, and kazoo, resonated through the brick walls of the museum complex, a converted factory that houses the Bang on a Can Summer Music Institute. Andriessen walked into the rehearsal space, paid compliments to the musicians, and greeted the guitarist Mark Stewart, who leads the group. Following a casual introduction, he told the group: “The piece should sound difficult. You make it sound too easy – this isn’t Cuban jazz!” Jolted by his comment, the students – many of whom were not acquainted with Marxist ideology and the social context in which the piece was composed – tried to give a harsher edge to the sound of relentless rhythms played in unison. Three days later, Workers Union was showcased along with post-minimalist works by David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, and Steve Reich in a six-hour marathon concert. The boisterous energy and response from the audience generated an atmosphere of a pop or rock concert more than that of a typical contemporary music event.2 As a radical anarchist turned “guru,” Andriessen has influenced a host of young composers and musicians through his residencies at the California Institute for the Arts (1983), Yale University (1986), Duke University (1991), Princeton University (1996), and other institutions in the United States. Along with Reich, Glass, and Adams, Andriessen’s music has been canonized in the repertoire of Bang on a Can, the group that presented Andriessen’s Hoketus in their inaugural marathon concert in 1987. In recent years, his music was featured in one-to-two-week-long festivals in Tokyo (2000), London (2002) and New York City (2004).3 In the Netherlands, some refer to Andriessen as an “American” composer because he openly demonstrates a fondness for American culture (from cowboy films to boogie-woogie to Janet Jackson).4 At the same time, his music abounds with references that are simultaneously grounded in the vernacular traditions of jazz and popular music, the modernist traditions of Ives, Stravinsky, and Cage, and the contrapuntal traditions of Machaut, Gesualdo, and Bach. Andriessen’s music presents a provocative case study for examining the social and aesthetic implications of new music that crosses stylistic and

2

T h e Mu s i c o f L o u i s An d r i e s s e n

ideological boundaries. For much of his career, the Dutch composer was understood as an iconoclast who challenged and resisted the musical establishment and its hallmark institutions, among them the symphony orchestra. Informed by a socialist agenda since the 1970s, he has composed music that comments on political or philosophical concepts in order to reinstate music as a social ritual and as an arena for controversy and provocation. His political stance is encapsulated in the statement: “My duty is to steal music from the commercial-music world and make some more intellectual use of it. It’s a symbol of anti-capitalism” (Schwarz 1996). It is also telling that his recent compilation of essays bears the title Gestolen Tijd: Alle verhalen (“Stolen Time: Telling Everything”). Intended as a double entendre, the title refers to the act of composing in time and “stealing” musical materials from other historical periods (2002a: 11–12; 2002b: 12). While challenging mainstream modernism and the commodification of music, the constructivist strains in Andriessen’s compositions keep him inextricably bound to the modernist traditions of European and American art music. Along with that of Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky’s presence looms large throughout Andriessen’s evolution as a composer from both an aesthetic and a compositional perspective. John Adams comments: “Andriessen took two quintessentially American musical languages, be-bop and minimalism, filtered them through the refracting rhythmic techniques of Stravinsky and produced a genuinely original sound” (Schwarz 1996). Like Stravinsky, Andriessen has repeatedly declared himself an anti-romanticist, upholding classical objectivity over sentimental expressions of subjectivity. And following Stravinsky, Andriessen composes by means of absorption, synthesis, and reinterpretation of existing styles. To this end, he has written widely about his aesthetic stance, his models and inspirations, the dialectical constitution of his music, the meaning of irony, and numerous other topics (2002a; 2002b). Stravinsky is important not only to Andriessen, but also to a generation of Dutch composers who reinstated the constancy of pulse and renewed sense of tonality that defined a new orientation in Dutch music after World War II. In The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky (1993), co-authored with Elmer Schönberger, Andriessen upholds Stravinsky as the consummate modernist who helped redefine contemporary music in postwar Holland: The true influence of Stravinsky has only just begun. It is an influence which can do without Stravinskianisms, without convulsive rhythms, without endless changes of time signatures, without pandiatonicism . . . Real influence is a ladder that one lovingly throws behind, just out of reach. (Andriessen and Schönberger 1989: 6)

In t ro d u c t i o n

3

In keeping with the above, what Andriessen means by “true influence” extends far beyond simply appropriating Stravinsky’s signature styles and compositional modus operandi. In this regard, Andriessen’s orientation has clearly set him apart from other Dutch composers such as Ton de Leeuw and Klaas de Vries who have appropriated Stravinsky’s style more literally.5 Taking Stravinsky’s anti-romanticist stance as a point of departure, Andriessen has instead developed an aesthetic ideology for the Haagse School (The Hague school), which has come to be known for its distinctive approaches to composition based on improvisation, fusion of popular and experimental idioms, and exploration of irony. David Wright aptly coined the term “concept” pieces to describe Andriessen’s major works from the 70s and 80s where music provides a paradoxical commentary on political and metaphysical themes (1993: 7). Although the aesthetic and ideological underpinnings of Andriessen’s “concept” pieces from the 1970s have been widely written about, a comprehensive examination of his aesthetic position and reception of his music has yet to be undertaken. Maja Trochimczyk’s recent book offers an accessible introduction to Andriessen’s music, filled with useful interviews with the composer and his colleagues. Her uneven coverage of the repertory and reliance on categories (e.g., minimalism, mysticism), however, result in an uncritical historical evaluation of the political context and ideologies that have shaped Andriessen’s compositional orientation. Instead of reducing the characteristics of his music to familiar labels, I argue that the ideological underpinnings of his work need to be placed under closer scrutiny.6 As much as he speaks of his American influences, Andriessen’s aesthetic stance has to be understood in reference to the zeitgeist of Dutch musical culture and examined within the broader contexts of twentieth-century artistic developments. In this respect, Robert Adlington’s monograph on De Staat is the first to probe deeply into this socio-political and ideological context in his detailed examination of one of Andriessen’s landmark compositions (2004a). The term musical poetics thus invokes the aesthetic, ideological, and cultural contexts that have shaped the production and reception of Andriessen’s music.7 The book chronicles the evolution of his compositional orientation over five decades, and among the topics considered are the influence of Darmstadt aesthetics on his compositions from the 1960s, the harmonic vocabulary and the montage technique that he inherited from Stravinsky, how the politically-engaged praxes of Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler, and Vsevolod Meyerhold shaped his stance toward theater and opera, and his preoccupation with the expression of irony in his later works. Building on available resources, I set my commentary on Andriessen’s music in dialogue

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with the composer’s own words, the opinions of his students and colleagues, and perspectives culled from the work of Dutch and British musicologists. In addition, my analytical descriptions of Andriessen’s music are designed to make the organization of form, motive, rhythm, harmony, and timbre accessible to readers as an aid to listening and contemplating the metaphysical or philosophical questions posed. Regarding politics, I trace the ideological foundation of Andriessen’s music to two interrelated trends in twentieth-century Dutch history: the institutional hegemony of the symphony orchestra in the prewar years and the social protest movements in the postwar era. Both were important in shaping Andriessen’s seminal role as socialist composer and his anticapitalist stance toward art. The opening chapter traces the evolution of contemporary Dutch music from the struggles waged by prewar composers against the conservative legislation that governed the production of music, up to the critical period in the postwar years when radical social reforms brought about a new infrastructure in support of the arts. In the early 1970s, the emergence of progressive political parties on the left ushered in an era of wide-ranging social, economic, and cultural reforms. Inspired by countercultural protest groups that demanded new modes of artistic expression and freedom, Andriessen joined the Notenkraker (“Nutcracker” action group) in an effort to remove institutional censorship in orchestras, give musicians the freedom to choose the kind of music they wished to play, and make music more accessible to people from all walks of life. Although the composers involved in the protests were not bound by a cohesive ideology, their efforts signaled a deliberate departure from the positivistic strain of high modernism8 that reached its pinnacle in the 1950s. To defy the capitalistic commodification of the symphony orchestra, Andriessen vowed to write music exclusively for ensembles that performed for a social cause (Whitehead 1997: 4–7). His employment of music as propaganda is in alliance with the material aesthetics of the Marxist philosopher György Lukács; in shifting the emphasis of material aesthetics from its epistemological basis to the issue of agency, Lukács claimed that the power of art resides in its ability to intervene directly on the level of social praxis and human behavior (1970). To this end, quotations and stylized allusions in Andriessen’s music do not appear for their own sake, but rather serve as references embedded within an ideological framework. Likewise, rhythmic unison and repetitive rhythms are not minimal for an aesthetic reason, but rather for their social utility or use-value.9 For Andriessen, foregrounding the use-value of music serves as an ideological demystification, emphasizing that the act of composing is never “supra-social” – that is, it cannot transcend the social conditions that give birth to it. His aim was to work directly – at the levels of


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practicality and behavior – to challenge and subvert cultural authorities by mobilizing performers and audiences to act for socio-political change. The democratic ideal is embedded, for instance, in his decision to combine musical instruments from classical, jazz, and folk genres. Since 1980, Andriessen’s compositions espouse metaphysical rather than political themes, yet the ideological shift that took place during the 1970s has left an indelible mark on his compositional orientation and his stance toward the function of music in society. Politics, in the broader sense, extends to the ramifications of his musical ideology in the formation of alternative music ensembles, his impact on younger generations of composers and musicians, and the reception of his music within and outside the Netherlands. The book also examines Andriessen’s techniques for incorporating quotations of and stylistic allusions to music from the past as a vehicle for advancing his political and philosophical vision of art. In exploring the aesthetic framework for understanding parodic workings in twentieth-century art forms, specific criteria are distilled from Mikhail Bakhtin’s formulation of parody as a type of double-voiced discourse (1981) and Linda Hutcheon’s definition of parody as a particular form of artistic recycling with complex textual intentionality (1985). Defining parody as a stylized discourse of heteroglossia, Bakhtin emphasizes the way in which this device appropriates “another’s speech in another’s language, serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way” (1981: 324). Along with the comic and ironic, parodic discourse expresses two different intentions, meanings, voices, and expressions that enter into dialogue with one another within one context. The “dialectical” commentary Andriessen creates through a collision of two or more musical ideas is founded on such a principle. In exploring parody in the context of twentieth-century music, Hutcheon characterizes neo-classical pieces such as Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (1916–17) and Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony (1919–20) by the stylized distance created between the borrowed model and the parody where the ethos or underlying intent may be one of humor, satire, or simply a tribute. In the postwar era, she argues, parody takes a different turn, exemplified in works such as Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia (1968–69) or Peter Maxwell Davies’s Antechrist (1967) where the distance between the background text being parodied and the new incorporating work is signaled by “ironic inversion” or “ironic transcontexualization” (Hutcheon 1985: 15).10 Distinguishing the effect of parody from pastiche, Hutcheon emphasizes the contradictory or incongruous grounding of a reference in a new context. Furthermore, as with Bakhtin, Hutcheon distinguishes parody from intertextuality by privileging authorial intent over readerly response to a borrowed model or reference; as an internally “dialogized” discourse, parody

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requires the decoder to unravel the encoder’s intent in choosing a particular reference and placing it into a new context.11 Thus, parody can be interpreted as a marked type of reference, a case whereby the composer re-contextualizes a stylized or literal musical quotation with intent to highlight it in a specific way. Sometimes parodic techniques are used to forge a contradictory juxtaposition of literary texts, such as when a quotation of Gesualdo’s languid motet intersects with an agitated style of chanting that accompanies Machiavelli’s text in Andriessen’s Il Principe (1974). At other times, the parodic reference remains hidden, taking on an extra-musical and symbolic function; in the climactic passage of “Tao,” the second movement of the Trilogy of the Last Day, Andriessen conceives the descending minor third motive (F-D) as a corollary to the death motive in Bizet’s Carmen. On yet another occasion, the quotation of Brahms’s waltz from his op. 39 no. 2 is transfigured into a theme of lament, as a satirical commentary, in Rosa. The act of decoding parodic references with prescribed meanings does not exclude intertextual readings – cross-references to other music and texts – that arise independently of the poietic investigation centered on authorial intent.12 Jonathan Cross argues for “the uncritical fetishisation of Stravinskian moments” in passages from De Staat that carry the imprint of Stravinsky’s proto-minimal early Russian style, possibly without Andriessen’s conscious attempt to imitate his predecessor (1998: 186).13 Analysis of Andriessen’s music often calls for negotiating the significance of references that arise from seemingly incompatible sources. It is precisely his strategy of recontextualization – how and why he alters the borrowed musical references to form a commentary – that renders his “concept” work meaningful in creating a multi-layered musical discourse. In moving beyond authorial intention as one type of agency, it is also possible to construct readings of Andriessen’s music as text, defined by Barthes as a “social space” that stresses process, context, and enunciative situation (1977: 164). Rather than please the senses, his music often provokes the listeners to contemplate the significance of the borrowed references. In this regard, there are aesthetic cross-currents that figure prominently in Andriessen’s approach to incorporating historical models. For instance, following Brecht’s theory of Verfremdung (“alienation” or “defamiliarization”), Andriessen often re-contextualizes borrowed musical references to create polemical and paradoxical commentaries on contemporary social situations (Bryand-Bertail 2002: 18–20; Willett 1992). Musical forms of alienation in Andriessen’s music appear in the guises of montage, disjointed use of text as a form of narration, and other musical devices for fragmentation. As Joyce and Proust deal with the fragmentation of personality to


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portray a dehumanized individual subject in literature, Andriessen deploys montage and discontinuous form to disrupt linear continuity in music. The spatial form and collage techniques in the Ittrospezione series already signal the transition to a full-scale adoption of montage in De Staat. Rather than unifying a composition through linear and sequential developments of themes and motives, montage gives rise to a collision of meanings through fragmentation and juxtaposition of elements. Already in On Jimmy Yancey, dissonant interruptions cut across the joyous references to jazz in a way that prevents us from hearing the piece as a simple parody. In his “concept” works, Andriessen employs such strategies to encourage the audience to grapple with the contradictory nature of the questions posed. The ingenuity of Andriessen’s parodic approach thus lies in the particular type of misreading, the “good wrong conclusion” that he creates (Andriessen and Schönberger 1989: 6). Joseph Straus – after the literary critic, Harold Bloom – discusses the ways in which modernist composers, notably Arnold Schoenberg and Stravinsky, engaged in creative misreadings in their appropriations of musical elements from their predecessors (1990).14 Andriessen takes the art of misreading one step further by adapting Stravinsky’s modernist strategy and dialectical form of commentary to his own ideological goal. His musical output is, however, surprisingly free of “the anxiety of influence” that, according to Straus, characterizes Schoenberg’s or Stravinsky’s relationship to their predecessors. Andriessen’s misreading differs from theirs in his appropriation of text and music within a musical commentary that does not necessarily aim at synthesis or closure.15 Instead, Andriessen’s appropriation can be seen as an outgrowth of dialectical imitation involving an aggressive dialogue between a piece and its model, one of the strategies of imitation Martha Hyde identifies in Stravinsky’s neoclassical works such as The Rake’s Progress.16 Such characteristics have also led Frits van der Waa to describe Andriessen’s music as “commentaries, essays in notes, meta-music” (1993). Finally, the book explores the broader cultural implications of Andriessen’s musical poetics through the prism of recent discourses on modernism, postmodernism, and minimalism in twentieth-century art. While different disciplines negotiate the “post” in postmodern differently, trends in music since World War II can be viewed at best as a continuation of modernism in a modified form (Silverman 1990; Pasler 1993). Modernist art, exemplified by Futurist, Fauvist, Cubist, and Dadaist movements, signifies a reaction against romanticism in its embrace of rationalism or objectivity. This modernist strain is evident in Andriessen’s predilection for organizing the formal structure of his large-scale compositions according to prescribed numerical proportions. In denouncing nineteenth-century romanticism as

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bourgeois decadence, Stravinsky redefined music as a form of speculation in terms of sound and space (1970: 64). It is also in this sense that Adorno describes Stravinsky as the twentieth-century composer who attempted to reconcile the contradictions that lie between popular and “critical, selfreflective” music “from the outside” by assimilating stylistic forms of the past (Paddison 1996: 98). Andriessen strikes a rebellious stance that is kindred in spirit to Stravinsky’s, employing montage, parodic discourse, and “open” form to set up a dialectical tension between form and content. His aesthetic stance mirrors Arnold Whittall’s comment: “Modernist art . . .is not simply a reflection of what is often apocalyptically described as the chaos of modern society, but an expression of the special and unprecedented tension between the attempt to embody fragmentation and the impulse to transcend it” (1997: 158). In other respects, Andriessen’s aesthetic stance seems to align itself with postmodernist discourses on art since the mid-1970s, be it a postmodernism of resistance and political engagement (Foster 1983), eradication of boundaries between “high” and “low” art (Jameson 1991), fragmentation and discontinuity in artistic expression (Harvey 1984: 44), or protest against institutionalized art and its ideology of autonomy (Huyssen 1986). In my interviews with the composer, however, he has expressly refused to be pigeonholed as a postmodern artist, since the label for him implies the reduction of art to pastiche, nostalgia, and late-capitalistic modes of commodification (Lyotard 1984). Instead of debating classifications, the real challenge lies in locating the cultural fields of production that have transformed the critical reception of Andriessen’s music over time, leading to a dislocation of his musical poetics from its pragmatic intent, i.e., music as social “ritual.” While he attained notoriety as an anarchist composer who vowed never to write for symphony orchestras, his music has been programmed alongside Stravinsky’s at the Concertgebouw – the site of protest in the 1970s – as well as by progressive-minded symphony orchestras across the continent.17 K. Robert Schwarz describes Andriessen – much to the composer’s astonishment – as the icon of anti-establishment in the 1970s who has become an “elder statesman” of the mainstream (1996). In exploring Andriessen’s musical poetics in one concrete sense, one needs to pay particular attention to the disjunction that has emerged between the composer’s ideal (lodged in a historical moment) and the changing reception of his music. What happens when young musicians listen to his protest works from the 1970s, stripped of their socio-political context of performance and adapted for mimetic modes of reproduction in today’s global culture? In what ways does his musical orientation “cross over” established genres of experimental music (e.g., John Cage), minimalism (e.g., Steve Reich),


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and fusion (e.g., John Zorn), yet resist classification into one specific genre? Boundaries are also established through the different geo-political and cultural contexts in which his music has taken root. While Andriessen’s music receives regular performances in England, the United States, Germany, Poland, and Australia, it is rarely heard in France. How do his musical poetics mirror the unique social-democratic ideals that have shaped the musical culture of the Netherlands, yet collide with aesthetic ideals associated with other genres of new music? This book considers the multifarious grounding of Andriessen’s role as composer in the light of such questions. While chronological in orientation, the following chapters delve into Andriessen’s musical language from distinct, yet overlapping theoretical positions. Issues pertaining to Dutch history, aesthetic ideology, and politics are central to chapters 1 through 3, while techniques of parody and intertextuality are explored in depth in chapters 4 through 7. Other analytical discourses, such as deconstruction and narrativity, take on importance in the discussion of his theatrical and operatic works in chapters 4 and 6, and theorizing the cultural and ideological differences that have shaped the reception of Andriessen’s music occupies the focal point of chapter 5 and the epilogue.

Notes 1. In Dutch the possessive noun is used without an apostrophe so that the title Workers Union is equivalent to Workers’ Union in English. 2. These observations are based on the author’s visit to the Bang on a Can Festival Summer Institute between 24 and 27 July 2003. Twenty-four composition students and performers were invited to participate in a series of workshops that included: Balinese gamelan instruction, courses in making instruments, improvisation, dance and choreography, and composition seminars. Unlike a standard concert where the audience is not allowed to talk or leave the hall, the festival attendees were free to move in and out of the concert hall, listening to the music broadcast on video screens throughout the vast space of the museum, which includes a café and an outdoor courtyard. Six hours of new music never felt so short and exhilarating. According to David Lang, Martin Bresnick introduced the idea of a marathon concert at Yale University in the early 1980s. Its format is also similar to the “inclusive” concerts that Andriessen and his colleagues started in Amsterdam in 1972. 3. Andriessen’s music has been showcased in the following festivals, among others: COMPOSIUM 2000 in Tokyo (May 21 through 28, 2000), Passion: The Music of Louis Andriessen in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall (October 3 through 17, 2002), and Sonic Evolutions at Lincoln Center in New York City (May 1 through 15, 2004).

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4. Based on a conversation with Dutch composers Sinta Wullur and Jan Rokus van Rosendael in March 1998. 5. In De Leeuw’s Symphonies for wind-instruments, for example, the composer quotes various “chorale” segments from the eponymous work by Stravinsky (Schönberger 1986: 4). De Vries, on the other hand, adopts Stravinskian idioms of changing meter, emphasis on brass and woodwinds, and chordal complexes in . . . sub nocte per umbras . . . (1989). 6. Ideology is defined as a system of representations (images, myths, ideas, or concepts) endowed with a specific historical context and functioning within a given society (Kristeva 1980: 15). 7. The term poetics is also an oblique reference to Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music (1942) in which he discusses at length his aesthetic stance, philosophy, and the structural deployment of sounds in his music. 8. High modernism in music is associated with postwar avant-garde composers, e.g., Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Milton Babbitt, etc., who sought to systematize the structure of all musical parameters to rationalist means of control – for instance, integral serialism. 9. Marx defines use-value as the specific function which the raw material or product assumes in the labor process. As the position it occupies in the labor process changes, so do its determining characteristics (1977: 289). 10. For instance, Davies’ Antechrist begins with the original thirteenth-century motet “Deo confitemini-Domino” presented in instrumental form; the new context then turns it inside out by breaking it down and superimposing it on related plainchant fragments. 11. According to Julia Kristeva, intertextuality signifies an impersonal, anonymous crossing of texts, where “several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another”; moving away from traditional notions of agency and influence, she suggests that such relationships function like an “intersection of textual surfaces rather than a point (with a fixed meaning)” (1980: 36). In contrast, Hutcheon refers to Michael Riffaterre’s view of intertextuality, where the experience of literature involves systems of words that are grouped associatively in the reader’s mind. In the case of parody, she claims that those groupings are carefully controlled, like the strategies found in Eco’s “inferential walks”. The reader acts as decoder of encoded intent and the entire context that defines it (Hutcheon 1985: 23). 12. As a matter of fact, Michael Klein distinguishes between four types of intertextuality, partly informed by Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s tripartition: poietic (authorial intention), esthesic (reader’s interpretation based on social texts), historical (texts cultivated from a single time period), and transhistorical (texts cultivated from all time periods) (Klein 2005: 12). 13. Cross discusses the imprint of Stravinsky’s style in Andriessen’s music with reference to Bloom’s revisionary ratio of kenosis, in which the precursor’s style is manifested through fragmentation or reordering.


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14. Based on Bloom’s theory of revision, Straus explores the ways in which composers rework their predecessors’ music by compressing, fragmenting, neutralizing, generalizing, and marginalizing borrowed elements. For an extended application of Bloom’s theory to nineteenth-century music, see Korsyn 1991. 15. Unrestricted by Freudian categories, his deliberate forms of misreading belong to what Martha Hyde calls “dialectical” imitation under the rubric of metamorphic anachronism (1996: 200–35). 16. Hyde refers to Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress as an example and comments that: “dialectical imitation implicitly criticizes or challenges its authenticating model, but in so doing leaves itself open to the possibility of unfavourable comparison” (2003: 122). 17. In North America, conductors such as Edo de Waart, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Robert Spano have programmed Andriessen’s music, e.g., De Staat, De Stijl, for symphony orchestra performances.

1 Dutch music in the twentieth century

The Hollander has always imported a substantial amount of wine, wheat, tobacco and music and considered this to be appropriate. He is not unwilling to consider that Dutch music can be as “good” as French or Austrian music, but he sure would like to get some validation first. The Dutch merchant will, if need be, make a purchase on a sample, rarely will he buy from a picture, and never based on an anonymous recommendation – Willem Pijper. (Samama 1986: 13)

In 1927, composer/critic Willem Pijper (1894–1947) expressed his disappointment over the general skepticism and indifference of the Dutch public toward their own music; in the quote above, he wonders where this “anti-musical disposition” came from and why Dutch musicians suffer from an overwhelming sense of cultural inferiority. Considering Holland’s longstanding mercantile culture, Pijper speculated that an average countryman’s valuation of music was dictated by an attitude that music is just another product to be measured against imported tobacco and wine. His reaction points to the sobriety (nuchterheid) of the Dutch bourgeoisie, people who steadfastly clung to familiar traditions and were not easily swayed by new and alluring trends. Simon Schama characterizes the provincial ideals of the Dutch in terms of: “bourgeois addiction to the prosaic, the literal, the frugal – the dispassionate objectification of the world and its reduction of mystery to commodity” (1987: 6).1 Looking back into history, the period of French rule (1795–1813) played a particularly important role in the development of cultural policy in the Netherlands; the establishment of the Batavian Republic in 1795 produced a unified national state and established a foundation for state involvement in the promotion of the arts and sciences.2 However, by the second half of the eighteenth century, a dichotomy arose in the state support for the fine arts between those who served national interests and those who promoted ideology of select groups or private initiatives. The state assumed responsibility mainly for visual arts that fell into the first category. It was only after 1920 that the Dutch government began to consider symphony orchestras as a national asset and recognize that their repertoire suffered from a dearth of homegrown music. The Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Culture introduced a new system of subsidy to encourage the publication of Dutch compositions, although it did not necessarily increase the extent to which

D u tch mu s i c i n t h e t we n t i e t h ce n t u r y

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they were performed.3 In stark contrast to visual artists, who embraced the ideal of l’art pour l’art in promoting a national identity, theaters and orchestras strove to achieve a level of excellence in performance in accordance with international standards. Thus the sense of cultural inferiority felt by Pijper and his contemporaries can be seen as the byproduct of the symphony orchestra’s interest in “importing” music from abroad (repertories that were considered international standard-bearers at the time) to the exclusion of promoting Dutch new music. What were the obstacles that stood in their way? How could a country that prided itself on a rich artistic and musical heritage during the Golden Age suffer from this predicament? In the climate of conservative legislation, symphony orchestras – notably the Concertgebouw orchestra – stood at the center of the musical establishment. Because government subsidy was given exclusively to support orchestral music, regional orchestras provided the main venue through which an aspiring Dutch composer could receive a performance of his music. As chronicled by Leo Samama’s detailed account of musical development in the Netherlands from 1915 to 1985, composers in the prewar years vied for recognition by Willem Mengelberg (1871–1951), the reputable conductor of the Concertgebouw, whose autocratic control over programming spurred numerous controversies and confrontations. Tension sizzled between Mengelberg and composer/critic Matthijs Vermeulen (1888–1967), between pro-German and pro-French compositional factions, and between critics and conductors, all of whom debated the place and relevance of new music in the Netherlands. Composers often played the role of critics and engaged in aesthetic arguments that elevated the general public’s knowledge of modern music, a trend that had certainly persisted into the postwar era. Their views were often polemical, targeted at dismantling the prevailing aesthetic views and opinions upheld by the status quo. In retrospect, one may view the postwar generation of composers as having carried the torch of the previous generation of composers by continuing to challenge the institutional hegemony of the Royal Concertgebouw orchestra. The acknowledgement of this historical continuity is essential to understanding the significance of the social uprisings that irrevocably altered the cultural landscape in the second half of the twentieth century. With this in mind, this chapter retraces the stages by which developments in new music came about in the course of the century.

Developments prior to World War II Established in 1888, the Royal Concertgebouw orchestra was dominated by the legacy of German romantic music from its inception. When Willem

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Mengelberg, born in Utrecht of German origin, was appointed as the chief conductor in 1895, the Concertgebouw had already formed an outstanding orchestra under the command of Willem Kes (1856–1934). Immediately upon his arrival, Mengelberg consolidated the orchestra’s repertoire by discarding light-hearted music intended for divertissement in order to instill a more serious character to the orchestra. Within a few years, Mengelberg brought international recognition to the orchestra through his interpretation of Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss; numerous soloists and composers of international renown were brought under his podium – Ferruccio Busoni, Pablo Casals, Rachmaninov, and Max Schillings, to name a few (Zwart 2001: 526).4 In addition, with his renowned interpretation of the St Matthew Passion in 1899, Mengelberg turned the performance of Bach’s masterwork into an annual event, reinvigorating the public’s interest in sacred choral music.5 Along with Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler found an avid supporter of his music in Mengelberg. After hearing Mahler conduct his third symphony in 1903, Mengelberg extended several invitations for the Austrian composer to conduct his own symphonies in Amsterdam in subsequent years (Straub 2001: 574).6 His sustained admiration for the Austrian composer led to the major festival of Mahler’s music in 1920, used simultaneously to commemorate Mengelberg’s twenty-fifth anniversary with the Concertgebouw orchestra. These performances generated so much enthusiasm with the public that tickets were often sold out in advance.7 The Concertgebouw orchestra soon set a model for all other regional orchestras to follow, as Mengelberg established a series of concerts to take place in The Hague, Utrecht, Haarlem, Groningen, Arnhem, and Nijmegen, and frequently appeared as guest conductor of regional orchestras. Although immensely successful in developing an international reputation on behalf of the orchestra, Mengelberg was repeatedly criticized for his authoritarian views and conservative programming that did not allow for an adequate representation of new orchestral works by Dutch composers. Mengelberg supported only a handful of Dutch composers, such as Jan Ingenhoven (1876–1951) and Alphons Diepenbrock (1862–1921), whose music demonstrated a strong affinity with German late-Romanticism. The influences of Strauss, Zemlinsky, and Schmidt permeate, for example, the orchestral and chamber works of Ingenhoven (Staverman 2000a: 184).8 Likewise, Diepenbrock primarily composed songs, works for voice and orchestra, and choral works in the tradition of Mahler and Strauss; his crowning achievement can be found in the incidental music for Elektra, which features Wagnerian characteristics in its pervasive use of ostinato motifs and meandering chromaticism. To appease the critics, Mengelberg founded an annual festival in 1902 to showcase orchestral music written exclusively by Dutch composers,


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although he selected only a handful of works each year by Diepenbrock, Cornelius Dopper, and Bernard Zweers (1854–1924). Dopper, who was trained at the Leipzig conservatory, wrote in the romantic tradition of Brahms that appealed to Mengelberg, while incorporating familiar Dutch folk tunes in simple, homophonic style to promote national identity; such traits are exemplified in the Rembrandt and Zuiderzee (“Southsea”) Symphonies.9 Mengelberg’s pro-German predilection spurred a heated controversy between him and the composer/critic Vermeulen, whose early symphonies were repeatedly rejected by the conductor as unworthy and lacking in proper craftsmanship (Samama 1986: 25).10 After receiving his second rejection from Mengelberg, Vermeulen caused a scandal in 1918 by shouting in defiance, “Long live Sousa,” at the end of a Concertgebouw concert that featured Dopper’s Zuiderzee Symphony. Vermeulen’s verbal assault conveyed the sentiment that there was more novelty in Sousa’s marching band music than Dopper’s unoriginal composition. While temporarily banned from the Concertgebouw, Vermeulen showed up again at a concert given a few days later, causing a standoff between him and the solo violinist, Alexander Schmuller, who refused to play unless Vermeulen left the hall. Such commotions went on for several days while Mengelberg was away on a tour, with the incited public split between those who supported Vermeulen and those who opposed him (Samama 1986: 70). While the frustrated composer managed to avoid further repercussions after receiving a severe warning from the administration, he continued to vilify Mengelberg in print. For example, in 1915, Vermeulen wrote in de Groene Amsterdammer: “Mengelberg, though a great organizer, leaves Dutch music to the most unpredictable coincidence. His habit of programming Dutch composers’ music at the beginning or at the end of a season – times when no one is concentrating on music – has a very depressing effect on the composer, who learns to view himself as scum” (Samama 1986: 69). Eventually leaving his job as critic to compose music in France, it was not until 1939 – more than two decades after the scandalous incident – that Vermeulen returned to Amsterdam to attend a performance of his Third Symphony at the Concertgebouw, made possible through the generosity of Eduard van Beinum, who succeeded Mengelberg as the principal conductor of the Concertgebouw after the war (Samama 1986: 64).11 At the heart of the dispute between Vermeulen and Mengelberg lay the growing division between pro-German and pro-French musical factions. French predilections in Vermeulen’s music are made evident in his “pan-tonal” Second Symphony (1919–20); the principal theme is supported by a static repetition of a chromatic hexachord containing two tritones, C-F and C-G, cast within a stratified polyrhythmic texture (Braas 1988/89:

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20).12 As conveyed by its title Prélude a` la nouvelle journée, Vermeulen envisioned the piece to usher in the music of the future, characterized by its “polymelodic” lines. Unsuited to Mengelberg’s taste and technically too difficult for Dutch orchestras to perform at the time, the Second Symphony waited thirty-six years before receiving its Amsterdam première during the Holland Festival in 1956. Vermeulen went on to write five more symphonies, although none of the later works compare to the Second in the levels of tonal and rhythmic complexity.13 Contemporaneous composers such as Sem Dresden and Rudolph Escher were fascinated by Vermeulen, speaking of “his metaphysical leanings that provided an antithesis to Mahler, the ‘fogs’ of Debussy, and even the hybridity of Schoenberg” (Braas 1997: 67). It would certainly be unfair to depict Mengelberg as an enemy of new music; he was simply not open to pieces that deviated far from his Germanic taste. As a case in point, Skryabin’s Prometheus Symphony received a performance as early as 1912. Furthermore, fascinated by Arnold Schoenberg’s music, Mengelberg invited the Austrian composer to stay in the Netherlands between September 1920 and March 1921, and many of Schoenberg’s compositions including Verklärte Nacht (1899), Pelleas und Melisande, and Five Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16 (1908), received their Dutch premières at the Concertgebouw between 1914 and 1920. In December 1920, Schoenberg described his impressions of Dutch composers in a letter to Alban Berg: What I’ve seen of the composers here (young men who’ve come to me) is very depressing. Everyone imitates Debussy and everything has a veneer of film music. They have no ability . . . But they are artfully modern; that is, Debussy-ish. One could accomplish a great deal here; and I must say: people know it and realize they are at a dead end and will never write music of any significance if they continue like this, and yet they can’t help themselves because they lack the right teachers. (Brand et al. 1987: 296)

Evidently, the feeling was mutual. Schoenberg’s negative response was reciprocated by Dutch composers’ lukewarm reception of his atonal compositions (Samama 1986: 72).14 As Mengelberg’s popularity grew abroad – including frequent guest conducting for the New York Philharmonic – he assigned his assistant conductor, Cornelis Dopper, to handle the conducting of the new French-oriented repertory. Cornelis was an exceptionally erudite man who brought varied repertoire to the Utrechts Stedelijk Orkest, with emphasis on new Dutch music and unknown Baroque music as well as the newest French compositions (Samama 1986: 86). Guest conductor Pierre Monteux was also an enthusiastic advocate for modern French music and brought concert performances of music by Ravel, Milhaud, Roussel, and Nadia Boulanger


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in 1922 (Samama 1986: 73). Monteux also presided over the Amsterdam première of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in 1924, which turned out to be a great success with the public. In stark contrast to Vermeulen, Willem Pijper – the first to bemoan the public’s lack of interest in new music – was received favorably by Mengelberg and quickly rose to power as an influential composer and critic during the inter-war years (Samama 1986: 27). As an aspiring composer and pupil of Johan Wagenaar, Pijper became one of the few whose music was selected to receive regular performances at the Concertgebouw. In spite of its personalized style, the conductor felt a strong affinity for Pijper’s music: his First Symphony, Mahlerian in scope, received its première in 1918 when the composer was only twenty-three years old (Janssen 2001: 9).15 Pijper developed a compositional system based on what came to be known as the kiemceltechniek (basic cell technique). Inspired by Vincent D’Indy’s Cours de Composition Musicale, he envisioned musical development as an organic process of evolution that takes place through the continuous variation of a single cell. Although similar to Beethoven’s cellular motives and the cyclical procedures for developing motives familiar from the music of Berlioz, Franck, Liszt, and Debussy, Pijper’s technique allowed musical cells to be used simultaneously as building blocks for melodic and harmonic materials (Samama 1986: 100). The earliest pieces by Pijper based on the basic-cell technique are his Septet (1920) and Second Symphony (1921): in the latter, he uses a four-note motive, C-D-A-G, as a building block for the harmonic and melodic sources of the symphony. While the instrumentation is rich and Mahlerian, Pijper’s fondness for habanera, tango, and jazz-based rhythms gives the orchestral texture a certain air of capriciousness, reminiscent of Debussy’s Ibéria. After 1930, his compositions displayed an unexpected tendency toward lyricism and economy, as exemplified by his Piano Concerto (1930), and apart from a symphonic drama, Halewijn (1933), Pijper wrote very little after taking on the directorship of the Rotterdam conservatory – immersing himself instead in teaching and administrative work. As a music critic, Pijper was highly influential in widening the Dutch public’s appreciation for modern music, while his venomous tongue and sharp criticism earned him a reputation as a fearless polemicist. In his early writings, Pijper preached a kind of musical absolutism, avoiding links with literature, dance, and theater (Haakman 1986: 23). Yet, after attending a performance of Berg’s Wozzeck in 1930, he declared that he had found a new model for opera in Berg’s work and strove to improve the conditions for producing opera in the Netherlands. Soon afterward, he composed his opera Halewijn – modeled on Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande – which received a

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performance at the ISCM festival in 1933 (Op de Coul, 2001: 622).16 Later in 1938, he published an essay called “From Debussy to the Present” in which he hailed the significance of modern music, attributing special significance to Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Berg.17 In addition to his role as a critic, Pijper played an important role as mentor to an entire generation of composers during his directorship at the Rotterdam conservatory. Mengelberg commented on his influence upon his students as follows: “Zo de ouden zongen, pijperen de jongen” (“the old folks sing while the young ones play the pipe after Pijper”) (Samama 1986: 109).18 The first generation of students included Bertus van Lier (1906–1972), Piet Ketting (1904–1984), and Guillaume Landré (1905–1968), all of whom adopted Pijper’s basic-cell technique in their own individual styles (Samama 1986: 109–13).19 These students were quickly superseded by a second generation of composers of greater originality: Henriëtte Bosmans (1895–1952), Oscar van Hemel (1892–1981), Kees van Baaren (1906–1970), Hans Henkemans (1913–1995), and others. The majority of these composers sided with Pijper’s brand of modernism, characterized by bitonality, athematicism, rhythmic and metric innovation, and musical references to popular, film, and Baroque music (Samama 1986: 134). By the early 1950s, a rift developed between the traditional and progressive-minded Pijper students; to the former group belonged Landré and Henkemans, who continued to follow a French neo-classical orientation, and to the latter belonged Van Baaren and his pupils who tended toward dodecaphony and serialism (Muller 1997: 17). After World War I, new organizations and venues for promoting music emerged in the Netherlands. In 1918, Daniël Ruyneman founded the Society for the Development of Modern Music (De Vereniging tot Ontwikkeling der Moderne Scheppende Toonkunst). The society hosted chamber concerts that showcased avant-garde music written by young Dutch composers and published their music (Braas 2001: 570). The society took on the task of organizing the Dutch sector of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in 1923. To expose Dutch audiences to new developments from abroad, they devoted one of their concerts in 1930 exclusively to the modern Viennese music of Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and invited both composers to attend (Samama 1986: 76). A definitive turning point came in 1935 when the composer Jan van Gilse organized a committee called Maneto (Manifestatie Nederlandse Toonkunst), which for the first time allowed composers to organize and promote their own concerts (Kolsteeg 2001: 542).20 The copyright organization BUMA, set up by van Gilse, enabled the financing of a biannual composition prize, concerts, and small festivals independent of the state-sponsored orchestral concerts for the first time (Kolsteeg 1997: 7). While changes were slow to come, the emergence of new


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organizations paved the path toward establishing a new economic infrastructure, giving composers the aesthetic freedom to pursue their aesthetic ideals as well as opportunities for international exposure. During the years of German occupation, the conditions for subsidy were turned inside out. By October 1940, Jewish musicians had been dismissed from government service and conservatory posts, and by the following year from orchestras all over the Netherlands. Jan Goverts, who handled music for the Department for Consumer Information and Arts (DVK), established a guild system after the German model, where all musicians were gathered together as a unit under an umbrella organization of Kultuurkamer (Micheels 2001: 639). Ironically, Goverts played an important role in strengthening financial support for musicians by establishing a new salary system, and offering prizes and commissions to composers in various genres that ranged from orchestral music to entertainment music (Overbeeke 2004: 147). In exchange for financial support, all concert programs had to meet the Department’s approval and music of Jewish, English, Polish, Russian and American origins was banned under the category of “degenerate” art (entartete Kunst). Adding to the irony, there was also an initiative established to promote Dutch music by providing subsidies for orchestras to devote twenty to thirty percent of their repertory to compositions by Dutch composers, which was an unprecedented figure for that time (Kolsteeg 2001: 542). The most sought-after composer during this period was Johan Wagenaar, followed by Henk Badings, Hendrik Andriessen, Diepenbrock, and others. Andriessen, however, refused to become a member of the Kultuurkamer, after which point his music was banned from performances. Music by Wagenaar, Badings, Pijper and Diepenbrock was also allowed to circulate in Germany as representative of new Dutch music. By the early 1940s, Mengelberg’s popularity began to wane rapidly because the Dutch public viewed him as a supporter of the German occupation. He proceeded to record Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 with the Berlin Philharmonic in July 1940. By the time the Concertgebouw orchestra accepted the invitation to attend the 100th anniversary concert by the Vienna Philharmonic, to which Henk Badings dedicated a work in April 1942, the damage to his reputation was irreversible (Micheels 2001: 641). Soon after liberation, Mengelberg’s pension was revoked and he went into exile in Switzerland for five years. Brenden Wehrung, however, views Mengelberg as having been falsely accused, and notes his apolitical stance throughout the years of occupation.21 In a similar manner, Badings was banned from participation in any form of public music making until 1947 due to his involvement with the Kultuurkamer (Becx 2000: 26–27).

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Developments after World War II The years following the liberation from German occupation heralded an era of artistic renewal and cultural transformation. Ton de Leeuw describes how artists and musicians voraciously absorbed genres of art that were prohibited during the war: “A sort of vacuum had been created in Europe as a result of dictatorship which worked against every expression of modern art. Hungry for inspiration, young people threw themselves into all types of music that had been forbidden up until this time” (Samama 1986: 181). Nonetheless, the developments in the first ten years after the war were unsettling: while longing for new and better social conditions, society as a whole remained compartmentalized as the majority of people joined in an effort to reestablish the social order from the prewar years (Hiu 1996: 31). Consequently, the transformation of musical activities in the Netherlands came about rather slowly during the first decade after the war. By the mid1970s, a combination of factors brought about the shift in infrastructure from orchestral to ensemble-based musical culture. First, the authoritative position of the symphony orchestra was gradually undermined by the rise of institutions such as Donemus and Gaudeamus that supported individual composers and provided a conduit for international influence. New avantgarde trends from France and America soon found their way into the eclectic musical scene. Second, the influx of American culture and lifestyle – e.g., architecture, film, jazz, popular music – led to the emergence of free improvisational groups that were very different from traditional jazz ensembles. Theater companies grew rapidly as a separate form of entertainment from opera. Third, countercultural activities led to a significant expansion in the system of subsidy for the arts during the course of the 1970s; Amsterdam was transformed into a robust ensemble culture with independent groups specializing in early music, Baroque, classical, free improvisation, and new music. In the first stage, new infrastructure of support for the arts emerged through the establishment of institutions for new music. In 1945, the Jewish philanthropist Walter Maas gathered together many young composers in his home in Bilthoven, a small town in the province of Utrecht. This grew into the Gaudeamus Foundation, established in 1950 to organize the Music Week concerts, which have taken place every year since 1951. A tight group of composers formed around Maas, including Jaap Geraedts, Henk Stam, and Ton de Leeuw. Soon composers of a younger generation who were engrossed in the new avant-garde trends in serialism, including Otto Ketting, Peter Schat, and Jan van Vlijmen, proclaimed themselves the “apostles of series” and wrote dodecaphonic style compositions for the 1956 Gaudeamus Music Week (Schönberger 2001: 672).


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Other composers associated with Gaudeamus who did not take to serialism nonetheless pursued a diverse range of compositional orientations; Sas Bunge, Jaap Geraedts, and Jurriaan Andriessen carried on the style of French neoclassicism, while Ton de Leeuw – who started out by modeling his music ´ and Messiaen – developed his own musical lanafter Hindemith, Bartok, guage in the most striking way by experimenting with avant-garde idioms as well as musical techniques such as heterophony derived from extensive study of Indian and Indonesian music. It was through Gaudeamus’s programming that the electronic music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and the musique concrète of Pierre Schaeffer were first heard in Eindhoven. This local organization quickly grew into a forum for promoting new music with an international scope. A few years after Gaudeamus, Donemus (Documentatie Nederlandse Muziek) emerged in 1947 as the first professional organization to devote itself to the promotion and publication of new Dutch music. Its director, André Jurres, developed an international network of relationships with agencies abroad, taking on the role of a musical ambassador (Kolsteeg 2001: 8).22 In addition, he was responsible for promoting the inclusion of Dutch new music in established festivals within Holland – for instance, the annual Holland Festival, which had not programmed music by Dutch composers prior to 1954. In May 1961, the Stichting Nederlandse Muziekbelangen organized another festival in Maastricht called the Nederlandse Muziekdagen, which in conjunction with the Genootschap van Nederlandse Componisten (GeNeCo), featured music by Dutch composers from the previous five years (Schönberger 2001: 544). Another decisive step toward promotion of Dutch music came about during the 1960s through the commissioning of new music based on the pragmatic premise that it should fill particular “holes” in the repertory; such decisions came to be handled by the Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst (“Funding for the Creation of Music”), founded in 1984, and comprised two advisory committees (Schönberger 2001: 544). Despite the fact that the criteria for granting commissions would become a hot topic of debate in the years ahead, this source of funding established the most effective system of subsidy for composers (De Groot 2001: 845–51).23 In addition, Donemus has produced and disseminated recordings and scores for Dutch composers since the early 1960s, where young composers participated in the managerial process to determine the specific promotion policy and representation of their music in the magazine Key Notes (Kolsteeg 1997: 8–9).24 Established in 1975, this journal chronicled the latest developments in Dutch new music complete with reviews, commentary, and interviews, until its termination in 1998.25

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The critical stage in transforming the musical landscape resulted from protest activities launched against the cultural establishment. On November 23, 1968, the minister for Culture, Recreation, and Social Work outlined her position on artistic control in the Algemeen Handelsblad as follows: Art should not be for the “happy few.” On the contrary, we should take caution not to drag people to theaters and concert halls against their will. That would subscribe to paternalism. We wish to provide equipment so that each artist will be given the opportunity to go his/her own way. We must give opportunities to new and revolutionary ideas for these developments to take place. In this crazy world of ours, the significance lies in giving a chance to all sectors of the arts so that we don’t turn into robots. (Samama 2001: 745)

To continue the system of subsidy that was put into place during the German occupation, the government was willing to devote more tax revenue to the arts. In spite of such promises, artists and musicians were hardly satisfied with the existing conditions of state support. Young composers were frustrated with the uncommonly long time it took for their requests to pass through the necessary committees. As their aesthetic goals deviated from ideals of l’art pour l’art and leaned more toward using music to reflect on the social and political developments of the times, they were caught in the paradoxical situation of asking for funding from the very institution that they were rebelling against. As in earlier times, a progressive group of composers accused the Concertgebouw of standing firmly in the way of desirable changes. In 1961, the Concertgebouw initiated subscription concerts called the C-series (performances given on Sunday afternoons) that included modern classics by ´ and Janácˇ ek. A new wave of controversy surfaced in 1964 when Ton de Bartok Leeuw urged the director of the Concertgebouw, Piet Heuwekemeijer, to consider transforming the structure of the orchestra to allow for greater coverage of experimental music, a proposal that was quickly rejected (Samama 2001: 747).26 Huewekemeijer nonetheless introduced three experimental concerts in 1965–66 that included performances of Webern’s Concerto Op. 24, Earle Brown’s Available Forms 1, and Varèse’s Déserts. Between 1966 and 1968, the Concertgebouw ran the E-series devoted to post-1945 music in which Pierre Boulez was invited to conduct Stockhausen’s Kontra-punkte, Peter Schat’s Signalement, and Boulez’s Eclat; the series was unfortunately discontinued due to poor attendance (Schönberger 1996b: 146). In February 1966, an article appeared in het Algemeen Handelsblad in which the critic J. Reichenfeld proposed the appointment of conductor Bruno Maderna as a regular conductor next to Bernard Haitink, to lead the Experimental Music concert


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series (Schönberger 1996b: 129). Yet discussion with Haitink and the board of trustees led nowhere. Four composers – Louis Andriessen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Misha Mengelberg, and Peter Schat – then organized a public debate on December 14, 1966, over the dismal representation of Dutch new music in the programs of the Concertgebouw, where less than one quarter of its repertoire was devoted to music composed after 1910 (Schönberger 1996b: 747–48). The debate ended in a stalemate with both parties obstinately defending their points of view. Three years of futile negotiations led to a groundbreaking event on November 17, 1969, when the four composers who formed the Notenkrakers (“Nutcrackers”) caused a disturbance during a performance of a flute concerto by Johann J. Quantz conducted by Haitink.27 The group consisting of Kees Van Baaren’s pupils initially gained notoriety by trying to install Bruno Maderna as conductor of the Concertgebouw. At this scandalous event, they staged their protest by using penny whistles and rattles to disturb the performance and to criticize the Concertgebouw’s conservative programming policy (Vermeulen 1992: 16).28 The protesters were forcibly removed, but retaliated later by using leaflets to promote a public debate over the “undemocratic” structure of orchestra programming, which had no room for performances of avant-garde music. Some time later, they occupied the building of the Concertgebouw to demand negotiations with the administrators. Roughly one year later, the Nutcrackers were taken to court and received a one-week prison sentence for the disturbances that they had created at the Concertgebouw.29 Nonetheless, the Nutcrackers’ actions were catalytic in bringing about a definitive and permanent change in the cultural infrastructure. By 1972, the Concertgebouw changed the C-series concerts to devote them exclusively to twentieth-century music and initiated a series called Eigentijdse Muziek (Contemporary Music) that showcased works by Stravinsky, Ives, Donatoni, Messiaen, Feldman, Cage, and Stockhausen (Schönberger 1996b: 148). In addition, composers began to hold Inklusieve Konserten (“inclusive” concerts) at alternative venues such as the Carré theater on the bank of the Amstel river, where classical, medieval, romantic, modern, and experimental music could be performed. These concerts fostered the growth of various ensembles with individual characters: e.g., the Instant Composers Pool (free improvisation), Orkest De Volharding (experimental music), Nederlands Blazers Ensemble (wind ensemble), Asko Ensemble (specializing in music by Varèse, Xenakis, and their Dutch counterparts), Schönberg Ensemble (specializing in the music of the Second Viennese School). Since 1975, smaller ensembles have developed specialized repertoires, e.g., Hoketus, Nieuw Ensemble,

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Xenakis Ensemble, Ives Ensemble, Ebony Band, Guus Jansen Septet, LOOS, Ensemble Gending, Ensemble Novecento, Orkest van de Achttiende Eeuw (“Orchestra of eighteenth-century music”). Journalist Pay-Uun Hiu uses the term eigenwijse (“self-willed” or “following its own tune”) to convey the sense of autonomy and individual identity fostered by the separate ensembles that have emerged in the Netherlands. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, these ensembles have established their own social-economic infrastructure; they program their own concerts in subscription series through alliances with alternative venues such as Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, the IJsbreker, and the Holland Festival, and they have their own offices in the center of Amsterdam on Keizersgracht (Hiu 2001: 760–61).30 Unlike in Germany and France where such ensembles exist on the margin of cultural activities, they have been absorbed into the mainstream of musical life. Following the social-democratic ideals prevalent in the 1970s, the emerging conditions have ensured that composers and musicians govern the process of producing and disseminating their work in accordance with their aesthetic ideals and without state or commercial intervention. ∗∗∗ What is truly remarkable about the musical developments in the Netherlands is the rapidity with which the infrastructure of musical culture shifted from the institutional monopoly of symphony orchestras to a pluralistic framework that gives subsidies to orchestra, theater, opera, as well as a diverse array of ensembles. Conflicts between the conductors in charge of the Concertgebouw and generations of composers revolved around the perennial problem of the orchestra’s programming policy; the orchestra, in spite of the new government requirement in 1997 that seven percent of the repertoire be devoted to programming Dutch new music, continues to devote less than one percent to the coverage of music by contemporary Dutch composers (Muller 1997: 17). Such statistics show that the rift still exists; new tensions build on top of old wounds, so to speak. Looking back, proponents of Haitink’s artistic policy claim that the Nutcrackers generated a false perception that contemporary music was ghettoized under the conductor’s artistic policy; the Concertgebouw orchestra had performed more concerts of new music than other orchestras of comparable stature.31 Former artistic director Marius Flothuis further argues that the Nutcrackers unjustly targeted the Concertgebouw as their enemy rather than the more conservative Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, whose repertory did not extend beyond the music of Shostakovich (Muller 1997: 70).32


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Over the years, the development of new infrastructure in support of specialized ensembles has neutralized the tension between opposing factions. Rather than toppling or dismantling the institutionalized hierarchy, a new social-economic infrastructure for producing and disseminating new music emerged around the institution of symphony orchestras. The Asko and Schoenberg Ensembles regularly perform new music at the Concertgebouw, and the increased specialization in repertory has led the Concertgebouw orchestra to conform to a narrower range of repertory than ever before. Hiu uses the metaphor of polders to illustrate the outgrowth of ensemble culture around the symphony orchestras: as water is drained and landfills are created to expand usable space, new ensembles have been established on ready made new soils (2001: 762). The development of Dutch music in the twentieth century is a history of controversy – one fraught with contradictions and resistant to being reduced to a coherent narrative. Willem Mengelberg cannot be depicted simply as an enemy to most composers in perpetuating a conservative policy in programming; such a view is necessarily one-sided and needs to be balanced with his contribution to furthering the music of Mahler and Schoenberg. Moreover, it is misleading to idealize Vermeulen as a hero of the prewar generation who took stubborn pride in his aesthetic principles and succumbed to decades of obscurity. Much to the dismay of the Nutcrackers, Vermeulen ironically sided with the Concertgebouw during the 1960s on the public debate over expanding their policy on programming to include experimental music in the 1960s; according to Andriessen, their onetime hero quickly turned into an “anti-hero” after that incident.33 Such controversies, at every stage, were catalytic not only in initiating changes in the infrastructure for new music, but also in shaping Dutch composers’ cultural identity as distinct from their German and French counterparts. Striving for autonomy became the necessary means for shedding the sense of cultural inferiority that plagued Pijper in 1923. In October 1996, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and the Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra came together to present a series built on the theme of musical controversies called Krakende Noten (“Tough Nuts to Crack”); it showcased music from four generations of controversy, beginning with music by Vermeulen and Dopper, Pijper and Van Gilse, Pijper’s students from the 1950s, and Andriessen’s generation from the 1960s. In spite of the continued lack of interest on the part of the general public, these concerts celebrated a century of music founded on idealism and differences of opinion. The symphony orchestra may have been an albatross for generations of Dutch composers, but the controversies also fueled the confrontational spirit that gave them

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solidarity in the 1960s. These were the social and political conditions under which Andriessen found his footing as a composer. Notes 1. While the rights of individuals were laid down in the Constitution of the Batavian Republic (Staatsregeling voor het Bataafsche Volk) in 1798, individual freedom was reserved for the liberal bourgeois establishment and did not apply to the population as a whole. “The Development of Cultural Policy in the Netherlands”, The Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Culture: Cultural Policy in the Netherlands (updated from 1993) , section 3.1. 2. Cultural Policy in the Netherlands, section 3.4. A rapid succession of political, social and economic changes revealed growing differences of an ideological nature between Catholics and Protestants that extended to types of artistic activity that should be promoted. 3. Cultural Policy in the Netherlands, section 4.5. 4. Mengelberg made a name for himself with his renowned interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony and Richard Strauss’s tone poem, Ein Heldenleben. 5. While cinema and theater performances were taxed heavily (20%) by the government, performance of Bach’s Passions in a church was exempt from taxation. Cultural Policy in the Netherlands, section 3.1. 6. After conducting his Third Symphony in Amsterdam in October 1902, Mahler hastily wrote to Alma about his positive impression of musical culture in the Netherlands. 7. The extent to which Mengelberg exerted his authority in the matter of programming repertoire is quite telling: in comparison to Mahler’s music, interest in Wagner never took root in Amsterdam. 8. Ingenhoven’s Zarathustra Nachtlied (1906) for voice and orchestra uses the same text by Nietszche that Mahler sets in his Third Symphony. 9. Paul Janssen, program notes from the CD Dutch Composers: Pijper, Wagenaar, Dopper, Röntgen. 10. Mengelberg supposedly leafed through Vermeulen’s First Symphony in 1916 and recommended that he take some composition lessons from his assistant conductor, Cornelis Dopper. A few years later, Vermeulen approached Mengelberg with his Second Symphony, only to be rejected one more time. 11. In spite of all his troubles at home, Koussevitsky took a liking to Vermeulen’s Third Symphony and took back a copy of the score to America in 1925. 12. Apparently writings on ancient Greek music by Maurice Emmanuel and his discussions on highly differentiated rhythm influenced Vermeulen. 13. Vermeulen’s Symphony No. 4 (1940–41) is characterized by a funeral march in C minor, and the Symphony No. 5 (1941–45) is reminiscent of Mahler in his treatment of strings. Symphony No. 6 (1956–58) features the motif “la-do-re”


14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

27

(acronym for “l’adore”) as the nucleus for development. For more information on Vermeulen’s seven symphonies, see Braas 1997. Vermeulen, Pijper, and their contemporaries were dismissive of Schoenberg’s atonal style. Unlike Vermeulen, Pijper maintained a good working relationship with the Concertgebouw throughout his career. Much later, Pijper’s Cello Concerto, a lyrical masterwork reminiscent of Debussy’s Jeux, was showcased in a farewell concert for the lead cellist of the Concertgebouw in 1936. Pijper actually founded the Netherlands chapter of the International Society for Contemporary Music in 1923. This essay by Pijper appears in Albert Smijers, ed., Algemeene muziekgeschiedenis. Here “pijperen” is an obvious pun on “pijpen” which means to “play the pipe.” Ketting and van Lier adopted this technique in pursuit of more dissonant and rhythmically dense musical contexts, while Landré adopted it toward advancing a neo-classical style after Roussel and Honegger. However, while the press responded enthusiastically to the early Manetoconcerts, the participation of the general public remained rather small. After the condemnation, Mengelberg could not leave Switzerland because the Dutch government took away his passport and he could not attend engagements abroad. He died in Switzerland before the ban was lifted (Wehrung 2004). As early as 1948, Donemus had twenty-five representatives worldwide and expanded its information center on Dutch music in New York. Through Konrad Boehmer’s initiative, a few amendments were made to improve the criteria for determining the quality of the commissions in 1994. Since it was founded in 1947, the government subsidy Donemus received grew from 55,000 guilders to 1.9 million guilders in 1996. Previous to Key Notes, Donemus published its own magazine, Muzieknotities, followed by Sonorum speculum from 1958 onward. Since 1999, Donemus/het muziekgroep Nederlands began publishing two journals devoted to Dutch new music online: Vrienden van de Nederlandse Muziek and Trackings. Both journals can be accessed through the website at: www.muziekgroup.nl/. Ton de Leeuw’s proposal was not welcomed by the orchestra and led to the dismissal of Heuwekemeijer. Incidentally, Andriessen and his colleagues were shocked when Vermeulen, whom they upheld as a model of rebellion against the Concertgebouw in the earlier half of the century, took the side of the establishment after the riot. Based on an interview with the composer on 24 July 2003. Andriessen apparently bought about thirty tickets for the performance on the pretense that they would be used for schoolchildren; instead, he passed them on to other students of other conservatories to stage this pandemonium. On 24 November 1970, a local newspaper, Het Vrije Volk, reported the trial of eight Nutcrackers to determine the legality of their demonstration before and during the performance. The group complained to the judge about the lack of appearance of the witness, Mr D. U. Sleehman, then president of the

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30.

31.

32.

33.

Amsterdam Rechtbank to testify against the Nutcrackers. Andriessen also spoke up for the group’s rights and demanded negotiation with the board of trustees of the Concertgebouw. According to Andriessen, the members of the Nutcrackers rejected the prison sentence and had to pay a fine of 100 guilders each. Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, the local concert hall in Utrecht, is not exclusively an alternative venue since it presents concerts by symphony orchestras, chamber music groups, soloists, and opera companies. Since 1978, it has given greater attention to non-standard classical repertoire, such as contemporary music, jazz, world music, and pop. The then artistic director, Marius Flothuis defended Haitink by referring to various performances that included works by the Second Viennese School, for instance the 1967/68 season in which Haitink performed Webern’s Five Orchestral Pieces, Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces, and Ton de Leeuw’s Ombres. See Flothuis 1999: 66–72. Their views do not, however, take into account the Nutcrackers’ main objection: the autocracy in the programming policy of the orchestra driven by commercial interests (e.g., recording contracts). Interview with Andriessen on 25 July 2003. Yet one has to take into account Vermeulen’s favorable reception by the Concertgebouw Orchestra during the 1950s and 1960s, when Van Beinum conducted his Second and Fifth Symphonies and Haitink conducted the première of his First Symphony in 1964.

2 Formative years

I’ve decided that Stravinsky’s oeuvre accounts for what is current in music for five hundred years already. Stravinsky dominates my way of thinking, either directly or indirectly. He is alive, he makes what is current, and the answer to current affairs [actualiteit]. Something similar guided my thoughts in composing Souvenirs d’Enfance. Graphic piano music, indeterminate piano music, strict twelve-tone music, but also light music, romantic music (from French B-films, James Bond) make up all the parts of what is current in music today. (Andriessen 1968: 179) This piece [Contra Tempus], as well as this article, is a response to the downward spiraling development in the conception of musical style and the de-humanizing effect it has had on composers. The musical quotation of other composers should be taken up in the first place as an engagement, an identification, a recognition of oneself in something else. Charles Ives comments: “I don’t quote, I just recognize myself.”. . . We can work in harmony with living as well as dead composers. (Andriessen 1968: 178)

The new directions in which contemporary music evolved after World War II had a determining influence upon the generation of composers who were coming of age in the late 1950s. The serial “fervor” that caught hold in Europe and North America exerted an inescapable force on composers working in the Netherlands who, until then, were divided between French and German compositional lineages. In the formative years, Andriessen’s musical language shifted rapidly from the pan-diatonic style that he inherited from his father and brother to the avant-garde idioms of the Darmstadt school, namely, serialism, textural and aleatoric music, and collage. As a student of Kees van Baaren, Andriessen began by toeing the avant-garde line and allying himself with the most radical group of composers. While experimenting with just about every style that came into vogue, he resisted being locked into one specific kind of technique, taking delight in exploring the musical and ideological connections among disparate compositional styles. This chapter chronicles the evolution of Andriessen’s compositional language circa 1956–1968 in three stages: the adoption of serialism and pandiatonic modes of composition during the late 1950s, his experimentation with sound mass and textural music in the early 1960s, and the collage

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techniques that lead to an ideological deployment of parody in the late 1960s. In this respect, Contra Tempus (1968) assumes a pivotal role as the last piece to showcase the avant-garde idioms of the Darmstadt school and the first to merge the musical present and the past in moving toward a parodic style of composition modeled on the music of Stravinsky and Ives. Through his work as a correspondent for several Dutch newspapers, Andriessen began to ruminate on the significance of the rapidly shifting terrain in contemporary musical trends at this time. His article in De Gids (1968) shows that, in the end, it is the heterogeneity in Stravinsky’s and Ives’s compositional approaches that exerted an abiding influence on his development as a composer, not the radicalism of Boulez, Stockhausen and the Darmstadt aesthetics. As Stravinsky and Ives transgressed stylistic conventions and expanded the resources for what could be included in the sphere of art music, Andriessen was motivated by a desire to use his music to reflect on current artistic trends. Parodying older music and contemporary styles started out as his way of identifying with what is “current” (actualiteit): the pluralistic sources of music that cannot be contained in one given style. Although his music from this period testifies to the inescapable influence of the Darmstadt school, it is also evident that he departed ideologically from Boulez’s dictum of musical autonomy, which demanded that every work present a system of coherent thought uniquely its own (Griffiths 1981: 139). In fact, he worked to dispel the ultra-modernists’ claim to originality in their rejection of neo-classicism and stylistic allegiance to the past, notably demonstrated by Boulez’s criticism of Schoenberg in his article, “Schoenberg is Dead” (1952: 18–22). The 1960s may be construed as a period of inward rebellion, a gestational period in which Andriessen sorted through the outer layers of influence in order to locate his emergent musical identity founded on the Stravinskian dictum that “music is about other music” (Andriessen and Schönberger 1989: 100).

Formative years: neo-tonality and serialism Louis was born in 1939 in Utrecht to a family of musicians and composers. Along with his five siblings (Jurriaan, Nico, Hiek, Leen and Cicilis), the third and youngest son of the family learned to play piano duets at an early age – his mother, a professional pianist, was his first teacher. By the time he was eleven years old, he was composing under the tutelage of his father, Hendrik. It is undoubtedly through his father that Andriessen developed a taste for the French music of Ravel and Fauré, and for Stravinsky’s neo-classicism: “There was not one song by Fauré that I did not know already

Fo r m a t ive ye a r s

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by the time I was twelve. I also knew the music of Chausson, Ravel, and so forth” (Trochimczyk 2002: 9). Analogous to Willem Pijper’s role in Rotterdam, musicologist Caecilanus Huigens contributed to the development of musical life in Utrecht. As a student of Huigens, Hendrik Andriessen (1892–1981) became one of the leading figures in the revival of Catholic church music. From 1937 onward, he acquired a considerable reputation as the director of the Utrecht Music School and Conservatory as a successor to Jan van Gilse (Samama 1986: 89). The family moved to The Hague when Hendrik was appointed director of the Royal Conservatory in 1949. In the course of his life, he wrote over two hundred works and contributed much to advancing the repertory of Catholic church music in the form of vocal, choral, and organ works. Although polychordal and bi-tonal techniques pervaded his music from the 1930s, he went on to write chamber works such as his Quintet for Winds (1951) that incorporated dodecaphonic techniques; by the time he embarked on the “Il Pensiero” Quartet (1961), he was employing techniques of thematic permutation readily associated with serialism, using non-tonal harmony with a strong contrapuntal basis (Dox 1981: 16–24). In retrospect, Louis comments on how his father loved the music of Alban Berg – his record collection included Berg’s Wozzeck and the Violin Concerto (1935) – yet felt little affinity for Schoenberg’s music. Hendrik professed that a composition was a continual search for the ultimate personal expression which could be developed from all styles and materials at his disposal and that “one must [caution] against the conception that music accounts for itself in relation to its own time” (Dox 1981: 24). Hendrik’s indomitable insistence upon music’s relatedness to the past implicitly guided Louis’s musical orientation from early on. Aside from the love for French music that he inherited from his father, the influence of his oldest brother, Jurriaan, played a critical role in opening Andriessen’s interest to jazz and music by American composers. After studying with Messiaen in Paris during 1948–49, Jurriaan moved to the United States for a couple of years. The “Berkshire” Symphony (1949), completed during his visit to the United States, displays a strong influence not only of Copland, but American film music and Stravinsky’s neo-classical works (Samama 1986: 208). Much to Louis’s delight, Jurriaan returned from the United States in 1951 with records of jazz music by Buck Clayton, Stan Kenton, and Nat King Cole. When Hendrik fell ill around 1955, Jurriaan took over Louis’s composition lessons. In the time he spent away from the conservatory, Louis learned to improvise in the boogie-woogie style with his friend Wim Witteman (Bernlef 1993: 58). While the influence of jazz

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Ex. 2.1: Sonata for flute and piano (mvt. I) first theme

pno

second theme

in Andriessen’s music was not made explicit until later, this period firmly rooted his compositional exploration in piano improvisation. Andriessen’s earliest published composition, Sonata for piano and flute (1956), was written under the tutelage of Jurriaan. Written when he was seventeen years of age, the piece exemplifies the ease with which Andriessen could recreate compositions in the pan-diatonic style after Jurriaan. This early work comprises four movements cast in the standard binary or ternary form. While conforming to the neo-tonal idioms reminiscent of Copland, ˚ and others, Andriessen’s writing already shows quirky Hindemith, Martinu, deviations from a clichéd dependence on formulas, introducing irregular phrases and changing meters. The first movement, allegro, consists of two contrasting themes as shown in Ex. 2.1. For the first theme in 6/8 meter, Andriessen introduces harmonic tension by adding dissonances to extended tertian harmonies: B in the flute clashes with B in the piano at m.10. The agitated and unsettled quality of the first theme is counterbalanced by the expansive quality of the second theme built exclusively on quartal harmonies and their transpositions by step up or down. As illustrated in the second system, the transition to the second theme is accomplished through a shift in meter from 6/8 to 4/4 in which the tempo of the dotted crotchet is equated with the crotchet beat of the second


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theme. The rest of the movement proceeds according to the structure of a condensed sonata form: the two thematic materials are developed in the middle section prior to their condensed recapitulation in the final section of the movement. The second movement, andante molto, embarks on a fugal imitation of the opening quartal motive; the initial entries follow one another at the interval of a fourth or second below and a descending chromatic gesture fills in the transition leading to an inverted entry that follows. The retrograde formation and other creative transformations of the motive recall contrapuntal techniques deployed by Hindemith in Ludus Tonalis (1942). The solemn fugal exposition is followed by a light-hearted scherzo featuring the flute in moto perpetuo: the chromatic semiquaver motive in the flute unfolds over the ostinato chords in the piano. Although the focal pitch is E, Andriessen introduces a key signature that combines two flats (B and E) in the bottom clef of the piano with B and F in the upper clef. The middle section of this short ternary scherzo features the flute in cross-rhythm against the piano, inflecting the melody with further chromatic alterations. The final movement, allegro vivace, is cast in an elaborate ternary form, synthesizing thematic material from the previous movements in quick succession. Quartal harmony provides primary harmonic and melodic materials, and at times he enhances the dissonance by allowing the piano and flute to move in parallel fourths, doubled at the major seventh. As an academic exercise in pan-diatonic writing, the Sonata demonstrates Andriessen’s early mastery in balancing contrasting thematic and harmonic elements within a prescribed formal structure. Following Jurriaan’s tutelage, Andriessen studied at the conservatory in The Hague with the affable Kees van Baaren. Van Baaren, who had studied at the Sternsche Conservatory in Germany and who later became a student of Willem Pijper, came to be regarded as the “Schoenberg of the Netherlands” for having written the first Dutch twelve-tone compositions, Septet (1952), Muzikaal zelfportret (1954), and Variazioni per orchestra (1959) (Samama 1986: 215–16). In the Variazioni, he experimented with the serial arrangement of duration as well as pitch (Kien 1976: 4–13). Prior to obtaining teaching positions at the Rotterdam Conservatory, Amsterdam Muzieklyceum, and finally at the conservatory in The Hague, Van Baaren played jazz and accompanied the “Kabarett der Unmöglichkeit” to earn a living (Van der Klis 2000: 22–23). Van Baaren exhibited enthusiasm for a wide range of music that included works of Charles Ives along with those of the Second Viennese School; his versatility as a musician and non-dogmatic attitude toward composition undoubtedly helped his students to flourish as composers in highly individualized ways. The conservatory was the context in which Andriessen

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Ex. 2.2a: tempo scheme in Séries for two pianos

came to know Misha Mengelberg, Reinbert de Leeuw, Peter Schat, and Jan van Vlijmen, with whom he would stage the Nutcrackers’ protest action in 1969. The two works written under the tutelage of Van Baaren, Séries for two pianos (1958) and Nocturnen for two sopranos and orchestra (1959), illustrate Andriessen’s enormous capacity to absorb, replicate, and integrate a diverse range of musical styles in his late teenage years. The early 1950s presented the height of interest in twelve-tone and serial music all over Western Europe and North America. Andriessen recalls attending performances of Stravinsky’s serial works in Cologne and obtaining the complete recording of Webern’s music produced by Philips in 1956. Séries for two pianos (1958), along with the unpublished Prospettive e Retrospettive for solo piano (1959), resulted from his own experimentation with twelve-tone techniques for a brief period.1 While the sketches for Séries are now lost, the composer claims to have worked out the tempo, durations, pitches, dynamics, and expression markings according to a series of twelve elements, e.g., each movement consists of twelve measures.2 It is obviously not the contrapuntal and transformational possibilities of a given twelvetone row that interested Andriessen, but rather the harmonic and textural possibilities of realizing the row. The overall structure of the pieces demonstrates a kind of preoccupation with re-ordering the rows according to interval cycles in a manner that resembles Alban Berg’s compositional strategy in his Lyric Suite (1925–26). A close examination reveals the extent to which Andriessen’s strategy for utilizing the twelve-tone row is motivated by intuitive musical interests rather than by an allegiance to prescribed systems. The twelve movements are, nonetheless, organized by means of eleven distinct tempi as shown in Ex. 2.2a. Notice how the tempo nearly doubles between movements II and III, and then doubles again between III and IV. The fast movements IV, VI, VII and IX are counterbalanced by slower ones in between and the concluding movement restores the tempo of the opening.


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Ex. 2.2b: Séries for two pianos (mvt. I)

Palindromic deployment of the row is evident in eight out of the twelve movements, an obvious homage to Webern whose music Andriessen studied closely. Aside from movements III and XI that follow a literal palindrome (with registral invariance of pitches), the remaining movements allow for change in register in the mirror image. For instance, in movement I, the row unfolds between the two piano parts as shown in Ex. 2.2b. Around the pivotal pitch C in m. 7, the row traverses in retrograde. The aural comprehensibility of the retrograde (mm. 7–12) is significantly undermined by the alterations in the rhythmic duration and the registral placement of each note (from those of mm. 1–6). The rhythmic durations of each note are extracted from an additive series that begins with a dotted semiquaver and ends with a dotted semibreve. The rhythmic entries in the two pianos are not, however, coordinated by systematic permutation of the durations, allowing for synchronous attacks to occur between the two piano parts, for instance, the silently held G on the fourth beat of m. 6. In writing the movements, Andriessen alternates between linear, pointillistic, and harmonic deployment of the series that privileges certain interval configurations. As shown in Ex. 2.2c, movement V derives from the reordering of the series based on a successive transposition of minor sixths and major ninths in the first measure: the pairs of pitch-classes that form dyads that descend in stepwise motion, producing a twelve-tone aggregate. The following measure is based on a succession of major seventh dyads with the exception of the minor tenth {E, G} in the middle of the row. The third measure follows a similar pattern by interchanging intervals of ninths with major tenths. Notice how the same pattern of dyads found in the opening measure recurs at m. 5, and m. 3 reverses the sequence of dyads formed in m. 1 and 5, while m. 4 reverses the sequence of dyads formed in m. 2. Although not shown, the pitch content for the rest of the movement is unified via a

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Ex. 2.2c: Séries for two pianos (mvt. V)

mirror-symmetrical arrangement so that the sequence of dyads in m. 12 corresponds with that in m. 1, m. 11 with m. 2, and so forth. The linear derivation of the row is, however, completely obscured in the process. Overall, the various movements take on the quality of a set of piano e´ tudes in the technical challenges they bring to the two players. In movement XI, Andriessen changes the intervallic configuration of the series almost continuously while maintaining a seamless texture of arpeggiation in the two pianos.3 Although he was not consciously modeling his method on Berg’s cyclical derivation of rows, his compositional modus operandi for Séries demonstrates a freedom of style unhampered by rigid adherence to a single row and the requisite rules of transformation by inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion. Inspired by a performance of Hans W. Henze’s Nachtstücke und Arien (1958), the twenty-year-old Andriessen then embarked on Nocturnen for soprano and orchestra, dedicating the work to Jeannette Yanikian. The piece employs two sopranos, one who sings the introductory movement from off stage, and the other who appears on stage to sing the subsequent three movements. Andriessen had composed the poem in French in his youth and decided to set it to this four-movement orchestral piece. The symbolist qualities inhere in his use of metaphors of night and shadows to describe his affection for Jeannette: “Oh, fluide immense. Moi la (la) nuit, c’est moi/ mon corps on aime l’obscurité/ de sentir de trembler . . . pour faire les ténèbres ensemble dans la nuit. Les arbres continuent sans voir. Oui, Oui, et on se tait toujours/ Là ça presse. Oh, comme je voudrais sentir et trembler et respirer l’odeur et aimer et mon aimée et tout ça! Faire tout ça avec la nuit dans ma conscience.”4


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Ex. 2.3a: principal motives in Nocturnen

In the notes accompanying the recording, Andriessen describes Nocturnen as “a techno-musical confrontation between traditional achievements and new tendencies in post-1950 music” (Schönberger 1996a: 15). Indeed, the four short movements attest to a continual confrontation between atonal and diatonic elements, as the initial diatonic chord complexes, anchored to bass notes that give them quasi-tonal support, gradually undergo transformation via addition of chromatic tones and extended harmonies. For instance, the Introduction offers five harmonic gestures and motives that recur cyclically throughout the four movements, as shown in Ex. 2.3a.5 The opening progression from m. 1 to m. 3, for example, can be described as a chord complex D-F-A-C-G that combines the tonic and dominant harmonies in D major. This chord complex progresses to an ambiguous sonority on E at m. 7 that simultaneously contains D and D. The D sustained by the flute functions like an upper pedal as the bass descends from E to D. A different chromatic extension is introduced (m. 9, 0’30”), where

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Ex. 2.3b: Nocturnen (mvt. I, reh. C)

octatonic collection on C (minus E and B )

the terraced entries of strings, harp, celesta, and horn span a whole-tone sonority on B with the addition of two notes, E and F, from its complementary whole-tone scale. This gesture is answered by the solo flute and clarinet, which play out a chromatic melody that spirals downward to another whole-tone fragment on G (m.12, 0’49”). Andriessen describes the interwined arpeggiations in harp and piano at reh. A as having “erotic” overtones.6 Built on D octatonic with an added B, this motive serves the function of a leitmotif throughout Nocturnen. This gesture is answered by the mirroring arpeggiations constructed on E octatonic, which is then superimposed over a dominant-seventh sonority on E at m.18. Past this point, the opening chord is reinstated at reh. B, transposed to F, and an angular, atonal gesture in the piano cadences to the concluding chord on F, another whole-tone extension with an added note. The introductory movement closely resembles techniques of tonal extension associated with the music of late Debussy and early Stravinsky. Movement I opens with an ostinato chord built on the tetrachord [C, C, E, F] spread across flute, piano, harp, and strings, that prepares for the lyrical vocal entry on the words “Moi, la nuit. . . .” The translucent texture leads to an instrumental tutti (reh. C, 2’45”), in which two ascending motives build to a dynamic climax, as shown in Ex. 2.3b. These gestures are counterbalanced by the final section in which the voice makes a chromatic descent to the final tetrachord [G, G, B, B] – also a fragment of the C octatonic.


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Ex. 2.3c: Nocturnen (mvt. III)

The tension between chromatic and diatonic elements increases in the subsequent movements. By the beginning of movement II, the mirrored fragments based on the octatonic chord and the flute melody unify the texture in the middle of the song and the concluding harmony provides an ambiguous sense of resolution through stacking intervals of fourths with added notes on D. The third and final movement nearly exhausts the chromatic aggregate in its opening three measures, as shown in Ex. 2.3c. The ascending contour in the cello and viola (doubled by horn and trumpet) alternates between a fourth and a third as focal intervals and the composite texture avoids any kind of octave duplication among the pitches present. The vocal entry at m. 4 is angular and chromatic; the partially octatonic melody zigzags its way to the highest note, C5 . Motives from this opening passage return later to form a dramatic climax on the text, “et mon aimée et tout ça!” at four measures past reh. A (6’17”). Here the E octatonic chord wedded to the E dominant seventh chord from the introductory movement returns, followed by an ascending gesture (doubled in octave and unison) built on C whole-tone scale with an added note. This climactic section is followed by a passage at the ppp dynamic level; the terraced entry in the orchestra and the vocal entry (reh. B, 6’54”) once again derive their pitch material from the octatonic scale on C. The final movement concludes with a progression of chords derived from the dominant-tonic complex built on A that seeks a resolution to unison E.

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The economy of motivic materials combined with sparse, yet dynamic, changes in the orchestral texture of Nocturnen closely resembles the orchestration of Henze’s Nachtstücke und Arien, which also treats the voice as an integral part of the orchestral texture.7 The harmonic construction of Nocturnen, its oscillation between tonal and atonal regions, is also modeled on Henze, incorporating extended tonal harmonies with added dissonance. By extending the harmonic resources through the addition of “wrong notes,” Andriessen’s harmonies tend to float aimlessly, suspended in mid-air without resolution. Even in his earliest compositions, Andriessen was drawn to polarities and oppositions that cross over stylistic boundaries.

Toward textural music, alea, and improvisation After graduating from the conservatory at The Hague, Andriessen worked as a correspondent for De Volkskrant and De Gids. He continued his work as a correspondent during 1962–63, when he traveled to Milan to study with Luciano Berio.8 One of the notable articles Andriessen wrote during this period describes his visit to the Darmstadt festival in August of 1963 (2002a: 110–14; 200b: 114–18). After attending ten concerts in twelve days, he commented on how this festival tried to distinguish itself by staging performances of experimental pieces that confronted current social issues. Andriessen glowingly praised Berio’s works that demonstrate his interest in phonetics (Circles (1960), Passaggio (1961–62)), Henri Pousseur’s rational system for harmonic analysis, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s self-analysis of Gruppen for three orchestras (1955–57), and Pierre Boulez’s striking forum that defended the significance of Debussy for modern music. The positive tone with which Andriessen described the festival is oddly coupled with his disappointment over the conservative nature of the programming of events for that year. He bemoaned the fact that relatively little attention was given to truly experimental compositions, with the notable exception of a string quartet by Michael von Biel, in which the strings were played in a totally unconventional fashion (2002a: 112; 2002b: 116). In his concluding article, he expressed his excitement over theatrical innovations by Berio and Mauricio Kagel: “As is evident from these widely-differing productions, the theatre plays a role in music which no one had expected. The movement of the musicians as a means of dramatic expression; the movement of the actors as an expression of time passing; the contact with one another; or the co-existence of as many different expressions as possible” (Andriessen 2002a: 113–14; 2002b: 117).


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Ex. 2.4a: Ittrospezione II for orchestra (1963) [Quartet I]

The imprint of Darmstadt compositional aesthetics is demonstrated in the large-scale orchestral work, Ittrospezione II (1963), which Andriessen completed during his studies with Berio in Milan during 1962–63. Instructions in Italian explain how the instrumentalists should be arranged in a circular formation: the audience faces the stage where the tam-tam, gong, and strings are situated; brass, woodwind, and the remaining percussion players are distributed on both sides of the concert hall; and the conductor is located at the rear of the concert hall. This orchestral version of Ittrospezione represents Andriessen’s first largescale composition to use proportional notation in which gestures for each instrumental group are encased within a block or grid with a designated number of seconds allocated for each. All notes were precisely written out within a blocked texture that oscillates from tutti to quartets, sectional passages that feature a small combination of instruments. At times, when the grid encompasses an extended duration, Andriessen provides dotted lines above the individual gestures to break them up into separate, self-contained groups. An excerpt from the score is shown in Ex. 2.4a. Referring to the micropolyphonic textures that were current in those years (inspired by Ligeti, Xenakis, and Stockhausen), Andriessen called this manner of textualizing an instrumental block heterophony; a composite texture sustains an unchanging harmonic region that, in spite of the microcosmic rhythmic changes within individual parts, hangs together as one gestural unit.9 This heterophonic texture – an aggregate of notes that defies

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conventional rhythmic or metric organization – appears in many different guises in the pieces Andriessen wrote during the 1960s, and eventually developed into the sustained “sound continua” texture he introduces in Contra Tempus. While proportional notation was used throughout, every musical gesture was precisely written out in the manner of Xenakis’s Pithoprakta (1958) and Stockhausen’s Gruppen for three orchestras (1955–57). This type of notation dominates two different versions of Ittrospezione III that was completed in the following two years. “Concept I” (1964) is for two pianists, clarinet, horn, glockenspiel, trombones, guitar, and bass, and it is about five-and-a-half minutes in duration, while “Concept II” (1965) presents an extended version with two pianists, clarinet, horn, vibraphone, tenor saxophone, and bass, although the writing for the piano remains the same in the two versions. The latter expands on the heterophonic interaction between the two pianos and the other instrumental groups by merging the highly dissonant and frenetic Darmstadt sounds with free jazz improvisation. Formally, it differs from “Concept I” by allowing for an optional texture that can be inserted at indeterminate points in the composition and which can be realized in a number of different ways. As shown by Ex. 2.4b, this latter version opens with simultaneous entries by the strings, trombones, tenor saxophone and clarinets. At first glance, the highly pointillistic texture in the pianos recalls Boulez’s Structures Ia, although the pitch organization, as in the case of Séries, hardly conforms to a strict permutation of twelve-tone rows. Nonetheless, the pitches seem to be fixed in register (for example, F7 , which appears in piano 1, is duplicated in the same register in piano 2 some measures later) while avoiding simultaneous points of rhythmic attack between the two pianos. The brass and string groups frame the piano duet with rhythmically sparse, but non-overlapping textures built on major sevenths and seconds. Following the tutti introduction, the two pianos embark on a prolonged duet comprising dense interaction between “points” and arpeggiations (0’15”-6’12”).10 The instruction shows how an independent layer of heterophony by clarinet, horn, vibraphone, and strings may enter against the piano duet within a prescribed range. After a brief pause, the second tutti entry quickly segues into an extended heterophonic passage by three trombones, with brief interjection by the pianos (6’12”-7’48”). The last section of the work (9’05”-13’12”) builds on slow, sustained chorale-like material in the bass and violas, upon which horns, pianos, and trombones superimpose short overlapping passages in the styles previously exploited. The first piano, however, unexpectedly settles on an ostinato consisting of BB tremolo in the bass (9’45”), a dramatic turn in the piece that signals a stylistic change from the rhythmically amorphous, stochastic texture to


Ex. 2.4b: opening of Ittrospezione III (“Concept II” 1965)

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Ex. 2.5: Registers for piano (1963) [systems 1 and 5]

free-style jazz, inspired by Willem Breuker. At the conclusion of the piece, the strings continue to unravel a long, slow sequence of chords against the frenetic, improvisatory solo by the tenor saxophone. In composing the series of Ittrospezione, Andriessen effectively transgresses stylistic boundaries, creating music that is stylistically hybrid without losing the essence of either serialism or free jazz. Weary of working on Ittrospezione II, which demanded microscopic attention to detail, Andriessen spent hours during his stay in Milan engaging in “wild improvisations” at the piano to clear his mind (Andriessen 1965). The improvisations consequently led him to embark on a graphic piece that codifies the gestures with which he experimented freely at the piano. Inspired by American experimental composers such as Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and John Cage, he wrote Registers (1963), replacing conventional musical notation with a whole array of graphic symbols. Example 2.5 reproduces the beginning of systems 1 and 5 from the eleven systems that comprise the piece. The square note heads are meant to be performed with the shortest attacks possible and the duration of rests is determined by the length of the staves: one second roughly corresponds to one centimeter of the actual space in the score. The dark rectangular shape indicates a sustaining of the given pitch while playing other gestures that overlap. Bass clefs indicate that the piece begins in the lowest registers of the piano and it is not until the fifth system that the right hand ascends to the treble clef. In the fifth system, diamond-shaped figures are introduced, corresponding to three tetrachords that are written out at a specified register in the accompanying instruction; they are to be struck or pressed without sounding if an empty rectangular shape follows the figure. In a recent recording of Registers, Ralph van Raat executes the points, clusters, and legato glissandi (to be executed either with fingers or with pedals) with ease and inflects them


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with the quasi-serial Darmstadt sonorities in keeping with Andriessen’s writing for piano in the Ittrospezione series.11 While the execution of gestures may vary from performer to performer, the structure of this piece is hardly indeterminate; Andriessen gradually widens the register of the two staves to cover the entire range of the piano to bring the music to a dramatic end. The indeterminate notation in Registers can be traced to similar techniques found in Morton Feldman’s Projections I (1950), Stockhausen’s Zyklus (1959), György Ligeti’s Volumina (1961), and so forth. Unlike Earle Brown’s Folio (1952) or Available Forms I (1961) that introduce a mobile conception of form, Andriessen controls the temporal realization of musical gestures as a fixed entity. Brown’s conception of indeterminacy and use of graphic notation in Available Forms I is dictated by an interest in “synergy” between conceivable and inconceivable processes that leads up to the realization of a graphic score which could be transmitted from the composer to the performer and the audience (Brown 1961). In contrast to such speculative concerns, Andriessen used graphic notation primarily to convey extended physical gestures at the piano, which could not be captured through conventional notation. Since the graphic piece emerged out of his improvisations at the piano during these years, he did not wish the performer necessarily to be bound by the graphic symbols: “the used notation is meant to stimulate the performer to impulsive activity which can have a clearly emotional, passionate character. It is possible to play more notes than are written. . . . The notation should not curb the player; indeed, it should encourage pianistic action” (Andriessen 1963d).

Collage and syncretism After completing Ittrospezione III, Andriessen began to adopt collage technique as a compositional device, following a trend that became increasingly fashionable after serial and aleatoric techniques began to wane in prominence in the latter half of the 1960s. In an article written for De Gids in the 1966, he commented on the historical importance of “quotation” music (e.g. Bach, who copied Vivaldi’s concertos) and attributed the term stijloosheid (“stylelessness”) to the simultaneous use of musical fragments originating from different historical styles (2002a: 49; 2002b: 53). In it, Andriessen took care to explain what is “style-less” and what is not; in a proper sense, “styleless” music must not allow any one normative style to dominate the process of composition, as exemplified by Stockhausen’s Telemusik, Makoto Shinohara’s Memories, and van Baaren’s Musica per orchestra – all written in 1966.12

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Andriessen’s first collage work consists of a set of pieces he wrote for two pianos called Souvenirs d’enfance (1966). The musicians are free to make their own arrangement from twenty-eight loose pages of music contained inside a box that include a twelve-tone e´ tude, a graphic piece, clusters, a samba, quotations from Stravinsky’s orchestra music, three blank pages for the pianists to compose out their own music, and so forth (Andriessen 1968a: 179).13 Shortly afterwards, he embarked on his first full-fledged attempt to write a “styleless” collage for orchestra, entitled Anachronie I. Dedicated to Ives, the score contains a heterogeneous array of stylistic and literal quotations of music found in contemporary society. Andriessen comments: It’s like the aesthetic that was developed after World War II among painters like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and also by such as Cage – just accepting what is in the outside world, also accepting an aesthetic of the outside world in the art world. It does away with the division between art and life. Ives is, in that mentality, a precursor. I think that, for him, it was very simple to put all kinds of things together. He just didn’t mind, I think, and that’s the marvelous thing about it. (1968b: 63)

The title refers to the seemingly anachronistic use of stylistic allusions and quotations that are “out of harmony with the modernist concept of musical progress” (Schönberger 1996a: 15). In assembling a multitude of stylistic allusions and musical quotations in block juxtaposition, Andriessen set out to write a collage piece that exemplifies what is truly “styleless,” without one style dominating any other. The composer compares this stylistic collage to the musical reality of postwar society, when people were free to “zap through the collected stations of different tuners” (Schönberger 1996a: 16). The piece begins with a seven-bar Stravinskian brass fanfare, alternating with a heterophonic passage for cello and bass, in which a violist is instructed to improvise in an atonal style above it within the range of F3 to F4 . After the second repetition, the music segues into the series of stylistic and literal quotations, as shown under Fig. 2.6b. After the linear juxtaposition of the opening blocks (alternating between brass and strings), Andriessen interweaves three or four layers of stylized music in the form of a collage; for instance, at reh. B, stylized imitation of Messiaen’s “birdsongs” float aimlessly above the atonal gestures in the strings and big-band gesture in the brass. While each layer of music comes and goes in a state of continuous change, the music builds dramatic momentum by synchronizing the entries of musical fragments at formal junctures. The music indeed proceeds as a succession of overlapping musical segments without settling into one normative style of composition. A four-measure segment of Brahms’s Variations on a Theme


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Fig. 2.6a: quotations found in Anachronie I Reh. B [1’15”]: Messiaen in woodwinds (SQ); Penderecki in strings (SQ); Big-band music (Gil Evans) in brass (SQ); Reh. C [1’48”]: Stravinsky’s cantata (SQ); Webern in strings (SQ); Reh. D [2’08”]: French salon music (SQ); Ives’s string quartet (SQ) Reh. E [2’33”]: Brahms, Variations on a Theme by Handel (LQ) Reh. F [3’20”]: Peter Schat, Labyrinth (LQ) Reh. G [3’55”]: Jurriaan Andriessen, Berkshire Symphony (LQ) Reh. H [4’10”]: Jurriaan Andriessen, Violin Sonata (LQ) Reh. I [4’19”]: Hendrik Andriessen, “Miserere” from Missa Cristus Rex (LQ) César Franck, String Quartet in electric organ (LQ) Darius Milhaud, “Ipanem” from Saudades do Brasil (LQ) Reh. J [5’02”]: Albert Roussel, Symphony No. 3 (LQ) Reh. K [5’23”]: Stockhausen (SQ) Reh. L: [5’50”]: Penderecki in strings (SQ) Reh. M [6’03”]: Italian popular tune (SQ) Reh. N [7’05”]: French film music in the style of Michel Legrand (SQ) Reh. Q [8’33”]: Broadway-style horn melody (SQ) Reh. R [8’54”]: Bach’s St Matthew Passion (LQ) Reh. U [9’48”]: Darmstadt school (SQ) [SQ = style quotation; LQ = literal quotation; timings based on Donemus CV54, track 3]

by Haydn is heard against the protest music, Labyrinth [Labyrinth], written by his colleague, Peter Schat, at reh. F. Literal quotations of neo-tonal compositions by his brother, Jurriaan, and his father, Hendrik, follow. At reh. I, the sense of disruption and discontinuity is heightened by the quickened pace at which the literal quotations overlap one another. In an excerpt shown in Ex. 2.6b, a four-measure quotation of Hendrik Andriessen’s “Miserere” from Missa Cristus Rex is followed by eight measures of Franck’s string quartet arranged for electric organ. True to the composer’s intention, the effect of this piece continually thwarts the listener’s expectations. In particular, interspersing atonal fragments between tonal references serves to heighten the incongruity of their juxtaposition and neutralizes the listener’s point of reference. Toward the end of the piece, the music retreats to an extremely sporadic atonal texture (stylization of Darmstadt sounds) that features vibraphone, celesta, harp, piano, and electric organ (reh. U). The piece comes to a close with the striking of five bells, which are electronically manipulated to crescendo from p to fff. The collage techniques in Andriessen’s Anachronie I contrast interestingly with the third movement of Berio’s Sinfonia (1968–69), which was completed around the same time.14 Berio takes the scherzo of Mahler’s

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Ex. 2.6b: Anachronie I (reh. I, annotation by author)

Second Symphony as his core musical text, upon which he overlays fragments of numerous orchestral works, as well as spoken and sung texts from various literary texts (Osmond-Smith 1981; 1985). This movement, a musical analogue to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, is arguably the most ambitious attempt yet made to create a multitude of musical spaces that unfold simultaneously, evoking a temporal stream of consciousness modeled on Joyce’s literary discourse.15 What clearly distinguishes Anachronie I from Berio’s colossal experimentation in fragmentation is the absence of a primary musical text like Mahler’s scherzo that holds the piece together in spite of its transformation and distortion.16 Andriessen deliberately abstains from foregrounding one quotation over another, maintaining a position of


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neutrality and thereby holding to the ethos of “stylelessness.” At the same time, the stylized and literal quotations are autobiographical, alluding to the multitude of musical experiences that inhabited Andriessen’s creative consciousness. Clearly Ives served as a model for his inclination to intersperse heterogeneous sources that carry varying degrees of personal reference, notably works by his father and brother, yet such references are viewed objectively, from a distance. Written as the sequel to Anachronie I, Anachronie II (1968–69) presents a pastiche of Italian Baroque music in the form of a “deconstructed” miniature oboe concerto. In this piece Andriessen abandoned the technique of stylistic collage and embraced a type of interpolated formal structure in which the self-contained sections within the oboe concerto undergo gradual decomposition. The piece is dedicated to Erik Satie – the inventor of musique d’ ameublement. Many of the characteristics found in Anachronie II can be seen as a direct homage to Satie, an iconoclast in his own time, who parodied formal and harmonic structures of tonal forms and incorporated graphic presentation in works such as the Sports et divertissements (1914). The piece opens with the transistor radio – Andriessen’s homage to Satie’s “furniture music” – and an affected and melancholy melody in the oboe that oscillates between E major and minor. The piece proceeds by cycling through different tonal sequences (e.g., an ascending fifth sequence) with frequent enharmonic shifts to enhance the nomadic and sentimental effects of the oboe’s clichéd melody. The horn enters with a triplet motive, adopting a texture of popular music that often accompanies classic Hollywood films of the 1960s. This effect of “camp” is interrupted by a long pause, at which point the oboe and strings usher in a Baroque melody in E minor, winding upward in register to a climactic peak on a quasi-dominant harmony (2’40”).17 The prevailing texture is then brutally interrupted by a hocket of angular, dissonant chords by the remaining instruments (3’49”). The level of incongruity is maximized when the music comes to an abrupt halt on a chordal cluster, seguing into the oboe’s next entry on a gigue-like melody in C major (4’45”) with the transistor radio hovering above it. After a characteristic cadence in C major, the texture shifts suddenly to an A minor minuet, featuring the oboe and the first violin in imitation, ushering in a courante in C major (7’32”). The largely tonal passages come to an abrupt halt, when the dissonant hockets are brought back once again. The final phase of the deconstruction begins when the oboe’s melody dissolves to an atonal passage, as shown in Ex. 2.7 (7’43”). Similar to the saxophone solo inspired by Willem Breuker in Ittrospezione III (Concept II), the oboe embarks on a sequence of improvisatory gestures that extends

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Ex. 2.7: Anachronie II (reh. N)

the technical resources of the instrument far beyond what is called for in a tonal cadenza. The furthest extreme of “noise” is reached when the texture decomposes into a slur of line, as shown in the second system. Here the oboist improvises on the graphic notation, squiggles that zigzag their way up and down the staff line, obliterating any principle of melodic coherence. The wild cadenza continues for two-and-a-half pages before the horn enters with a solemn, atonal sarabande (10’14”), and this texture builds to a heterophonic interaction of four instrumental layers. At the conclusion of the piece, the oboe plays multiphonics and the transistor radio makes its final appearance. The final sustained note of the oboe is followed by a long pause, which is abruptly cut off by the pizzicato strings. In Anachronie II, Andriessen takes Satie’s playfulness and satirical treatment of tonal forms to an absurd height, exploring the continuum between constructed “sounds” and “noise.” Lastly, in Contra Tempus (1968–69) – which literally means “[working] against time” – Andriessen explores the commonality and compatibility between pre-tonal and atonal music. Here the musical neutrality of stylistic collage in Anachronie I gives way to a bold, polarized opposition between texture consisting of discrete points and clusters and slow, chorale-like “sound continua.” While employing block juxtaposition in the manner of Stravinsky, Contra Tempus is the first work in which Andriessen organizes the temporal proportion of the five movements according to the series of 6:4:5:8:7. The sequence of ratios is organized so that the duration “shaved


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Fig. 2.8a: interplay of gestures in Contra Tempus mvt.

reh.

time

instruments

gestures

F G

0’0” 2’34” 3’00”

kb1/2/3/4 vla kb1/2/3/4

points/arp/clusters chorale 1 points/arp/clusters

B C

3’37” 5’02” 5’50”

fl/ob/trb/tb perc/kb1 tutti

chorales 2 points/arp/clusters arp/chords (x7)

A B C D

6’18” 7’01” 7’34” 8’18” 8’44”

trb/vlc; kb1/2 fl/ob/trb/perc/kb1/4 fl/ob; perc/kb1/2/3/4/vla ob/trb/kb2/3/4; fl/ob trb

Machaut quote; points arp/chords (x7) Machaut quote; clusters sound continua; Machaut points/clusters

C E

10’04” 11’51” 13’29”

tutti tutti kb1/2/3/4

sound continua sound continua/chords (x7) arp/clusters

14’19” 17’15”

tutti tutti

chorale 3 “Symphony of Psalms” chord

I

II

III

IV

V

[arp = arpeggiation; timings are based on Donemus CV 54 (track 4)]

off” from one section to the next is re-attached later; in short, the difference in ratio between the first two sections is then added to that between the third and the fourth movements. The internal movements are related to one another to create an arch-like, formal symmetry. The musical gestures in movements I and IV tend toward an extreme of highly charged avant-garde pointillism and disjunct clusters, while movements II and V prolong the sustained quality of “sound continua” and the middle movement brings these elements together in open confrontation. What Andriessen calls a koral, an abstraction of chorale technique that goes back to J. S. Bach, carries a specific cultural meaning for Andriessen, who recalls the Dutch Calvinists’ tradition of singing hymns and chorales at an extremely slow tempo. The slowness of tempo creates a sustained sonic continuum, the quality that he transfers to the atonal context in the passages where the instruments cycle through the same chromatic range of pitches without change in tempo to prolong the effect of “sound continua” (Schönberger 1996a: 22). The above table illustrates the range of different gestures he introduces to vary the interplay of textures assigned to brass, woodwind, violas, keyboards, and percussion. In my designation above (Fig. 2.8a), rhythmically discrete chorale textures (1/2/3) are distinguished from “sound continua,” in which the perception of rhythm is no longer based on discrete but on continuous blocks of sound.

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Ex. 2.8b: opening of Contra Tempus (mvt. I)

In the opening of movement I (Ex. 2.8b), the percussionists and keyboard players enter with a succession of single notes (points) and chordal clusters dispersed across all registers. At each point designated “1” at the top of the score, the instrumentalists come together to sustain a chordal cluster that increases in textural density. The time notation (TN) works so that the conductor divides the sequence of measures according to the number shown and subdivides them according to the proportional length of each measure; for instance, the first three measures are subdivided into three beats at a moderate tempo, then the next three measures are subdivided in the same manner but proceed at a tempo that is approximately double the speed due to the narrower width of the barline. The third and fourth keyboards employ a Hornet clavinet to simulate the sounds of guitar and double bass. As indicated in brackets below the score, Andriessen allows for octave duplication of pitches (highlighted in bold) in the sustained chords while foregrounding dissonances of major sevenths (C – D, E – D) and tritones (G – C and D – A in the third chord, D – A and A – E in the fourth). The texture of this movement oscillates back and forth between the proportional notation of the opening and short rhythmic passages employing


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Ex. 2.8c: Contra Tempus (opening of mvt. II)

metered signature. At reh. E, flutes, oboes, and trombones enter with the other instruments in sustaining a block chord above the tremolo repetition of chromatic clusters in the second keyboard. Following this passage, four violas enter with a sustained chord, which leads to the first of the chorale textures. The registers of the four violas overlap to create a dense, chromatic intersection of notes within a span of roughly one octave played within the dynamic range of pp. This eerily serene passage is followed by a return to the points and clusters of the opening, further elaborated with rapid arpeggiations that are tossed from one keyboard to the next, and ending with chromatic clusters played simultaneously by the four keyboards at the sfff dynamic level. Movement II sets the woodwind and brass instruments in opposition to percussion and keyboards. As shown in Ex. 2.8c, it opens with the superimposition of three rhythmically distinct chorale textures in flutes, oboes,

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and trumpets/trombones. The flutes sustain a trichord {F, C, E}, derived from the beginning of movement I. While the rhythmic subdivisions of the pulse are synchronized within each layer, Andriessen continually varies the pattern of subdivision (e.g. triple changes to duple in the trumpets/trombones) through cross-accents and cross-rhythms, to energize the composite texture. As in Messiaen’s polyrhythmic notation, the written meter (2/4 in this case) serves merely to coordinate the three layers rather than to articulate a perceptible pulse. The chorale texture is explored more fully in the middle section of this movement. At reh. A, flutes and violas are rhythmically synchronized to provide a “sound continuum” at the dynamic level of pp, which first appeared toward the end of movement I. Violas provide an ethereal timbral counterpoint to the flutes through the use of harmonics. Two percussionists playing tam-tams and gongs enter with short, arpeggiating gestures written in time notation (TN). Flutes and violas continue with the “sound continuum” material, progressively diverging in their rhythmic constitution. Following this passage, two percussionists embark on a lengthy virtuosic competition using tom-toms, timbales, gongs, and bongos. The two players settle into a hocket-like exchange of beats while trombones and keyboards interject short chords at irregular intervals. The final section of the piece culminates in a repetition of a given chord, sustained by flutes, oboes, trombones and keyboard (4) while the percussion and keyboard (1) embellish it with arpeggiated and other chordal gestures. The central chord, spread out in register over five octaves, forms a harmonic complex that contains all the notes of the chromatic scale except C and B; it can also be conceived as a composite of two extended tertian harmonies built on A and E, as shown in Ex. 2.8c. This chord cluster is repeated seven times at irregular temporal distances, interspersed with flourishes and arpeggiations in the two percussion parts, and brings the movement to a close. It is in movement III that the confrontation between the pre-tonal and atonal styles comes to a head. The movement begins with a quotation from Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame (c. 1360) in the brass and violins. The three-measure fragment cadences on an open-fifth interval on D. This is immediately followed by a self-quotation from the atonal two piano parts of Ittrospezione III (concept II), shown in Ex. 2.4b. This stark juxtaposition of the pre-tonal and atonal segments produces a jolting effect. After two rounds of competition between the piano interpolations and the Machaut fragment, the brass and violins enter with the remainder of the Machaut quotation, closing with a double leading-tone cadence on C. The subsequent passages in movement III recycle the textures from the previous


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movements in the following order: the chord clusters from movement II, followed by the superimposition of pre-tonal and atonal musical idioms, a brief recapitulation of movement I, and then concluding with the section for trombones and trumpets in a two-part atonal chorale. Movement IV opens with the graphic notation of short ascending glissandi in the trombones with the instruction to “change timbre with mutes, flutters, etc.” It represents the extreme end of “sound continua” that verges on pure textural music, reminiscent of the graphic notations introduced in the writings for strings by Penderecki and Lutoslawski. The trombone glissandi are supported by similar gestures in the keyboards that sustain tremolos in the low register and violas’ glissandi that gradually ascend in register. Following this passage, time notation is brought back to project a sustained “sound continua” section, culminating in a dense, heterophonic passage involving four keyboards that simultaneously perform harmonic clusters spread across the entire register of the piano. The final movement experiments further with the uninterrupted “sound continua” texture in woodwinds and strings at a very slow tempo in 5/4 meter (chorale 3). As the rhythms are drawn out in all parts, but not synchronized, a texture of Klangfarbenmelodie emerges out of four distinct musical layers, interjected by chordal clusters in the keyboards. Unexpectedly, the opening chord of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms marks the end of the piece. Aside from the apparent incongruity of stylistic juxtaposition, Contra Tempus is the first work of Andriessen’s to engage in parody (of Machaut and his own music) while systematically investigating the stylistic interconnections between pre-tonal and atonal music. Schönberger sees Contra Tempus as containing the elements of a “blueprint” for the large-scale works Andriessen would produce in the following decades; his preference for four violas presages their use in De Staat (1972–76), the duet between three trombones and three trumpets can be seen as a forerunner to the hocket technique that he develops in Hoketus (1976) and Mausoleum (1979), and the “sound continuum” idea materializes later in the static texture that accompanies De Tijd (1981) (Schönberger 1993a: 215). Contra Tempus is also the first work in which Andriessen creates a multilayered musical response to the ideological theme of working “against time.” In exposing modern music’s connectedness to the historical past, Contra Tempus openly challenges Boulez’s assertion that the musical past can be transcended. The quotation of Stravinsky’s first chord from the Symphony of Psalms can be interpreted as his declaration to embrace, rather than reject, the musical past. Nonetheless, by interjecting the chord in the form of a rhetorical question at the end of Contra Tempus, Andriessen provokes an

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open-ended discourse, anticipating the dialectical conception that pervades his musical thinking in the decades to follow. ∗∗∗ In notes accompanying the recording of Andriessen’s music from the formative years, Elmer Schönberger comments: “Everything produced in the prenatal stage is merely a foreshadowing of the future. Prenatal music is to post-natal music as sketches are to a definitive composition. In this early phase nothing is what it is, everything is only prefiguration and promise. If prenatal music is anything, it is “not yet” (1996a: 13). Schönberger’s statement clearly is not meant to undermine the significance of compositions that demonstrate the process of growth and awareness that accompanied Andriessen’s musical journey through the 1960s. His compositions from this period are not simply a precursor to large-scale works he produced in the following decades, but rather bear witness to a versatile composer who is not content simply to follow whatever style happens to be in vogue. An orchestral work such as Ittrospezione II shows an abiding commitment to the Darmstadt “sound” and the move from serialism to textural music. On an ideological plane, it also represents Andriessen’s turn away from the pervasive aesthetic and conceptual rigor of the Darmstadt composers to his musical intuition rooted in improvisation. Reflecting on these years, Andriessen comments: “I found that aleatoricism actually served as a ‘decoy’ or a ‘distraction’ for the bourgeois, avant-garde composers who had no idea about true improvisation. It helped them to get out of the strict academicism of twelve-tone music and serialism, but that was all” (Trochimczyk 2002: 171). He remained critical of those who clung to systematic procedures, as almost all of his music was written intuitively and without observing formalized parameters (with the notable exception of Séries). It was not until Contra Tempus that Andriessen began to apply precompositional constraints to his music by prescribing numerical ratios to the length of internal movements. From Ittrospezione II onward, there is a growing tendency to employ heterophonic and chorale textures that culminate in Contra Tempus. These techniques became further refined and expanded in his works of the 1970s and were passed on to his students in the Haagse School (The Hague school), becoming a trademark sound of the generation of Dutch composers who followed in his footsteps (Chapter 5). Suffice it to say, Andriessen was not the only postwar Dutch composer to experiment with chorale writing during this period. Schönberger, in his survey of postwar Dutch music, goes as far as to describe the chorale as “the fingerprint of Dutch musical culture.” Beginning with Ton de Leeuw’s reworking of the chorale in Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments in a composition with the same title (1963), other composers, e.g., Peter-Jan Wagemans,


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Tristan Keuris, and Geert van Keulen, began to incorporate the chorale texture into their music in different guises (Schönberger 1986: 3–8). Nonetheless, Andriessen’s adoption of the chorale is undoubtedly different from those of his contemporaries as he extended the textural dimension of the chorale (e.g., “sound continua”) rather than simply extending its rhythmic and harmonic dimensions as De Leeuw and others have done in their compositions. The most powerful influences are frequently those that remain unspoken, influences that lie dormant within the depth of one’s unconscious. As the Darmstadt core began to disintegrate and split off into many different compositional orientations, Andriessen identified most with theatrical composers like Berio and Henze who promoted music as a form of social and political engagement. Improvisation became a key element in guiding his compositional orientation to transgress stylistic boundaries between atonality and free jazz. In the process, his music acquired an aesthetic and ideological foundation that challenged the ultra-modernists’ claim of autonomy based on their denial of the historical past. Along with his father and brother, who embraced unity through diversity of musical influences, Andriessen turned to heterogeneous and parodic aspects of Stravinsky’s and Ives’s music as a guiding principle for carving out his musical path and his syncretic approach to composition.

Notes 1. For an excellent recording of the unpublished Prospettive e Retrospettive, see Van Raat 2004. Van Raat attributes the structural characteristic of this piece to reside in the continual use of retrograde. 2. For the documentation that remains on the sketches for Séries, see Desmedt 1988: 96–101. 3. In an interview, Andriessen explained his modus operandi for re-ordering the series. In his years as a student, he would sit at the piano and determine the placement of pitches by cycling through a given interval; for instance, he would cycle through the major seventh in ascending order, C-B-B-A-A-G-F-F-EE-D-C, reversing the direction once one end of the piano was reached, then redistributing the register of the pitches to arrive at an ordering of the series. 4. Andriessen refrained from printing the text in the score because he conceived the vocal part primarily as part of the orchestral texture and timbre. 5. Timings are based on Donemus CV 54 (track 1). 6. Interview with Andriessen on 17 Dec. 2002. 7. In fact, the use of a syncopated motive in the woodwinds that begins Andriessen’s Nocturnen is closely modeled on the horn motive found in the beginning of Henze’s piece Nachtstück I.

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8. There are quite a few articles in which Andriessen offers commentaries on performances of works by Luciano Berio and Luigi Nono in De Volkskrant from 1963. See Andriessen 1963a, 1963b, and 1963c. 9. Interview with Andriessen on 17 Dec. 2002. Andriessen’s idiosyncratic usage of heterophony should be distinguished from its standard usage of the term, referring to the improvisational type of polyphony in which a given melody is played by more than two instruments in modified or elaborated rhythmic configurations. 10. Timings are based on Donemus CV 54 (track 2). 11. See track 3 from Van Raat’s recording of Andriessen’s solo piano works. 12. Andriessen found that Henri Pousseur’s application of mathematical system to set fragments of Faust texts using serial permutations in Votre Faust (1960) detracted from this principle. 13. For audio excerpts from Souvenirs d’enfance, listen to Van Raat’s CD2 (tracks 2–10). 14. Interview with Andriessen on 19 Dec. 2002. Berio decided to “outdo them all” by writing the colossal collage that comprises the third movement of Sinfonia. 15. Andriessen prides himself on having introduced Berio to the Swingle Singers, a French jazz group who became famous for their a cappella jazz arrangements of Baroque and Classical music. 16. Osmond-Smith illustrates the degree to which the main quotation of Mahler’s scherzo becomes distorted with respect to criteria of meter, melody, and harmonic stability in the course of the movement; see Osmond-Smith 1985: 45 (Ex. 18). 17. Timings are based on Donemus CV 54 (track 5).

3 Politics and “concept” works

The real politics of music are made apparent by the way in which it is produced. These forms of production (and we should allow ourselves at least one Marxist concept while we are crossing the cultural landscape), for a composer these production forms initially imply the actual musicians . . . Who are you composing for: who’s going to play, where’s it going to be played and for whom. If you ask yourself these questions and try to come up with some kind of answer then you’re already deeply immersed in the field of cultural politics. – Andriessen (1980: 100)

The year 1965 was marked by massive anti-Vietnam war protests in Washington, the Berkeley student-teach-in, race riots in Los Angeles, and Martin Luther King’s march for integration, among other social uprisings (Gitlin 1993). Events related to American imperialism triggered revolutionary student protests all across the globe from Tokyo to Berlin.1 Influenced by the American counterculture and its struggle for social equality, the postwar generation of Dutch youth waged its own battle against the conservative government and cultural authorities within Holland. Andriessen cut short his second year of compositional study with Berio in Berlin to return to Amsterdam in November of 1965, only to find himself in the midst of a socio-political revolution unfolding on an unprecedented scale. The 1970s signified a major turning point in his compositional career. Driven by Marxist and anarchist ideologies, Andriessen became preoccupied with pragmatic issues of musical production: for whom is the music written, who plays it, and for what purpose? This new consciousness led to his disavowal of the Darmstadt compositional aesthetics (serial and aleatoric methods) that had governed much of his musical orientation during the 1960s. Such political concerns manifested themselves in the works Andriessen composed circa 1971–79 in two phases. In the first phase, he wrote music specifically for political demonstrations. Volkslied (1971) and Dat gebeurt in Vietnam (“This is happening in Vietnam”) (1972) express collective solidarity through collaborative chanting, and instrumental works such as De Volharding (1972) and Workers Union (1975) convey a sense of perseverance and strife through repetition and “collective” unison. In the second phase, Andriessen incorporated literary texts as an “anti-model” in the spirit of Brecht and introduced them into his musical settings. Beginning with the

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political triptych, Il Duce (1973), Il Principe (1973–74), and De Staat (1973– 76), his music refers to the political and philosophical ideologies of writers such as Mussolini, Machiavelli, and Plato in order to comment on fascism or totalitarianism. The process frequently resulted in an open-ended musical form that resists formal and rhetorical closure. “Concept” works circa 1973–79 were, for that matter, conceived as performance art or happenings: listeners/participants respond to Andriessen’s paradoxical rendering of the text by reflecting on the incongruities or contradictions that emerge. The ingenuity of his approach therefore lies not in the references to past musical styles or literary texts themselves, but rather in the forms of commentary he creates. In doing so, he challenges the view that music is “supra-social,” that it transcends the social and historical contexts of its production. While Brecht’s theory and leftist political ideologies shaped the aesthetic positions advanced by Andriessen and his colleagues, their musical initiatives were disengaged from the political aims of the social revolution in conspicuous ways. Robert Adlington, for example, points out the contradiction between the explicit political venues in which they organized certain performances and their account that music itself remains apolitical. Hence he remarks: “a leftist radicalism regarding the conditions of performance was combined with an insistence that musical styles should not be held culpable for the social meanings that get attached to them” (2004a: 16). The contradiction also extends to the fact that many of the political concerts were subsidized by the government, funded partly by the “ruling class” that the Notenkrakers (“Nutcrackers”) mounted their protest against. Although alternative ensembles were formed to eradicate class boundaries and reach out to new audiences, many performances of Andriessen’s large-scale pieces, by the end of the 1970s, were reabsorbed into the traditional concert halls (e.g., the Concertgebouw) for the new middle-class consumers. What could account for such discrepancies in cause and effect? According to historian Geert Mak, the so-called “revolution” conflated the diverse initiatives of at least five groups (i.e., leftist political parties, democratic political parties, intellectuals, Marxists, the “flower-power”) and their aims were notoriously vague and diverse (1986: 80–81). In particular, Marxist ideology provided an ideal intellectual framework for the younger generation to turn itself against the older one. In retrospect, Mak views the collective strife for democracy in the 1970s as a political culture in transition, imbued with latent romanticism: Romanticism became apparent in the embracing of dogmatic [ideologies of] Marxism uttered by the younger generation in those years. Not Marxism as philosophy, as one of the newly discovered sources that enables one to bring about real social changes, but as a system of belief, as dogma. That set the

Po l i t i c s a n d “co n ce p t ” wo r k s

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stage after all for the fights and oppression, dramatic contradictions, possibilities for sacrifice and martyrdom, matters to which a decent, democratic country of prosperity [the Netherlands] never gave a chance before. It provided, in short, a framework in which the younger generation could carry on a spectacular and compelling life. It finally gave them a battle to fight of their own. (1986: 85)

Mak’s commentary leads me to argue that social revolution was used simply as a foil to launch a democratic restructuring of musical life in the Netherlands, to give legitimacy to all types of music (including their own) that had been unduly suppressed. For the artists and intellectuals, their democratic initiatives were cloaked under the guise of Marxist and anarchist ideologies, even if their aims were targeted at bringing about reforms in the system of governmental subsidy. Andriessen and his colleagues’ appropriation of particular techniques and idioms culled from Ives, Stravinsky, and minimalism may reflect a concern of an intellectual minority, but the radical changes in the musical infrastructure that resulted from their actions extended far beyond the promotion of contemporary music alone. The protest actions set the foundation for an unprecedented reform in governmental subsidies for the arts; by 1971, the five members of the Nutcrackers became founding members of the Movement for the Renewal of Musical Praxis (Beweging voor de Vernieuwing van de Muziekpraktijk or BEVEM), where seven committees were set up to study the concert system, musical training, government policy and the media (Koopmans 1976: 22). Thus, it would be more accurate to claim that their activism contributed to the restructuring of power within the hierarchy rather than to the overhaul of the political and social structure itself as implied by the term revolution. In light of this perspective, this chapter explores the political ideologies and aesthetic considerations that guided Andriessen by discussing the development of his musical language in three phases as follows: 1) collaborative opera and collage, 2) music for demonstration played by “democratic” ensembles, and 3) “concept” works. During this decade, Andriessen’s eclectic footing in both European modernism and American vernacular genres placed his music across stylistic and cultural boundaries. If such diverse influences constitute Wittgenstein’s “ladder”2 that Andriessen throws behind, just out of reach, on what ground does his music ultimately stand?

Collaborative opera and collage The Netherlands was dominated in the first half of the twentieth century by the conservative Christian parties Antirevolutionaire Partij (ARP), Christelijk

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Historische Unie (CHU), and Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP), which remained in power until the beginning of the 1960s (Righart 1995: 46). Increased social mobility and economic expansion after World War II led to greater secularization and a gradual erosion of the traditional religious and sociopolitical barriers that had previously divided the Catholics in the southern region from the Protestants in the north. Social-democratic movements after the war aimed at a structure of verzuiling (sectarianism), leading to institutionalized pluralism that allowed liberal subcultures to co-exist with Catholic and Protestant communities. Each community boasted its own political party, schools, choirs, youth clubs, and so forth (Kennedy 1995: 13). The year 1966 brought definitive changes in the formation of political parties: with the rise of liberal democratic parties, the conservative parties began to lose seats and split off into new factions. In particular, the Partij van de Arbeit (PVDA) acquired young, radical students and gained enormous popularity as the New Left. In addition, other liberal parties such as the Democraten ’66 (D’66), Politieke Partij Radikalen (PPR), Pacifistisch-Socialistische Partij (PSP), and Democratische-Socialisten ’70 (DS’70) emerged as advocates of nationwide reform (Kennedy 1995: 48). By this time, Amsterdam had become the cultural “hotbed” for communist and liberal activities, as students from all over Northern Holland flocked to the city to escape the provincialism of small towns.3 In May 1965, a protest movement called Provo (short for provocateurs) led by Roel van Duyn and others, emerged to provoke the klootjesvolk (“petty bourgeois”); critical of American involvement in Vietnam, Provo produced Happenings, the Witte Fietsen Plan (white bicycle plan), and other activities that promoted liberal causes (Kennedy 1995: 132). During 1965–66, this playful form of anarchism set the stage for what was to come. By 1969, a fullfledged cultural revolution had broken out in various social milieus: students launched massive demonstrations at the University of Amsterdam, a group of artists occupied the Rijksmuseum, and an experimental theater group called Aktie Tomaat (“Action Tomato”) rebelled against conservative theater programming by literally throwing tomatoes onto the stage during performances.4 The Nutcrackers, led by Peter Schat, Andriessen, and other composers, formed a musical counterpart to the rebellion against conservative programming. On all fronts, Marxist ideology was combined with more frivolous elements to rebel against cultural authorities (Kennedy 1995: 137).5 During this time, a distinctive kind of urban eclecticism characterized the artistic climate in Amsterdam. Kevin Whitehead coins the term the “New Dutch Swing” to refer to scenes where musicians came together to play


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collective improvisations in which they combined jazz, pop, classical and contemporary musical resources with regional accents (Whitehead 1999). Inspired by John Cage and La Monte Young, the Fluxus movement and Happenings flourished in the city as a way of taunting the bourgeoisie (épater le bourgeois).6 Andriessen and Misha Mengelberg, who were classically trained composers, engaged actively in collective improvisations that blended jazz, soul, rock and roll, minimalism, and contemporary musical idioms in search of a kind of Stravinsky-inspired musical language that would reinstate pulse, modality, and diatonicism as essential building blocks. Along with Stravinsky, Charles Ives was hailed as a revolutionary composer, whose principles of anarchism and non-conformity provided exactly the model the Dutch composers were looking for. Reinbert De Leeuw wrote an article called Muzikale anarchie (1967) in which he embraced the “lawlessness” in Ives’s music as a welcome relief from the dominant post-serial trend of the Darmstadt school; “the inclusion of all types of music made it possible for Ives to refer to a reality that exists outside music and to comment on the social conditions in which his music came into existence” (Peters 1994: 615–16). In 1968, Andriessen and the writer J. Bernlef founded the Charles Ives Society in Amsterdam and organized the first Ives Centennial Festival-Conference in 1974. To Andriessen, “the growing importance of Ives’s music in Holland had directly to do with the democratic movement there” (Peters 1994: 616). Little did it matter to Andriessen and his colleagues that the American composer was a conservative and middle-class loyalist to the capitalist system of his day. In the first phase of his political activism, Andriessen vigorously incorporated collage technique into his music as a form of social commentary after Ives. The first of the overtly political contexts in which Andriessen and his colleagues launched a concert of new music was the Politiek-demonstratief experimenteel (PDE) concert that took place in the Carré theater on May 30, 1968. The concert was sponsored by the Dutch government, the city of Amsterdam, and VPRO radio, and was scheduled for performances in three other Dutch cities following the Amsterdam première. The initial concert was launched in the Carré theater (a former circus venue), where demonstrators displayed photos of Castro and Ho Chi Minh as revolutionary heroes. Under the guidance of Konrad Boehmer, they published a booklet that contained socialist slogans from Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Che Guevara, Adorno, and Marx and featured performances of Andriessen’s Contra Tempus, Misha Mengelberg’s Hello Windyboys, and Peter Schat’s On Escalation.7 A week prior to this event the major revolts of May 1968 had occurred in Paris, and the Dutch authorities took precautions to prevent a similar occurrence in Amsterdam by surrounding the venue with over 200 police officers (Peters 1994: 611).

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Fearing that anti-riot squads would occupy the space, the demonstrators continually disrupted the performance led by Edo de Waart. The composers were later reproached by other demonstrators for not being revolutionary enough, because with the exception of Schat’s piece that alluded to Che Guevara, the music remained mostly disconnected from the purpose of the mass demonstration.8 Such a view was reciprocated in several reviews of the concert, which pointed out that “serious” music has, after all, no bearing on the political issues under discussion and doubted whether the experiment yielded anything of significance.9 The true repercussions of the PDE concert were yet to come. Following this controversial event, Andriessen received a commission from the Netherlands Opera Foundation to write a collective opera entitled Reconstructie in collaboration with four other composers – Jan van Vlijmen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Misha Mengelberg, Peter Schat – and two writers, Harry Mulisch and Hugo Claus (Trochimczyk 2002: 13).10 A month prior to the première, letters poured into the newspaper De Telegraaf from concerned citizens who questioned whether taxpayers’ money should be used to produce an opera that explicitly promoted anti-imperialist and anti-American sentiments (Peters 1994: 613). Notwithstanding the growing public controversy, the group received the staunch support of the Minister of Cultural Affairs, Marga Klompé, and the opera was staged during the Holland Festival on June 29, 1969, along with the Amsterdam première of Berio’s Sinfonia (1969). Due to the heightened publicity, the Carré theater was flooded with people who literally “crawled on the floor” to enter the site of the performance. The collaborative opera features Che Guevara, the Bolivian revolutionary leader who died in 1967, in a narrative of Latin American struggle against U. S. imperialism. The composers called the opera a tale of morality, reconstructing the death of Che Guevara as a Mozartian operetta by juxtaposing characters such as Don Juan, his servant Erasmus, and Martin Bormann with invented ones such as the members of the American Total Corporation and their wives. All five composers worked together to compose and arrange musical fragments that included, in the spirit of Ives, symphonic “frescoes,” Mozartian quotations, pop music, and atonal idioms of the Darmstadt school. The production included an eleven-meter statue of Che Guevara and comprised singers (jazz and popular), choruses, woodwind, brass, strings, electric guitars and keyboards, harpsichord, electric organ, and electronics (Vermeulen 1992: 14–17).11 Attracted by the idea of a formal structure, the group decided to arrange the twenty-six sections of the opera alphabetically by topic: A is for America, B is for Bolivia, C is for Culture, D is for Devotion, E is for Eating, F is for Fantasy, G is for God, H is for Hate, and so forth. Each section presents


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Ex. 3.1: “H is for Hate” from Reconstructie [annotation added by author]

a musical pastiche, freely combining sources from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, commercial jingles, Protestant chorales, American patriotic music, avantgarde music, etc., for a satirical portrayal of American imperialism. In “H is for Hate,” for instance, the merciless and exploitative character of Jack who runs the American Total Company is amplified through a pastiche of quotations – Yankee Doodle, Dixie, Battle Hymn of the Republic, and the Star-spangled Banner – as shown in Ex. 3.1. As the jumbled fragments of these patriotic songs culminate in the concluding phrase of the Star-spangled Banner, Jack declares that “The attack has begun.” In “G is for God,” electronically-produced sounds of bombardment ironically fill the stage. In “N is for Neighborly Love” (a pun on a song called “Motherly Love”), the actors sing in the style of Frank Zappa and his group Mothers of Invention, accompanied by “Darmstadt” sounds that percolate from seven keyboards. In a collage-like synthesis of textual and musical materials highly reminiscent of the third movement of Berio’s Sinfonia, this operetta expressed its anti-war sentiments through musical and theatrical pastiche elevated to the highest level of exaggeration, distortion, and absurdism. Because of the overtly anti-American sentiment of the work, the newly-elected President Richard Nixon canceled a planned visit to the Netherlands, which was scheduled as part of his European tour (Vermeulen 1992: 14–15). The group’s mission was completed when the net proceeds from the LP for Reconstructie were donated to the Committee for Solidarity with Cuba. In spite of the composers’ attempt to rid music of “class

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associations” by bringing together an opera choir and children’s choir with jazz, pop, and classical musicians under one roof, the production of Reconstructie only reinforced the gap that existed between them. Whitehead notes Mengelberg’s and Andriessen’s disappointment over the failure to achieve the inclusive goals the group set out to accomplish (1997: 71). In the following year, Andriessen received a commission to write for a radio symphony orchestra and came up with a rather “kitschy” and entertaining parody called the Nine Symphonies of Beethoven (1970); in addition to splicing fragments of Beethoven’s music together, he interpolates pop music segments with the sound of an ice cream vendor’s bells articulating the transitions. The piece culminates in an arrangement of the “Ode to Joy” for a combination of orchestral and pop musicians, and the intrusion of atonal fragments abruptly ends the piece. When the piece received a standing ovation in the Concertgebouw hall, Andriessen was particularly unnerved by the self-satisfied response of the director of the radio symphony orchestra who commissioned the work. Such experiences led him to disavow writing music for a conventional symphony orchestra for good.12

Embodiment of solidarity: agitated chant, “collective” unison, and minimalism Following the upheaval of Reconstructie, Andriessen and his colleagues instituted new changes in the forms of musical production by establishing “democratic” ensembles and choosing alternative performance venues. Although theater works with political themes by Berio and Henze from the 1960s provided initial models, Andriessen and his colleagues dismissed them as liberal and bourgeois. Instead, through his own involvement with protest groups during the 1970s Andriessen came to embrace his own musical poetics of politics, that is, the particular styles by which his political ideology came to be expressed in his music.13 To this end, he empowered musicians to make choices in performances, incorporated gestures to create a sense of collective solidarity, and tried to eliminate the boundary between “low” and “high” art by dividing instruments into collective, egalitarian musical forces. The formation of democratic ensembles played a critical role in realizing Andriessen’s political ideology centered on collective solidarity. With Willem Breuker, he founded the Orkest de Volharding in 1971 and composed music for them to perform at demonstrations and open-air festivals. De Volharding, literally meaning “perseverance,” consisted of woodwind and brass players experienced in playing both jazz and classical music (Whitehead 1997: 4–7). The group’s resistance to authority led it to discard


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the function of a conductor and make all decisions collectively in the context of performance. The première of the eponymous piece De Volharding (1972) took place at the Young People for Vietnam demonstration in Amsterdam Woods on 30 April, 1972.14 The score is laid out with musical segments in blocks, and every transition required a collective decision reached through negotiation within the group as a whole.15 The idea of perseverance is made palpable in live performances that demand the highest levels of physical and mental concentration with little break. In the early stages, Andriessen made a significant contribution to enhancing De Volharding’s repertory by composing over ten works himself – notably On Jimmy Yancey (1973)16 – and arranging other works specifically for the group, including Stravinsky’s Tango (1940), Eisler’s Solidariteitslied (1931), Riley’s In C (1964), and Milhaud’s La Création du monde (1922). The central idea was to bring to the public the kind of music that combines styles drawn from different social classes (Koopmans 1976: 38). This alternative ensemble brought music to the people in factories, school assemblies, neighborhood centers, and political rallies. The group participated in all types of public demonstrations under the guise of protest music (strijdmuziek) and traveled all over different provinces within the Netherlands to provide music for labor and trade union gatherings. Each program carried a specific theme; for instance, for the numerous antiVietnam protests, the group performed Misha Mengelberg’s arrangement of a hymn of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam called Bevrijdt het Zuiden (“Liberate the South”), Vietnamlied (“Song of Vietnam”) by Gilius van Bergijk, and Dat gebeurt in Vietnam by Andriessen. In 1973, Lidy van Marissing wrote a feature article on Andriessen’s political involvement with De Volharding. The cover photo for this article is shown in Fig. 3.2. Andriessen expresses his intention to bring new music to new audiences in order to engage the listeners to “criticize and develop existing musical taste” in non-traditional venues, free of commercial endorsements (Van Marissing). In building a new repertory, he emphasizes the need to bring the “refined” European art music and “hard” American folk music together in his attempt to eradicate differences in musical taste among social classes.17 As part of their effort to promote new choral repertoire, De Volharding organized various events to bring amateur choruses and ensembles to participate in making music together; for instance, an annual festival called the Music Day (Muziekdag) in Utrecht was started in 1978 to bring together more than ten ensembles for a joint concert (Koopmans 1976: 68). In addition to domestic activities, the group participated in political demonstrations in Frankfurt, Belgium, London, and Chile. As the end of the decade

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Fig. 3.2: cover photo for “Andriessen [goes] on the road with the ‘red’ [leftist] orchestra” [De Volkskrant, September 18, 1973]

approached, four members had departed from the initial group and it had become increasingly difficult for them to fulfill their dual function of participating in political demonstrations and performing regular concerts. In spite of the changes in membership over the next three decades, De Volharding has persisted as a “self-standing” (eigenwijse) ensemble by maintaining their specific modes of production, selection of repertory and performance venues, and by selectively commissioning new works from Dutch composers. Andriessen’s collaboration with De Volharding in the initial years proved to be indispensable in developing a signature blend of sound that reflected his new “democratic” ideology. Following Peter Schat, who introduced amplified guitars in combination with other acoustic and electronic instruments in Thema (1970) and To You (1970–72), Andriessen began incorporating electronic keyboards and/or bass guitar as a marker of social equality. Although music for woodwind and brass bands was deemed ideal for the working class, he often left the instrumentation open-ended to encourage inclusive participation, e.g., Workers Union, written for “any loud-sounding group of instruments.” Because of the ubiquitous presence of the bass and electric guitars, acoustic instruments were often amplified to adjust the overall balance of timbres, especially in pieces like Hoketus, that calls for two groups to play hockets for up to forty-five minutes. Beginning with this piece, one can observe a particular tendency toward doubling instruments within an antiphonal


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Ex. 3.3a: Dat gebeurt in Vietnam (opening)

Translation “To be trampled and to fight against hunger, sickness, poverty, ...”

arrangement to create a complex blend of timbres. To strategically mark a difference from the performance convention of the symphony orchestra, Andriessen insisted that classically trained musicians adopt jazz articulations in the style of Count Basie and Stan Kenton in performing works such as De Staat (2002a: 145; 2002b: 149).18 In the early stages, Andriessen drew inspiration from Brecht’s Lehrstücke (“learning plays”) by composing theater works for the Amsterdam Theater School beginning with his 1972 adaptation of Eisler’s musical setting of Die Massnahme (1930). It is in this theatrical context that he began to incorporate a style of choral recitation based on “agitated” speech (Andriessen 1975).19 In an article entitled “Komponeren voor De Maatregel,” Andriessen describes Eisler’s technique in detail and specifies, for his purpose, that the manner of singing should be syllabic, unsentimental, and – unlike Eisler’s specification of dynamic changes – consistently loud (1975: 432). This style of chanting subsequently appears in the protest song Dat gebeurt in Vietnam; the original choral version, with text by Paul Binnerts, was sung by a chorus consisting of students at the Amsterdam Theater School. Andriessen insisted on the intelligibility of the text and the setting of text to be “agitated” in character (Koopmans 1976: 46). As shown in Ex. 3.3a, the speech-inflected rhythm allows for a straightforward and incisive enunciation of the text, syncopated against the stomping bass in the accompaniment modeled on Eisler’s Solidariteitslied (“Song of Solidarity”). Soon after the première, an instrumental version was arranged for De Volharding. Subsequent to its use in actual demonstrations, Andriessen continued to develop the agitated form of chanting in “concept” works intended for concert music performance. In Il Principe, the first of the triptych of works in which Andriessen forms a dialectical commentary on the text by Machiavelli, the chanting is harmonized in a four-part declamatory setting, with the upper two voices moving in parallel or contrary motion within an intervallic distance of a second or third, as shown in Ex. 3.3b.

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Ex. 3.3b: opening of Il Principe (reduction, mm. 3–9)

Moving at a swift pulse of 112 crotchets per minute, the rhythm seems not to lend clarity to the enunciation of the text. Andriessen insists, however, that the quick rhythmic pace is in keeping with the Italian enunciation and that an Italian-speaking audience would have no difficulty understanding the text.20 He would argue, furthermore, that the meaning of the text, regardless of its aural comprehensibility, is left for the audience to contemplate later. The rhetoric of solidarity is conveyed through the raw rhythmic energy in the declamatory form of chanting itself. The offbeat accents in the tuba, piano, and bass guitar provide a rebellious rhythmic counterpoint to the chanting that further energizes the collective texture. In the next stage of development, Andriessen introduces instrumental texture of “collective” unison – first explored in Volkslied in which the national anthem is gradually transformed into an international workers’ song – as a metaphor for socialist labor movements. In the instruction to the score for Workers Union, he comments that “only in the case that every player plays with such an intention that his part is an essential one, the work succeeds, as in a political work.”21 The score designates that it can be played by any combination of instruments: “symfonic [sic] movement for any loud sounding group of instruments.” The opening rhythmic pattern is shown in Ex. 3.3c. Although the rhythmic patterns and relative registers are written out, the choice of pitch remains open (with the instruction “not to play conventional figures or scales”). In the course of the piece, the rhythmic pattern separates into two strata for a few measures, only to converge again into a texture of rhythmic unison; this process captures the sense of individuals drifting apart and then coming back together with a renewed sense of collective


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Ex. 3.3c: opening of Workers Union (1975)

Ex. 3.3d: section F of De Staat (reh. 37, piano parts only)

Pno 1

Pno 2

solidarity. While the choice of pitch and register remains indeterminate, Andriessen provides specific chords for the ensemble to use at the close of the piece. What is captivating about the work is the unpredictable manner by which Andriessen transforms the contexts where rhythmic cells are articulated through unexpected shifts in texture and register. In the climactic moment (about two-thirds of the way into the piece), Andriessen parodies the rhythm of the Dutch national hymn for two bars, only to return to a sequence of ascending rhythmic patterns that ends with accents at the high end. The relentless form of rhythmic repetition is continually offset by the changes in melodic contour, rhythmic disposition, and cross-accents; this opposition alludes to the workers’ rebellion against dehumanized labor conditions (characterized by mechanical repetition) in the post-industrial age. In performance, Andriessen emphasizes the importance of resisting the inclination to assimilate with neighboring musicians in the choice of pitch and melodic contour. The ultimate challenge thus lies in maintaining one’s individuality within the collective. Arguably the most powerful form of “collective” unison appears in the static section of De Staat where all instruments participate in prolonging the hexachord B-C-C-E-F-G, as shown in the reduction given in Ex. 3.3d. Each repetition of this gesture is, however, unique in the way it cycles through the pitches, and is accompanied by an undulating dynamic arch that crescendos

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to triple forte and diminuendos back to forte. The seemingly incessant repetition of this motive played collectively at the loudest dynamic intensity maximizes the level of tension experienced by the listener. Andriessen envisioned the effect of this passage as “a huge wall that virtually collapses in front of the listener” (Trochimczyk 2002: 103). In my experience of hearing De Staat live, this passage represents the symbolic moment in which Andriessen transcends the influences of Stravinsky and minimalist precursors to create a powerful gesture of rebellion: the rising succession of chords cycles through the same notes over and over as if to simulate the act of shouting a slogan repeatedly in a political demonstration. A sporadic insertion of a crotchet rest provides breathing space in this instrumental rendition of the agitated chanting. The third way in which the idea of collective strife was embodied in sound was through the appropriation and radical transformation of American minimalism. Early works such as De Volharding demonstrate an attempt to incorporate the process-oriented minimalism that attained popularity in Amsterdam, modeled on such works as Steve Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Terry Riley’s In C (Trochimczyk 2002: 92–93). The solo piano part, played by Andriessen, opens the piece with a seemingly endless repetition of two pitches, E and F, a semitone apart. Repetition of various ostinati, one hundred per gesture on average, changes gradually through addition and subtraction of rhythmic elements in the opening section of this piece. At reh. A, the trumpets and saxophones enter, playing similar semiquaver rhythmic gestures (two hundred repetitions on average) in a given block overlaid on top of the piano part. The next textural shift occurs at reh. B, where trumpets, saxophones, and trombones play the given rhythmic gestures in unison over approximately one hundred repetitions. In this way, the texture abruptly shifts from one block to the next, where each block contains seemingly endless repetitions of rhythmic patterns – consisting of anywhere between two and ten notes. Some written-out phase-shifting of rhythmic patterns, an obvious allusion to Reich, occurs at reh. C, where the three saxophones cycle through a five-note diatonic scale segment offset by the distance of one quaver (Ex. 3.4a). The textural density builds toward the end of the piece as all instruments engage in “collective” unison, first at the unison interval (reh. L, 18’50”), then at the fifth (reh. O, 21’39”).22 Due to the predominant use of the diatonic scale, the overall effect of the music is celebratory rather than rebellious. In the live recording at the “Inclusive Concert” in 1972, one can hear the audience cheering the performers as if they were participating in an improvisatory jam session.23 The Symphonies of the Netherlands (1974) – a piece for wind ensemble which Andriessen half-jokingly refers to


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Ex. 3.4a: phase-shifting device in De Volharding (reh. C, 8’58”)

as De Staat for the “working-class” (Adlington 2004a: 133) – features techniques of diatonic planning and phasing devices similar to De Volharding. The real turning point in Andriessen’s adoption of minimalism came with the formation of the ensemble Hoketus in 1976; it is in this context that he radically departs from the existing minimalist models. He found an ideal group of composers and musicians at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague to write music as both an exploration and a criticism of American minimalism (Hiu 1993: 75).24 The ensemble consisted of musicians in their early twenties with a strong popular music background, namely, Huib Emmer, Paul Koek, Gerard Bouwhuis, Cees van Zeeland, and others. In composing the eponymous piece Hoketus (1976), Andriessen commented on his aesthetic and stylistic departure from the American school as follows: What makes the piece Hoketus differ from most minimal art compositions is that the harmonic material is not diatonic but chromatic, and that it radically abandons the tonal continuous sound-masses characteristic of most minimal art, with the inclusion of all accompanying cosmic nonsense. (Whitehead 1999: 81)

Hoketus registers an important historical attribution to the medieval practice of hocket, characterized by a rapid alternation of two voices to form a composite melody. Equally important are the inclusion of pan-pipes in the ensemble and the allusion to hocketing techniques found in South American folk music. The piece is written for two groups of five amplified instruments (pan flute, piano/electric piano, bass guitar, congas, and alto saxophone) that are placed as far apart as possible on stage. The score is organized into five sections, differentiated by chords and accompanying rhythmic patterns. Example 3.4b shows the succession of dissonant clusters from which the instrumentalists choose the pitch material (the circled notes at the top register assigned to pan-pipes). Note how in sections A and D both groups choose

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Ex. 3.4b: chordal changes within Hoketus

Ex. 3.4c: opening rhythmic pattern from Hoketus (sec. C)

3

3

4

3

5

3

6 (2+2+2)

3

[circled notes are added by author]

the pitch materials freely from the chord complex, while in sections B and C each group chooses from separate chord complexes, thus accentuating the hocketing process in which two chords oscillate back and forth. Moreover, there is a quasi-systematic manner by which the composite rhythmic pattern of the hockets changes in relationship to the written meter.25 For instance, as shown in Ex. 3.4c, the opening of Section C generates additive rhythmic groupings that cut across the grouping of beats implied by the written meter. As demonstrated by the circled notes, the rhythm becomes longer and increasingly complex through the addition of a new quaver from one unit to the next. Compounded by several other variables, such as the changing timbre of the composite chords (players are free to move around in pitch within the specified chord), irregular placement of accents, and addition and subtraction of rests, Hoketus generates a dynamic rhythmic experience that keeps listeners in a continuous state of suspense. Performing Hoketus is all about endurance and the collective effort it takes to keep each and every rhythmic attack absolutely even. In the concluding section, the two groups join together to play a jazz-influenced “riff” in rhythmic unison while continuing with the hocketing device. As shown in Ex. 3.4d, the irregular accents superimposed over the shifting meters and pitch patterns cut across the written meter to create rhythmic groupings that expand (EXT) and contract (TRC) by a given number of beats. Groups 1 and 2 reverse (REV) the ordering of notes or exchange patterns (FLIP)


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Ex. 3.4d: concluding section of Hoketus (sec. E, reduction with annotation)

within a given segment. The cumulative effect of this closing section is quite enthralling: the angular changes in pitch combined with the unpredictable changes in rhythmic groupings and hocketing pattern further intensify the playful competition between the two instrumental groups. Hoketus is one of the many works written for the ensemble that came to define the “hard-edged” aesthetics of The Hague school of composers in the late 1970s. Diderik Wagenaar’s Tam Tam (1978) and Cornelius de Bondt’s Bint (1980) are two other notable pieces in the minimalist vein written for this specific ensemble. Tam Tam expands the antiphonal dialogue between the two groups through layering rhythmic patterns based on 2 and 3 in different combinations and density, while Bint experiments with gradually contracting polyrhythmic cycles and sparsely-textured hockets in C minor. Despite the differences in application, both works are guided by the integrity

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of rhythmic processes, as articulated by Steve Reich in his early writings on minimalism (Reich 1974: 9). David Wright comments that Andriessen’s Hoketus refurbished the “American” repetitive idiom with the “European” concern for an internal musical opposition that contains the seed for a potential synthesis (Wright 1993: 8). It is, indeed, important to stress that Andriessen and The Hague school of composers adopted minimalist procedures with a goal fundamentally different from those of their American counterparts during the same period. At the symbolic level, the references for repetition are always grounded in the Marxist ideals of individual struggle, collective solidarity, and dialectical form of critique. In these respects, the mission of Hoketus follows in the footsteps of Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra and Frederic Rzewski’s Musica Elettronica Viva from the late 1960s. At the syntactic level, Andriessen’s rhythmic techniques derive from Stravinsky’s early works based on folk music (e.g., Les Noces (1917), L’Histoire du soldat (1918)) rather than on those of the American minimalists, particularly with regard to the rhythmic ambivalence generated by the imposition of crossaccents and other rhythmic variables that actively collide with the written meter. The first phase of Andriessen’s “political” works can thus be characterized by the change in modes of production as well as the iconic level at which the ideas of rebellion and collective strife become reenacted in his musical gestures. Specialized ensembles comprising musicians versed in classical and jazz or popular music enabled Andriessen to communicate the ethos of solidarity through the adaptation of Eisler’s agitated style of chanting, “collective” unison, and minimalist idioms pushed to the limit through the infusion of hockets, dissonances, and complex meters. The minimal gestures in Andriessen’s music attained concrete ideological correspondents (e.g., collective solidarity, eradication of class associations in music) and in this pragmatic sense alone signaled a departure from the aesthetics of American minimalists such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass.26 This position is reflected in Misha Mengelberg’s comment: “Louis Andriessen isn’t interested in writing music for the people who go to art galleries, whose world is that of modern art” (Koopmans 1976: 35).

“Concept” works: dialectical commentary on text De Staat, Il Duce, and Il Principe together form a triptych of musical compositions dealing with politics. They are all settings of texts which are politically controversial, to say the least, if not downright negative. The idea comes from Bertolt Brecht, whose plays feature figures from whom you can


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learn how not to conduct yourself and why it is that at certain moments people’s political or social actions are bad. He terms this an “a-social model.” (Andriessen 1977: 43)

In the second phase of Andriessen’s experimentation, Il Duce, Il Principe, De Staat, and Mausoleum demonstrate his evolving techniques for using music and text as a combined force to comment on a socio-political theme. As he comments in the quote above, the influence of Brecht can be traced in Andriessen’s deployment of literary texts as an “anti-model”; in each of the three works, music is used in various ways to challenge and open up the dialectical realm of signification posed by the borrowed text. Mirroring the theatrical strategies found in Brechtian epic theater, these “concept” works employ music as a medium to expose the inherent contradictions within the text; as Andriessen himself says, “my efforts are concentrated on providing a musical and rhetorical commentary on the highly disputable views contained in the text” (Andriessen 1977: 43). The performance invites the audience members to abandon their preconceptions about art and critically examine the subject of inquiry – in this context the pros and cons of totalitarianism – in relation to their own position(s) in society. Distancing techniques in Brechtian theater can be equated in musical terms with block juxtaposition, montage, disjointed use of the sung text as narration, and other formal discontinuities. As the ensuing analysis of “concept” works will demonstrate, Andriessen’s musical commentary derives not from Hegel’s concept of dialectics that seeks resolution to a conflict at the stage of synthesis, but rather from Marx’s ideology in which the opposing forces of the conflict are transformed into an aspect of a new contradiction (Lunn 1982: 118). In the first of these political works, Andriessen wrestles with Machiavelli’s highly disputable message in Il Principe (1516) – the need to destroy a city in order to control it, or that freedom needs to be destroyed – as a fundamental philosophical point of contention in his musical setting. To this end, he took excerpts from Gesualdo’s book of madrigals (1613) to provide a musical and textual counterpoint to Machiavelli’s purported views. The piece opens with Machiavelli’s text sung by the first chorus in a declamatory style, as shown earlier in Ex. 3.3b. The woodwinds double the pitches of the voices that outline the trichord {C, F, F}, while the tuba, piano, and bass guitar punctuate the march-like recitation with the recurring dyad of C and F. This agitated form of chanting establishes one end of the topical and expressive opposition explored in the piece. The introduction of Gesualdo’s motet creates a sudden rupture from the presiding texture of declamatory recitation of Machiavelli’s text. In its

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Ex. 3.5: transition to Gesualdo’s motet in Il Principe (reh. 8, 1’40”)

first appearance, the second chorus enters on the words, “Ahi, che si picciol pianto,” as shown in Ex. 3.5.27 The entry into Gesualdo’s music is set up by the beginning pitch, G, that overlaps with A of the chorus I. Gesualdo’s triadic music, characterized by its distinctive chromatic inflections in tempus perfectum cum prolatione perfecta, presents an other-worldly aura in contrast to the earthly strife represented by Machiavelli’s text. It is unclear whether the featured text in Gesualdo’s motet, “pianto” (sorrow), is intended as a commentary on Machiavelli’s words that precede it. The stylistic incongruity thus accentuates the disparity between the two texts. The juxtaposition of independent musical layers in Il Principe recalls the textural strategy adopted by Ives in The Unanswered Question (1908; revised 1930–35). In Ives’s work, the atonal motive played by the trumpet and woodwinds is set into relief by the pristine diatonicism of the chorale performed by a string orchestra. Ives’s work alludes to an opposition between cosmological unity (tonality) and earthly strife (atonality) where the trumpet motive poses the same question over and over without coming to a resolution. Andriessen’s setting of Il Principe simulates the rhetorical effect found in Ives’s work, yet with a marked difference in the way the texts are related. In


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its subsequent entries, Gesualdo’s motet begins to overlap with the setting of Machiavelli’s text as if to set the two narrative voices in dialogue with one another; for example, the Gesualdo quotation of “Moro” (I die, fatigued) immediately follows Machiavelli’s text, which describes the conqueror’s need to destroy freedom in order to rule (reh. 14, 3’52”) and the sustained vocal entries on “cruel thoughts” linger above the increasingly agitated text by Machiavelli (reh. 24, 6’17”). The dramatic apex is reached when the final quotation from Gesualdo on the text “resta di darmi noia” (“it no longer troubles me”) is sung by the first chorus (reh. 29, 7’37”) and segues into the final verses by Machiavelli – “Li uomini sempre ti riusciranno tristi, se da una necessità non sono fatti buoni” (“Men will always do badly by you unless they are forced to be good”), delivered in “collective” unison by both choruses. The rhythm dissolves into a relentless succession of quavers struck molto pesante and at a dynamic level of triple forte. In this final passage, Gesualdo’s narrative voice of lament might be interpreted as Machiavelli’s internalized voice and the merging of the two choruses at the end as the suppression of the voice of the “alter ego” by Machiavelli’s outward resolution to rule. The merging of the two musical strands at the close of the piece forges a link between the otherwise incongruous juxtaposition of the texts. Despite the resemblance in the formal strategies between Il Principe and Ives’s The Unanswered Question, the forced closure in the former delivers a rhetorical message that differs from its model, suggesting the inevitable suppression of an individual voice for the good of the collective. The second work of the triptych, Il Duce (1973), opens with a tape loop of the famous speech given by Mussolini in Turin in 1935, celebrating the solidarity of Italy under fascist rule. Taking the last sentence of Mussolini’s speech, “Questa manifestazione vuole significare che l’identità fra l’Italia e il fascismo è perfetta, assoluta e inalterabile” (“This assembly signifies that the identity of Italy with fascism is perfect, absolute and immutable”), Andriessen progressively destroys the dictator’s voice by adding feedback of the loop onto itself (1976). In the gradual deformation of Mussolini’s speech, the rhythmic cadence of the last three words is isolated and repeated over and over again. The dual effect of this deformation for the listener is of a hypnotic experience on the one hand, and a sense of entrapment on the other. At the very end, there is a brief quotation from the opening of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. This juxtaposition embodies another form of paradox: Andriessen introduces a text by Nietzsche, an artist whose work was exploited by fascism, with the music of Strauss, who promoted fascism by serving as the president of the Reichsmusikkammer in 1933. The conflicting intertextual references are hardly arbitrary; Il Duce was conceived as a critique of Mussolini’s deployment and exploitation of fascism.

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This strategy of creating a polemical commentary on a text culminates in De Staat, which was composed over a four-year period (1972–76). Andriessen’s scoring embraces what he envisions as the fundamental tenet of Marxist ideology: solidarity and equal participation by all instruments. Instruments are divided into collective units, no longer showcased individually for virtuosic display. There are extensive passages that require all thirtyone players to perform in a prolonged state of “collective” unison, a physically taxing act to coordinate over the span of approximately forty minutes. Two groups of oboes, violas, harp, guitar, piano, trumpets, horns, and trombones are disposed symmetrically across the stage, with bass guitar and four female vocalists at the center back. In his lecture on De Staat, Andriessen explains how the disorderly state caused by different factions of instruments that play “a fast quasi-canon” leads to a restoration of order through homophony and collective unison (Trochimczyk 2002: 132). In the preface to the score, he explains his motivation for writing De Staat as follows: I wrote De Staat as a contribution to the debate about the relation of music to politics. Many composers view the act of composing as, somehow, above social conditioning. I contest that. How you arrange your musical material, the techniques you use and the instruments you score for, are largely determined by your own social circumstances and listening experience, and the availability of financial support. I do agree, though, that abstract musical material – pitch, duration, and rhythm – are beyond social conditioning: it is found in nature. However, the moment the musical material is ordered it becomes culture [sic] and hence a social entity. I have used passages from Plato to illustrate these points. His text is politically controversial, if not downright negative: everyone can see the absurdity of Plato’s statement that the mixolydian mode should be banned as it would have a damaging influence on the development of character. My second reason for writing De Staat is a direct contradiction of the first: I deplore the fact that Plato was wrong. If only it were true that musical innovation could change the laws of the State. (Andriessen 1994)

Plato’s ethical stance on music presented to Andriessen an ideal text upon which to build a dialectical response. While remarking on the absurdity of ascribing moral characteristics to particular aspects of music, he finds the premise guiding Plato’s argument (the empowering effect of music) highly desirable; every musical act is a result of social conditioning. Initially, Plato’s text echoes the voice of traditional Dutch musical establishment in Andriessen’s discourse, representing a form of dictatorship that needs to be resisted and overthrown. Yet in concluding, he laments that Plato is wrong


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in his fundamental assumption that musical innovations can change the law of the State. A more persistent paradox emerges when considering the fact that Plato wrote Politeia (“Republic”) as a response to Athens’s failed democracy following the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). Plato’s disillusionment with politics reached its height after Athens’s restored democracy put Socrates to death in 399 BC for promoting individualism and corrupting young people’s minds. In Politeia, Plato envisioned a utopian society where unity and stability in the community would be instituted through a benevolent, enlightened dictatorship of philosophers; this ideal state would be divided into three classes – of workers, auxiliaries, and philosophers – and the unity of the state would depend on maintaining these class divisions (Waterfield 1993: xxvii). State-centered values that emphasized uniformity of thought through social conditioning would subsume individual rights. Innovation in the arts and educational curriculum would be prohibited because it would pose a threat to unity within the imagined community. Intrigued by Plato’s prescription against certain types of music, Andriessen selected certain verses from the chapters on education of the male guardians in the Republic and distributed them into three vocal entries that demarcate the architectural pillars of De Staat. First, in the chapter on “Primary Education for the Guardians,” Plato suggests rhythm and harmony should remain the same in character so as not to detract one’s attention from the text. If it be given a musical mode and rhythm in accord with diction, it may be performed correctly in almost the same mode throughout; that is, since character is so uniform, in one musical mode, and also in a similarly unchanging rhythm?” “Yes,” he said, “that is certainly the case.” [III 397 b7–c2]

In the second set of verses, Plato speaks of regulating the usage of music to incite appropriate moral behavior. He censors the use of modes by attributing moral characteristics: mixed-Lydian and Hypolydian modes are deemed plaintive while Ionian and Lydian modes are soft and convivial and, therefore, to be banned; Dorian and Phrygian modes are the only ones he deems appropriate for warriors. He further prohibits general innovation by banning instruments that can produce complex harmonies and sudden modulations. Harps, dulcimers, and flutes are banned while the zither, lyre and pipes are allowed.

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Lastly, the third verse comes from the chapter on “The Guardians’ Life and Duties,” in which Plato prohibits any kind of innovation in music: He must beware of changing to a new kind of music, for the change always involves far-reaching danger. Any alteration in the modes of music is always followed by alteration in the most fundamental laws of the state. [IV 424 c3–6]

Why did Plato view innovation as a threat to the unity of philosophers? Plato’s claim rests on his conviction that exposure to the “wrong” kind of music could arouse irrational and instinctive behavior. He saw it as his mission to suppress the “passionate” realm of the mind in order to cultivate the rational. Yet there are traces of ambivalence in Plato’s words as he acknowledges certain desires and pleasures as necessary for survival. For Andriessen, it was the mysterious power Plato bestows on music and its capacity to transform human behavior that opened up the realm for a dialectical commentary. Aside from the obvious irony in assigning four female vocalists to sing the text, Andriessen’s contradictory response to Plato’s text becomes more and more pronounced in the progression of De Staat. A quick tour through the three “pillars” that comprise the vocal setting of Plato’s text demonstrates this point. The first vocal entry (reh. 5–8) in the musical setting is characterized by a uniformity of mode and rhythm. Following the antiphonal juxtaposition of the “misguided” unison in the woodwind in the high register and the dissonant chromatic dyads and jagged rhythms in the low register of the trombones, the texture suddenly broadens to include pianos and harps. This is also where the meter stabilizes (4/4) for the first time. As shown in Ex. 3.6a, the rhythmic pattern maintains a regular subdivision of quavers while the voice enunciates the text in a steady pulse of minims, accompanied by woodwind, piano, guitar, and harp and doubled by viola harmonics. The rhythm of the vocal part (crotchet) and the accompanying instruments (semiquaver) are related by a 4:1 ratio, as if it follows the colotomic structure of Javanese gamelan music at the second level of temporal expansion (irama).28 The pitch material of the entire section derives from the tetrachord [D, E, G, A] to maintain uniformity in conforming to Plato’s dictum. Approaching the second vocal entry, the rhythmic pace slows down and stabilizes to a 5/8 ostinato. The second vocal entry at reh. 31 proceeds by dividing the female singers into two groups. Departing from the previous texture of unison, the two vocal parts clash at the dissonant interval of a minor or major second on the apex of each vocal phrase, as shown in Ex. 3.6b. The diatonic tetrachord on E is extended through the addition of the tritone A above in the pentachordal motive E-F-G-A-A. The


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Ex. 3.6a: De Staat, first vocal entry (reh. 5, piano and vocal parts only)

Ex. 3.6b: De Staat, second vocal entry (reh. 31, voices only)

accompanying instruments support the vocal counterpoint by doubling each of the vocal melodies with paired instruments; i.e., the vocal parts 1 and 2 are doubled respectively by oboe, English horn, horn, guitar, harp, and piano. Andriessen’s musical setting subverts Plato’s dictum during the second vocal entry in poignant ways. First, the vocal part, sung by female singers, is accompanied by the “many-keyed instruments” such as the prohibited harp and piano. Second, he sets the vocal line in changing meter and overlays the vocal and instrumental parts, rhythmically “out of phase” with one another, to create a heterophonic texture – a type of polyphony that was clearly banned by Plato, based on the simultaneous use of slightly modified versions of the same melody played by two or more performers.29 Lastly, where the text forbids sudden changes in mode, the musical setting contradicts this idea by introducing sudden shifts in texture and pitch pattern at reh. 35. The vocal part continues to emphasize a tritone span within the chromatic tetrachord, now shifted upward in register to F-B-CD, punctuated by a dissonant interjection of chords in the accompanying instruments. For the third and final vocal entry, Andriessen’s vocal setting adopts a homophonic, “chorale” texture using a slow succession of dotted minims as

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Ex. 3.6c: third vocal entry in De Staat (reh. 45, voices only)

Fig. 3.6d: inversion of signifiers between text and music Plato’s text Education of male warriors Uniformity of mode and rhythm Prohibition of polyphony Prohibition of sudden modulations Prohibition of many-keyed instruments

Musical setting of De Staat

sung by female chorus dissonances, changing meter inclusion of polyphony sudden changes in key and texture inclusion of piano, harps, guitar, etc.

the basic pulse. While the rhythm remains steady throughout the passage, the characteristic elongation of the syllables that end each phrase is accompanied by dissonant harmonies with intervals of a minor ninth and major seventh. The accompanying horns and trumpets reinforce the declarative effect of the vocal entry with fanfare-like semiquaver figurations. By sustaining the highest degree of dissonance in the harmonic succession (almost every chord contains a major seventh or diminished octave), the passage seems to flout Plato’s dictum against innovation. Plato’s voice within Andriessen’s commentary can be understood in terms of a metaphorical inversion of cause and effect: Plato endorses authoritarianism and censorship in order to maintain unity within the collective. Andriessen inverts this relationship of intent and result by endorsing unity within the collective in order to resist authoritarianism and censorship. Fig. 3.6d summarizes the elements that constitute the “ironic inversion” between the text and musical setting. By setting up this contradictory relationship between text and music, Andriessen displaces the original meaning of Plato’s text and leads the audience to ponder the significance of De Staat in terms of symbolic resistance to authority beyond a specific time and place in history. Aside from the rhetorical strategies of subverting the text, De Staat merits attention on formal and aesthetic grounds. Andriessen’s preoccupation with mathematical proportions in structuring the overall form of De Staat suggests an undeniable modernist leaning, particularly in his self-claimed adoption of montage as a formal device inherited from Stravinsky.30 The


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adoption of montage technique and motivic interrelationships instil unity to the otherwise discontinuous textural shifts in De Staat. Furthermore, the intertextual references to Berio’s Sinfonia and Rzweski’s Coming Together in De Staat (Adlington 2004a: 73–75), coupled with his improvisational skill, bear witness to Andriessen’s enormous capacity to synthesize existing models in crafting his musical expressions. To complement Adlington’s extensive analysis of the scalar and harmonic properties of De Staat, my analysis focuses on the structure of tetrachords and montage technique that demarcate the instrumental and vocal entries. In preparation for setting Plato’s text to music, Andriessen consulted Arnold van Akkeren, a teacher of Greek language at Barlaeus Gymnasium in Amsterdam at the time. Van Akkeren provided Andriessen with extant theories of Greek music and some transcriptions of vocal music. In the absence of any historical documentation of Greek performance practice, the description of Greek modal theory formed the basis of Andriessen’s preliminary study for composing De Staat. His sketches contain a lineby-line translation of Plato’s Republic from Greek to Dutch and extensive notes on the Greek tonal system.31 Setting Plato’s text in the original Greek, Andriessen also found it necessary to examine the vocal inflection of the language and melodic settings (2002a: 147).32 Such melodic transcriptions were studied not for the purpose of imitating the rhythmic and melodic features of Greek vocal prosody, but rather to suggest appropriate types of vocal inflection in setting the transliteration of a Greek text to music. Studying the exact patterns of accentuation in the Greek text, Andriessen remarks, was especially helpful in determining the metric changes in the vocal setting of De Staat (Adlington 2004a: 139). Although Andriessen studied the theory of Greek modes in the preparatory stages of composing De Staat, the precise scalar configurations of the Greek modes were abandoned in favor of tetrachords and scalar formations that were influenced by other musical considerations. Fig. 3.7 presents my analysis of the primary tetrachords and related scales featured throughout De Staat. My analysis explores their interrelatedness by means of their intervallic profile; for example, motto 2 can be understood as the modification of motto 1 by means of expanding the semitone (1) to a whole tone (2) and RI (motto 2) as the retrograde inversion of motto 2, etc. Both mottos 1 and 2 can be extracted from the scalar configurations of the ecclesiastical church modes in multiple ways. Trochimczyk, in her analysis of De Staat, thus identifies motto 1 as a Phrygian fragment and motto 2 as a Lydian fragment. Another intertextual reference is offered by Adlington, who discusses the plausible derivation of motto 2 (reh. 13) from the pélog scale of the Javanese gamelan music with which Andriessen was familiar

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Fig. 3.7: list of mottos and scalar constructs in De Staat

through a recording (Adlington 2004a: 83–84). Rather than explore the signifying aspects of the tetrachords, my analysis focuses on their intervallic interconnections as underlying agents that give structural coherence to the piece. Motto 2, in particular, recurs at different levels of transposition, in retrograde inversion (RI), and in extended form (reh. 30). Another prominent feature is the way in which the perfect fifth, as the framing interval for the tetrachords, becomes progressively destabilized by the intrusion of other intervals, namely, the tritone and the minor second; see, for instance, how motto 3 is transformed at reh. 31+9 by compacting the outer interval to a diminished fifth. The consecutive minor seconds in motto 4 point to the extreme end of this destabilizing process, before restoring stability through the introduction of the modal scale (Lydian or Greek “Dorian” mode as specified by Van Akkeren) at reh. 46. Such modal inflections are anticipated by at least two pieces that were written during the four-year span in which Andriessen composed De Staat. For example, Melodie (1972) for recorder and piano draws on the mixed modality of Lydian-Mixolydian and locks into a melodic pattern that features motto 2 in transposition, B-C-E-F. This tetrachord also appears in De Volharding in the concluding unison section (reh. L) and as a prominent theme in the developmental section of the Symphonies of the Netherlands.33 However, the scalar constitution of these preceding works is predominantly diatonic and the pieces lack the overall proportional balance that lends coherence to the formal organization of De Staat. From a constructivist point of view, the formal construct of De Staat represents a decisive move away from collage and toward montage as a special type of “open” form (Eco 1989).34 Notably, the form emerges through block juxtaposition and interpolation of musical ideas following the technique of montage inherited from Stravinsky. While the pitch and rhythmic characteristics lend coherence to the musical work as a whole, the


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Fig. 3.8: montage technique in De Staat [∗ = choral entries]

→ → →

reh.

sec.

timing

density

meter

motive

0 3 6 8 12 18 20 21 26 28 31 37 43+6 45 46

A B ∗ C C’ D B’ D’ A’ D’B’ C’ ∗ E F D’E’B’ ∗ G H

0’00” 2’09” 3’07” 5’02” 8’21” 10’14” 10’53” 11’16” 15’33” 16’38” 19’19” 23’40” 28’43” 31’05” 32’44”

4 4–8 17 6–8 19 19 26 14–26 27 13–26 31 27 27 31 27

mixed

motto 1 chromatic motto 2 motto 3 motto 2/chromatic chromatic

4/4 mixed

4/4 mixed

motto 1 chromatic

4/4 mixed 6/4 4/4

motto 3 motto 4 motto 5 chromatic Lydian or Greek “Dorian”

length ( crotchets) 476 233 484 796 464 235 77 1072 282 614 1012 802 599.5 432 383

[Timings based on the CD that accompanies Adlington 2004a, track 3]

formal process is non-teleological and open-ended. In The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky, Andriessen traces the origin of montage to 1920s film experimentation: Stravinsky, who regularly went to the cinema and became a television addict (preferring cowboy and animal films), used compositional techniques in the Symphonies of Wind Instruments analogous to the film experiments of the same period: short, continually-returning fragments each with their own identity, abruptly alternated with contrasting structures, every one of which can be defined by a limited number of characteristics. One of the characteristics of these characteristics is that they are not developed. (Andriessen and Schönberger 1989: 162)

Andriessen attributes Symphonies of Wind Instruments as the earliest modernist composition to deploy montage: although both montage and collage rely on surface contrasts to articulate boundaries, the internal sections in a montage are structurally related. In Stravinsky’s work, fixed tempo relationships, among other factors, establish structural links between the otherwise self-contained sections. Likewise, in De Staat, the tempo remains steady, but contrast is created through abrupt changes in rhythm, motive, texture, and density, as shown in Fig. 3.8. Here density refers to textural density or the

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number of participating instruments and voices. Despite the discontinuity brought on by abrupt changes in rhythmic texture, motive, and instrumentation at each sectional juncture, there is an overall pattern by which the textural density increases over time. As indicated by the arrows, the first big build-up in density occurs when the number of instruments doubles at the first choral entry (reh. 8); the second occurs when all instruments engage in a rapid call and response (reh. 20); and the third coincides with the second vocal entry, which requires the participation of all instruments and chorus (reh. 31). The sense of stasis is directly correlated to the length of each self-contained section; while A’ and C’ sound progressive due to the contrapuntal processes by which a given motto is developed, E and F, that prolong a particular motto in unchanging rhythmic context, require endurance for the players as well as for the listeners. The closing section, H, sounds particularly cohesive due to the fact that all instruments are brought together in a two-part canon and belong to a complete mode for the first time. Last, but not of least significance, Andriessen consciously adopted the quality of sounding “improvised” or forma formans (“form forming”) in composing De Staat (Andriessen and Schönberger 1989: 45).35 Inspired by Frits Noske’s lecture on Jan Sweelinck’s Fantasie, Andriessen defines forma formans as a process that develops itself during the course of a piece – a self-forming form, as opposed to a predetermined formal structure like sonata form. All of his large-scale compositions, Andriessen admits, came from improvising at the piano: “It is through improvisation that I make musical progress in fleshing out my music. An idea or source for music often emerges spontaneously through the physical motion of playing the piano” (Bernlef 1993: 60). In spite of the fact that the music is eventually written down, it can still “give the impression of being improvised – as if arising out of the playing itself” (Andriessen and Schönberger 1989: 46). The musical process often conveys such improvisatory characteristics; for example, all instruments participate in playing the semiquaver passage in unison at reh. 13, where irregular and unpredictable shifts and turns in the pattern and accentuation impart a highly improvisatory quality of being played out “in the moment.” The extended instrumental interlude (reh. 12– 20) also contains improvisatory elements in its non-systematic rhythmic development of chromatic dyads and tetrachords derived from Section B. Andriessen freely admits to the improvisatory aspects of composing De Staat: “apart from [the planning of form and proportions], I wrote the piece completely freely, playing and improvising” (Schönberger 1981: 11). De Staat was followed by another large-scale work called Mausoleum (1979), based on writings by the Russian revolutionary Michael Bakunin.


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Ex. 3.9a: opening motive in Mausoleum [cimbalom part]

As a historical rival to Marx, Bakunin argued for the abolition of the state and against all measures of oppression. In the text, Bakunin discusses the way social conditions inevitably shape a man: “a man born into a society of brutes remains a near-brute.” He upheld the anarchist ideal of equality through the abolition of statehood and individual property, which he viewed as the source of all vice. In his musical setting, Andriessen juxtaposes Bakunin’s lofty sense of utopianism with a tribute by the Swiss journalist Arthur Arnold, who describes Bakunin as a quizzical figure in history: “I loved him as he was: forceful and inconscient [mindless], good and relentless, magnanimous and devoid of moral sense and common sense.”36 Trying to evoke folk music of Baltic origin, Andriessen adopts the cimbalom (a large dulcimer) and a style of vocal chanting modeled on Georgian polyphony in his musical commentary on Bakunin. The motivic and harmonic building block of this piece derives from the interval of a major second. The opening motive (designated x) outlines the tetrachord [F, G, A, B], which concatenates two major seconds at the distance of a minor second. As shown in Ex. 3.9a, the opening motive is played by the cimbalom and doubled by piano, guitar, harp, and strings. The motive, cast in 7/16, is framed by alternating measures that progressively expand the rhythm of the concluding note of the phrase; in extending the length of silence between successive reiterations of motive x, the opening gesture assumes the function of a rhetorical question that is posed over and over again. The instrumental prelude following this opening section develops the major second interval as the primary harmonic and motivic building block. Between reh. 6 and 8, the instruments develop the opening semiquaver motive in two layers; the segment C-D-E is distributed in the piano and strings, while the horns and harp outline the same segment transposed up a perfect fifth in rhythmic augmentation. At reh. 13, horns, pianos and strings participate in a hocket of triplets. The level of dissonance is heightened through the chromatic juxtaposition of tetrachordal clusters in two layers.

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Ex. 3.9b: the first vocal entry (baritone parts, reh. 26)

Fig. 3.9c: formal outline of Mausoleum r.1

motive x (no piano) ff

13

17

hockets fff

23

25

27

30

Bakunin’s text polyphony hockets/polyphony (percussion) f ff

36

motive x f

41

“chorale” 6/4 mp

50

57

Arnold’s text hockets/unison motive x fff

fff

[white blocks = instrumental; gray blocks = vocal + instrumental]

The first vocal entry by the baritones strongly recalls the vocal writing in Stravinsky’s Les Noces (1914–17); the resemblance is characterized by the crossing of voices within a close intervallic range (predominantly seconds and thirds) and the deployment of changing meters to create subtle rhythmic irregularities within the vocal phrase. Andriessen also attributes the vocal writing here to styles of singing found in Baltic choral music; the irregular rhythms and preponderance of intervals based on seconds and thirds are features found in two- to three-part Georgian chorales from the KartliKakhetia region. However, Andriessen’s setting departs from this historical model with respect to the stylized rhythm, fast tempo, and the absence of a drone. The overall formal structure of Mausoleum, shown in Fig. 3.9c, displays the sophisticated manner by which the dialectical relationship between text and music is established and sustained. Short instrumental interludes (gray blocks) continually interrupt the vocal texture (white blocks) and hocket is used extensively to shape the composite vocal and instrumental texture at reh. 28. An extended instrumental interlude follows the initial vocal entry with the reiteration of the opening tetrachordal motive. The rhythmic pacing slows down at reh. 41, leading into the second internal section. A tranquil


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instrumental chorale in 9/4 meter emerges, suggestive of the medieval mensuration practice of tempus perfectum cum prolatione perfecta (Schönberger 1993: 216). The processional chorale in triple meter exudes an other-worldly sense of serenity and awe prior to the next vocal entry. The initial dynamic and rhythmic vigor is recaptured at reh. 50 when the baritones enter to recite Arnold’s text, a tribute to Bakunin. Here the hockets in the instrumental parts are further reinforced by the addition of percussion instruments that amplify the disjointed rhythms. At reh. 57, the opening tetrachord is brought back for the last time as a motive of inquiry. In Mausoleum, Andriessen maximizes the dynamic and rhythmic thresholds at both ends of the continuum. The music oscillates back and forth between the contemplative and static texture of the opening motive, the aggressive and energetic hocket writing, and the tranquil instrumental “chorale” based on 9/4 meter. This oscillation between musical extremes can be seen as a musical analogue to Arnold’s text, which describes the contradictory forces within Bakunin’s personality. In bringing back the opening motive of inquiry without offering closure, the conclusion of the piece hangs on the dyad G and A, which is sustained at lunga massima. ∗∗∗ In his mature concept works, the ideological component becomes especially pronounced as Andriessen grapples with paradox and irony as subjects of inquiry in themselves. He confronts the political conditions that afflict individuals in contemporary society by commenting on ideals expounded by writers across history; ideological inquiries posed by Machiavelli, Plato, Bakunin, and others take on new resonance and become semantically charged with oppositional meanings in Andriessen’s musical settings. Indeed, the early reception of De Staat and Mausoleum seems to hinge on whether the music provided an effective commentary on Plato’s text. The première of De Staat at the Concertgebouw elicited opposite reactions based on critics who found that the music lacked “real engagement with the text” and those who applauded the “rhetorical fury” as an appropriate response to the text (Adlington 2004a: 119–20). When Mausoleum was first performed by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble in 1979, the piece received enthusiastic media coverage from the journalist Harm Visser who compared the social relevance of Andriessen’s musical commentary on Bakunin to the corrupt leader, Van Agt, of the Katholiek Volkspartij (KVP) from this time (Visser 1979). In retrospect, it is interesting to note that Andriessen conceived the largescale concept works from this period, i.e., Il Principe, De Staat, Mausoleum, as “operas” (Andriessen 2002a: 38). He clearly is not referring to opera in the sense of the standard nineteenth-century model, but rather in the sense of

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using music as a dramatic and often dialectically-charged commentary on text. Although cast in altogether different stylistic idioms, it seems appropriate to view the large-scale instrumental works from this period as a compositional and conceptual distillation of his music for the theater. Willem J. Otten comments on the theatrical quality of Mausoleum: “The first six indescribable notes of Mausoleum are like the introduction of a character on stage. These six notes will be the meat of the coming fifty minutes, they are the protagonist, and they sound so overwhelming that you ask yourself, ‘who is this?’” (Otten 1994: 15). During his involvement with the anarchistic theater group Baal, Andriessen vigorously worked with Brecht’s theory of Verfremdung (“alienation” or “estrangement”) to explore musical parody as satire: explicit quotations of Bach, stylized allusions to Stravinsky, and collage-like juxtaposition of textures contribute to an expression of satire combined with absurdism in the theatrical work Mattheus Passie (1976). The subsequent production of Orpheus (1977) is characterized by “Artaudlike display[s] of cruelty,” irony, and skepticism in its misconstruction of the familiar myth.37 Furthermore, his theater pieces feature the exaggerated acting styles for satirical effect and adopt a cabaret-style of singing for actors.38 Nonetheless, Andriessen’s “concept” works can be distinguished from his theater music from this period on the basis of the relative scarcity of literal quotations and stylistic allusions. With the exception of Gesualdo’s motet and a short excerpt from Strauss at the end of Il Duce, he avoids literal quotations of music as signifiers of irony or satire on the compositional surface. Instead of interleaving two different texts and musical layers as he did with Il Principe, he sets up oppositional instrumental forces within the ensemble and develops other means for polarizing aspects of rhythm, texture, and tonality in the temporal unfolding of Hoketus and De Staat. From an interpretive standpoint, his concept works resist obvious points of reference (literal quotations) and instead reveal their themes through the iconic and symbolic portrayals of strife, as further refinement of the rhetorical gestures (e.g., agitated chant, “collective” unison) developed in the earlier phase of his compositional orientation.

Ideology, reception, and authenticity Andriessen’s “concept” works from this period are inextricably linked to the political turbulence of the 1970s. Without knowledge and awareness of the societal contexts that surrounded the inception of this work, our understanding of early works such as De Volharding and Workers Union remains incomplete. The ground on which Andriessen stood was the social


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climate of the Netherlands in the 1970s, with activists such as the Nutcrackers and Aktie Tomaat who vigorously challenged the status quo. Marxist ideology manifested itself concretely in the modes of production that emphasized collective solidarity and empowerment of musicians in the formation of “democratic” ensembles and alternative performance venues. As Brecht worked with democratic ideals to “bring bourgeois ideology to bear upon its own presuppositions” in his didactic plays, Andriessen turned his music into a form of social commitment by engaging the performers and audience in musical experiences that extend beyond a “culinary” appreciation of new music (Mueller 1994: 82). De Staat and other “concept” works from the 1970s have to be understood in the light of this historical struggle as political demonstrations disguised as music. The music’s strength and emotive power lie in its direct expression of political struggle – its trials and tribulations, and its suspended resolution. In spite of such tantalizing ideological aims, what has complicated the reception of Andriessen’s “political” works from the 1970s is their reengagement with the performance of music in traditional concert halls for a new generation of middle-class consumers. For that matter, the Amsterdam première of De Staat took place in the Concertgebouw, the site of the 1969 Nutcrackers’ protest. This was certainly not surprising when one considers the fact that many of the activists and members of the Provo had entered the ranks of the officials placed in charge of the restructuring of artistic funding and subsidies in the course of the 1970s.39 What is more telling is how quickly some of his “political” works lost their ideological value in the face of the new generation of audiences that came into contact with music in the politically stagnant decade of the 1980s. By 1986, Mausoleum was programmed next to chamber music by Mozart in the C-series concerts at the Concertgebouw and the critics’ response became noticeably less enthusiastic; some called the work “brilliant”, while others were quick to note that the piece sounded mannered, ineffective, and worse still, had become a “mausoleum” of Andriessen’s own political engagement which was now a “closed chapter,” a relic of a bygone era (Van Kempen 1986; Degens 1986). Notwithstanding the fact that anarchist idealism had lost its cultural resonance by the mid1980s, one cannot dismiss the irony that a work such as Mausoleum came to be appreciated mainly for its aesthetic or nostalgic value. While much of the theater music written for Baal and many protest songs from this period have been relegated to the dustbin of history, the adaptability to new performance situations of works such as Hoketus, Workers Union, and De Staat has caught even Andriessen by surprise. Since its première, De Staat has established itself as “the standard bearer of contemporary Dutch music” and has received numerous performances within and outside the

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Netherlands (Van der Waa 1984: 11). At each performance, the context and mode of production determine whether the political message of the piece is communicated to the audience. When, for instance, John Adams introduced De Staat in San Francisco in 1983, reportedly he “chopped off” the relentlessly dissonant section (sec. F) in order to make the piece more accommodating for an American audience (Adlington 2004a: 139). Likewise, even though Hoketus was composed as a critique of American minimalism, many ensembles program the piece next to contemporaneous works by Reich and Glass under the theme of “minimal” music.40 Only a few ensembles have continued to foreground the social relevance of Andriessen’s music; for example, De Volharding produced a multimedia installation of Workers Union in 2002 for a new generation of concertgoers in response to the catastrophe of September 11th, as will be discussed in chapter 5. The factor that determines the social or aesthetic relevance of any given work is its authenticity, the quality of being authoritative or genuine in accordance with a given tradition, practice, or principle. If the authenticity of Andriessen’s political works is measured on pragmatic grounds, that is, the extent to which he achieved the “democratic” initiatives through the birth of new ensembles, new performance venues, new repertory and a system of subsidies for musicians, he has clearly succeeded in transforming the cultural politics of music making. What complicates the picture is another kind of authenticity Andriessen strove for as a composer of art music, building on the legacies of Stravinsky, Eisler, and Ives. It would not be far-fetched to assume that this concern for “aesthetic” legitimacy led him once again to write large-scale works for the concert hall. It is also demonstrated by Andriessen’s dismissal of the pieces he prodigiously wrote for theater and protest movements as essentially “inferior” to works such as Il Principe, De Staat, and Mausoleum. The apparent contradictions mentioned in the opening of this chapter – e.g., producing apolitical music in overtly political contexts – can be explained in part as arising from a collision between the two types of authenticity Andriessen sought. The “concept” works can thus be interpreted as his way of striking a compromise, merging aesthetic and political considerations under the guise of “critical” music. Can one defend the authenticity of Andriessen’s “critical” music against Adorno’s view of modernism? Like Stravinsky, Andriessen’s music seems to escape the aesthetic totality that defines authenticity in music according to Adorno, a position that was echoed by Boulez’s claim that all nonserial composers are useless (Boulez 1952: 214). Max Paddison points out, nonetheless, that Adorno acknowledged works that lie outside the dominant systems – those that belong neither to the music of Schoenberg nor to


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that of Stravinsky – yet remain “critical” music, as in the case of Kurt Weill. Adorno comments on Weill’s style as follows: a montage-style, which negates and at the same time raises to a new level [aufhebt] the surface appearance of neo-classicism and juxtaposes and cements ruins and fragments up against one another [aneinander rückt] through the addition of ‘wrong notes,’ it composes out the falseness and pretence which today have become apparent in the harmonic language of the nineteenth century. (Paddison 1996: 100)

Although different in stylistic orientation from Weill’s, Andriessen’s deployment of montage and parody follows in his footsteps in terms of the critical distance from which the borrowed elements are juxtaposed: levels of contradiction emerge and are held unreconciled within the compositional structure. Paddison claims that “such music is therefore regarded by Adorno as critical and self-reflective, and it thus comes under his concept of ‘authentic’ music” (1996: 98). From a slightly different perspective, Umberto Eco discusses the social relevance of contemporary music in Opera Aperta. He explains contemporary forms of alienation as caught within “a dialectic balance that is based on a constant struggle between the negation of what is asserted and the assertion of what is denied” (1989: 126). Schoenberg is depicted as a composer who breaks out of the tonal system to create a new one while Stravinsky re-embraces the tonal system during his neo-classical phase by parodying it and “by questioning it even as he glorifies it” (1989: 139). Andriessen’s compositional approach follows in Stravinsky’s footsteps, yet elevates its significance to another level by embedding the stylized elements within a dialectical framework to confront a political or metaphysical question. In problematizing discourses of modernism in application to postwar music, Alastair Williams also comments: “Many of the art forms of the 1960s, together with the more recent cultural practices associated with new social movements, emphasize the sociality of art against the remote abstraction that had prevailed, and indicate rightly that there is more social spontaneity to be tapped than Adorno envisioned” (1997: 127). By assigning a concrete “sign” value to musical gestures, e.g., repetitive motion as signifier of strife, one could argue that Andriessen reclaims the use-value of music as a form of empowerment against the objectification of music as commodity. On aesthetic grounds, there are discernible ways in which Andriessen’s musical language became crystallized in the 1970s. While continuing to explore an ideological basis for stylistic synthesis (as demonstrated by the

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concept of “stylelessness” and “sound continua”), his treatment of pitch and rhythm underwent vast simplification. In lieu of the atonal, pointillistic, and textural music influenced by the avant-garde idioms of the Darmstadt school (discussed in chapter 2), he adopted minimal, repetitive gestures and reinserted rhythmic pulse as the basic element of composition. The lineage of influences, extending from minimalism, Eisler, and Stravinsky, ultimately led Andriessen to found his own musical forms of expression that rely less on literal quotations and collage. De Staat and Mausoleum instead reveal a synthesis of content and form expressed through techniques of montage, misreading, and open form. Although Andriessen’s music elicits an immediate response (through the sheer rawness and physicality of sound), the audience has to work at unraveling the meanings and associations as well as the hidden levels of contradiction that emerge. It is in this sense that his “concept” works from this period constitute a musical analogue to Brecht’s Lehrstück in offering an artistic laboratory for political education and action.41 And it is in this sense that he comes into his own as a composer. A more persistent paradox is found, however, in how an anarchist rebel gains worldwide recognition and becomes a “guru” to a young generation of composers in search of a new musical identity. The following two chapters explore the ramifications of Andriessen’s aesthetic orientation and political ideology in the 1980s.

Notes 1. For instance, Zengakuren (All-Federation of Student Governing Councils), led by socialist parties and progressive intellectuals in Japan, launched violent protests against U.S. imperialism and militarism throughout the late 1960s. 2. In Tractatus (1922), philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein claims that we can never climb the same “ladder” twice in interpreting language since the context of its enunciation changes with every repetition. In musical terms, the Stravinskian and minimalist idioms constitute the “ladder” Andriessen climbs over and throws away, out of reach, in order to shape his own musical perspective. 3. The New Left was strengthened by over one thousand students, mostly from Northern Holland, who joined the Gemeentelijke Universiteit van Amsterdam (Municipal University of Amsterdam). Kennedy describes Amsterdam as being ten or fifteen years ahead of the rest of the country in terms of cultural development around this time (Kennedy 1995: 131). 4. The protests by various theater groups are documented in various newspaper articles between 1969 and 1970. 5. Kennedy notes that the student radicals in Holland never engaged in the extreme forms of violence that were launched during the revolutions in France and West Germany in 1968.


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6. In Amsterdam, “Fluxus Festival” performances took place as early as June and December, 1963. The Scheveningen ‘64 festival featured the writer of absurdist works, Wim T. Schippers as well as Fluxus Holland (Whitehead 1999: 35). 7. Muzikale en politieke commentaren en analyses bij een programma van een politiekdemonstratief experimenteel concert 1968. In an interview with Konrad Boehmer (27 October 2004), he explained that he wrote most of the philosophical essays contained in the booklet. 8. Adlington comments on the discrepancy between the heavily modernist idioms of compositions and the political context in which the concert was staged (2004a: 15). According to Andriessen, the audience was not at all concerned with aesthetic questions and “liked everything” (2002a: 119). 9. “Experimental concert in het Amsterdamse Carré: Muziek won het van de politiek,” Brabants Dagblad, 1 June 1968; C. H., “Vervelend politiek concert,” Vrije Volk, 17 June 1968. 10. Andriessen explains further that the initial idea was to write a communal work to organize something special for their teacher, Van Baaren’s sixtieth birthday. 11. Andriessen’s account contradicts Vermeulen’s observation: “Andriessen wrote collages of pop-like elements, Peter Schat wrote the vocal parts, Van Vlijmen wrote the symphonic frescoes, De Leeuw wrote passages in the style of Schoenberg, and Mengelberg put the pieces together.” 12. Interview with Andriessen on 20 October 2004. 13. Stravinsky describes poetics as having to do with “the knowledge and study of the certain and inevitable rules of the craft”; he then attributes to Aristotle the elements central to the idea of poetics that reside in the “arrangement of materials and structure” (Stravinsky 1977: 4–5). 14. The real “birth” of the group took place at the Carré in May. 15. According to the notes accompanying the score to De Volharding, the première of this piece on April 30, 1972 took eighteen minutes to perform whereas the following performance on May 12th took twenty-seven minutes. 16. The boogie-woogie bass and big-band riffs in the first part of the piece celebrate the joyous spirit of Yancey’s music. This is contrasted with the metamorphosis of the boogie-woogie bass in the second part to a slow, processional march, suggestive of a dirge. 17. The Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Social Work (Cultuur, Recreatie en Maatschappelijk werk or CRM) subsidized many of these performance events circa 1973. 18. He describes how he had to sing every note to the Polish symphony orchestra musicians using jazz articulations when De Staat was performed in Warsaw for the first time. 19. See Adlington 2004b: 381–407 for a more detailed explanation of Eisler’s influence on Andriessen’s development of Brechtian principles. 20. Interview with Andriessen, 29 October 2004. 21. For the Danish première during the 1983 ISCM Festival, Andriessen wrote: “The title refers to labor movements, where the members have common interests and

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22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

want to reach their goal in a persistent, hard-headed but difficult manner. The intention is to reach agreement about the road to follow, but in this long process there are often dissenting options and some lose the track altogether. With might and main however the majority brings the dissenters back in line with the rest” (Trochimczyk 2002: 98). Timings for De Volharding are based on CD (track 1) that accompanies Adlington 2004a. The CD for the live recording of De Volharding for the Inklusief Konsert (12 May 1972) also accompanies the issue of Key Notes 1997/3. The ensemble emerged out of the sessions called “minimal art project” conducted by Andriessen at the Conservatory in The Hague between January and April of 1976. While recognizing minimalism as a radical alternative to postserial music, the group was at the same time highly critical of Philip Glass’s style of minimalism and dismissed it as “sweet butter” music. For a comprehensive analysis of the rhythmic structure of Hoketus, see Everett, forthcoming. The aesthetic stance overlaps insofar as American minimalists’ works have strong counter-cultural elements, e.g., Terry Riley’s In C (1964) or Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music (1968). Timings for Il Principe are based on CD (track 2) that accompanies Adlington 2004a. In Javanese gamelan, the 4:1 ratio of diminution between the balungen (nucleus melody) and the elaborating instruments occurs at the second level of irama (system by which the tempo expands or contracts). Plato banned any kind of polyphony as “not suitable in the education of young people”. See “On Montage Technique,” in Andriessen and Schönberger 1989: 160–64. De Staat is the first piece in which Andriessen began to work out the overall formal structure by calculating the precise number of quavers in relationship to the tempo, vocal setting, and the placement of the Golden Section. Van Akkeren provides the following explanation in the liner notes to the original recording of De Staat: “The basic unit of the music of the ancient Greeks was the tetrachord, groups of four strings with an interval of a perfect fourth between the first and last. From this we can deduce the importance attached to stringed instruments in the ancient world. Two tetrachords formed an octave. They could be tuned in different ways, for instance on the lyre by adjusting the two middle strings of each tetrachord in such a way as to change the position of the semitone. This produced the descending diatonic progression of tone-tonesemitone known as the Dorian harmonia (mode) and the progression of tonesemitone-tone known as the Phrygian harmonia (e d cB A G FE and e dc B A GF E respectively). There was no fixed pitch. The names and nature of the modes derive from the various peoples at that time inhabiting western Anatolia (Turkey), e.g., the Phrygian, Lydian and Ionian modes. They are to some extent consistent with our major and minor scales and with the ecclesiastical modes.”


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32. Andriessen mentions that he studied the differences between the Spartan and Athenian pronunciation of Greek. 33. Adlington makes similar observations with regard to this passage from the Symphonies of the Netherlands (2004a: 71). 34. Umberto Eco discusses how postwar composers have sought to replace the traditional archetype of “closed” form with various types of “open” form where the lack of closure and non-teleological orientation reflect a new compositional aesthetic of temporality in music. 35. Andriessen and Schönberger claim that since Stravinsky did not like to improvise, he “feigns the improvised gesture.” 36. English translation of the Russian text by Arnold printed in the score to Mausoleum (Amsterdam: Donemus, 1979). 37. For a fuller description of Andriessen’s parodic techniques in Mattheus Passie and Orpheus, see Jan Otten and Schönberger 1978: 22–34. 38. See Otten and Schönberger for a full description of Mattheus Passie and Orpheus. 39. For specific discussion of this shift in power, see Mak 1986: 76–83. 40. This is made evident by comparing programming of pieces by Bang on a Can, Ensemble Sospeto, and the ICTUS Ensemble (Belgian group). 41. It is important to note that Lukács was strongly critical of the “estrangement” devices in Brecht’s Lehrstück, which he dismissed as merely formalistic techniques artificially imposed upon the dramatic production (Lunn 1982: 85).

4 Toward the metaphysical in art (1981–88)

Andriessen chooses his own labyrinth in musical history and himself as its center. Each journey through it is made with the future as the point of departure and the finishing point. That is why in his music the distinction between allusion, quotation, and own music is ultimately unimportant. The result is always music with an inalienable individual identity, intractable and direct, compelling and detached. (Schönberger 2001a: 637)

During the 1980s, Andriessen’s aesthetic focus gravitated away from the raucous and polemical works of the preceding decade to the exploration of philosophical and conceptual themes in increasingly abstract terms. De Tijd (1980–81) and De Snelheid (1982–83) are “concept” works that display constructivist rigor, in which explicit quotations and allusions to historical styles are conspicuously absent. These compositions nonetheless grapple with a metaphysical principle (e.g., perception of time or velocity) in compelling ways. During the same period Andriessen embarked on a large-scale theatrical production of De Materie (1985–88) on the subject of philosophers, scientists, and artists from diverse periods of European (primarily Dutch) history. The composer found in Robert Wilson’s ritualized, non-narrative approach to theater an ideal counterpart to his music. Through the iconic transference of proportions derived from musical, architectural, visual, and literary sources, Andriessen constructs the musical form of the four movements in De Materie as an analogue to J. S. Bach’s Prelude (Part I), the plan of Rheims Cathedral (Part II), Mondrian’s abstract painting (Part III), or the structure of Willem Kloos’s sonnet (Part IV). Furthermore, numerological and symbolic references permeate the structure of the four movements in ways that lend coherence and unity to the work at large. In their collaborative efforts to integrate poetry, music, dance, and visual arts under a common theme, the two sought to create a distinct form of Gesamtkunstwerk, not far removed from the visionary-mystical ideals of Wagner. De Materie presents a labyrinth of quotations and historical references; assembling musical and textual sources with virtuosic flair, Andriessen took care not to use them as vehicles for expressing personal sentiments

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(Andriessen and Schönberger 1989: 100).1 During the three-year period (1979–82) in which he collaborated with Elmer Schönberger on the book The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky, Stravinsky’s anti-Romantic stance became crystallized in Andriessen’s own compositional approach to incorporating historical references. In a chapter entitled “Ars Imitatio Artis,” Andriessen and Schönberger describe Stravinsky’s use of historical models as “a text ‘comprised of many writings, originating from several cultures, that enter into a dialogue, parody each other or disagree with one another’ (Barthes)” (1989: 18). Although different labels have been assigned to Andriessen’s parodic techniques from this period (e.g., “transhistoricism” according to Penka Kouneva, “synthesis of extremes” according to Schönberger), I argue that his compositional approach continues to draw on principles that underlie his concept works for transforming and transcending historical references. As captured by Schönberger’s opening epithet, Andriessen’s own identity speaks through the music in such a way that he remains at the center of his own “labyrinth.” Furthermore, while abiding by his “anti-symphonic” approach to instrumentation, Andriessen explores new timbral resources beginning with De Tijd to generate slow, sustained musical textures. Glockenspiel, vibraphone, and crotales – used extensively in his music from the 1960s, though excluded from his “street” music in the 1970s – once again assumed an important role in defining Andriessen’s timbral space. He combines specific instruments that generate a complex timbral envelope, often marked by sharp, disjunctive attacks. The metallic resonance of the “blue column” chords in De Tijd, for instance, emerges as an important aural marker. Particularly relevant are the timbral kinships between those chords and related gestures that appear in the second and fourth movements of De Materie. Works from this period also display the greater sophistication with which Andriessen applied mathematical principles to organize and structure aspects of rhythm, tempo, and texture. De Tijd and De Snelheid contain further developments of hocket technique with respect to rhythm and texture compared to Hoketus and Mausoleum from the 1970s. “Collective” unison, repetitive processes, and abrupt discontinuities (associated with montage) that defined much of his music from the 1970s were replaced by more complex textural and rhythmic strategies (e.g., polyrhythmic cycles) to ensure large-scale continuity and unity within a given structure. To facilitate discussion, this chapter explores De Tijd, De Snelheid, and De Materie in two sections. The first section focuses on the constructive designs of rhythm and texture in De Tijd and De Snelheid as they pertain

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to the metaphysical concepts that Andriessen explores. The second section is devoted to an analysis of De Materie that expands on previous analyses of this work by Coenen (1997), Kouneva (1991), and Trochimczyk (2002) in several ways: first, by exploring the interface between Andriessen’s music and Wilson’s non-linear approach to theater and dance, drawing comparisons with Wilson’s previous theatrical productions, e.g., his collaboration with Philip Glass in Einstein on the Beach (1975); second, by discussing the relationship between text and music, with the specific goal of exploring the manifestation of the dichotomy between matter and spirit in the roles assigned to music, spoken or sung words, and choreography; and third, by examining the multiple levels at which extra-musical references or symbols operate in conjunction with the specific rhythmic, motivic, and textural procedures Andriessen employs to unify the work as a whole. Wilson’s complex layering of movements, words, lighting, and color presents theatrical codes that intersect with Andriessen’s musical codes in the making of a postmodern Gesamtkunstwerk.

Dialectics of time and velocity In stark contrast to the visceral qualities of music composed during the preceding decade, Andriessen conceived De Tijd (“The Time”) as an experiment in the musical expression of asceticism. After browsing through various philosophical texts, including Dijksterhuis’s De mechanisering van het wereldbeed and Dante’s Divine Comedy,2 Andriessen chose a text taken from the eleventh book of St. Augustine’s Confessions; in it, the philosopher discusses the logical incompatibility of “eternity which is always still” and “the concept of time which is never still” (Schönberger 1993b: 4). De Tijd is a concept work that explores the formal opposition between temporal and non-temporal experiences of time as described by St Augustine in his Confessions. He told a friend as early as 1972 about embarking on a large-scale work that consisted of nothing but “terrifying blue columns. Very long. Bangs. Silences” (Schönberger 1981: 6).3 It was only nine years later that the “blue columns” took a concrete form as a drawn-out series of chords that supported a vocal cantus firmus in the context of De Tijd; in addition to the “blue columns,” “bangs” constituted a second layer made up of strongly attacked chords that articulated the eternal present, and “silences” were expressed by strategically placed pauses. In the final setting of the piece, sustained chords evolve so slowly that the words uttered by the female vocalists dissolve into the vertical projection of harmony. Jonathan Kramer identifies this self-contained process as “moment” time; the perceptual


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effect of the sustained chords in De Tijd indeed resembles that of Stockhausen’s Stimmung (1968) in which six vocalists sustain harmonic overtones over a B dominant ninth chord for approximately seventy minutes (1988: ˆ a seventeen-piece mouth organ 50–51). Andriessen also referred to the sho, in Japanese gagaku ensemble that sustains a diatonic chord cluster in high register much like an organ pedal, as an important source of influence (Schönberger 1981: 9). In his extensive analysis, Robert Adlington locates the fundamental opposition in the simultaneous evocation of time and timelessness in De Tijd (2001: 1–35). To complement his study of the harmonic, formal, and textural attributes of the piece, the ensuing analysis focuses primarily on the rhythmic processes and timbral aspects of the piece in exploring the dichotomized concept of time. St. Augustine wrestles with the paradoxical relationship between time and eternity in several stages: first, by setting up a dichotomy between time as a temporal phenomenon and eternity as non-temporal, he establishes a fundamental opposition between the two; second, by claiming that time is divisible into segments that define the past, the future, and the eternal present as embodiment of both, he subsumes time as an ontological facet of the human condition; finally, he casts into question whether it is possible for any of us to transcend the ontological condition in order to seize the “eternal moment.” At the outset, De Tijd explodes with a “Big Bang” – a diatonic chord complex comprised of E and B dominant sevenths – struck by flutes, trumpets, Hammond organ, bass guitars, pianos, gong, tam-tams, log drum, voices, and strings. Out of the rich resonance of the opening chord emerges a sequence of chords in the middle register sustained by harps, organ, voice, violins, and violas in a steady cycle of eight crotchets per bar at the metronome marking of 48. At this extremely slow speed, the enunciated syllables of St Augustine’s text dissolve into a medley of elongated vowels, e.g., “i,” “e,” “a,” whose distinctive formants merge with the timbral resonances of organ and strings. In extending each phonetic articulation at the rate of eight-and-a-half crotchets (around twelve seconds per phoneme, forcing the singers to breathe in alternation), the semantic content of St Augustine’s text is completely obscured. Against the ethereal and atmospheric articulation of sustained chords, the second group of percussion (vibraphone, crotales, cimbalom, and piano) enters with the “blue column” chords based on the iambic pattern of shortlong as shown in Ex. 4.1a. Besides the onomatopoeic reference to tolling bells, the metallic resonance of the “blue column” chords provides a powerful antidote (“terrifying,” to use Andriessen’s own word) to the serenity and

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Ex. 4.1a: De Tijd (Section I: mm. 25–30)

regularity of the sustained chords in the strings and voice with which the music begins. In the middle of the system, Andriessen introduces what he calls a “shadow melody”; the Hammond organ gradually releases one note of the sustained chord at a time, so that the remaining notes gain clarity of sound as the others drop out in creating an undulating rhythmic sensation within the sustained chords.4 As Sec. II draws to a close, the iambic pattern in the percussion gradually contracts in duration. This passage is accompanied by the text that reads: “time derives its length only from a great number of movements constantly following one another into the past.” There is a sense of urgency in the musical progression as the durational cycle begins to contract rapidly. A further rupture occurs in the progression of events when the bass guitar, piano, and gongs enter with a low-resonating ff chord struck at m. 81. The contracting “blue column” chords segue into the first instrumental hocket where the second group of percussion is joined by the first in a game of antiphonal call and response as shown in Ex. 4.1b. While maintaining rhythmic independence, the composite rhythm of the two groups distills the iambic rhythm to its shortest unit of 1–2 crotchets; the rhythmic values


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Ex. 4.1b: De Tijd, first instrumental interlude (reduced score, mm. 89–93) [FLIP = exchange of chords between the two groups; EXT (n) = extension by n beats; TRUC(n) = truncation by n beats; dotted arrow = direction of hocket]

here add up to 3, a number associated with tempus perfectum (Schönberger 1981: 10).5 Yet the composite rhythm does not form a consistent cycle based on tempus perfectum, rather it alternates primarily between 1–2 and 2–2 (tempus imperfectum) as illustrated. Because the two percussion groups share vibraphone, crotales, and piano in common, a composite melody emerges out of the top notes, alternating between the dyads E-F and E-E, tossed back and forth between the two groups (FLIP). The dyadic unit is elongated to a 2–2, followed by a 2–3 unit, prior to returning to the initial iambic rhythm unit of 1–2. The chords are markedly more dissonant than the sustained chords in the strings in the opening and the second percussion part echoes the content of the first with some variations. Symbolically, one can interpret the intense “clanging” of the hocketing chords in the two groups of percussion as the rhythmic distillation of the “blue column” chords, the rhythmic layer that alludes to the transitory and fleeting nature of time. Although lasting for less than three minutes, the relentless rhythmic energy of these “tolling bells” operates in fundamental opposition to the stasis of the sustained chords that connotes the “eternal” moment. The first instrumental hocket segues into Section IV, which introduces four distinct layers consisting of independent rhythmic cycles. The second

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Ex. 4.2: Section IV (mm. 97–123) [fl doubles the voice and is omitted here]

percussion drops out as flutes paired with voice, xylophone with double basses, and log drums and gongs articulate four distinct layers of sound, as shown in Ex. 4.2. The fast-paced polyrhythmic cycles in the drum and gongs (6:7 quavers) are a diminution of the slower cycles found in the voice and xylophones (6:7 crotchets). Like the cogs of a wheel nested within a larger set of wheels, the embedded durational cycles allude to the fundamentally mechanical nature of time that defines its measurable or chronometric dimension. At the close of this passage, the accompanying text refers to the condition that “in eternity nothing moves into the past: all is present,” as a haunting chord is struck in the low register at sffz by trumpets, harps, pianos, log drum, and gongs. In this manner, Andriessen introduces several different rhythmic processes to convey the opposition between the non-temporal nature of eternity and the fleeting nature of time: sustained chords and vocal entries that maintain a steady durational cycle, iambic patterns that contract or expand over an extended passage, and hockets. Figure 4.3 summarizes the rhythmic processes by means of fixed and variable cycles, each of the eight sections demarcated by change in the combination and density of instruments. Although

Fig. 4.3: durational cycles and patterns in De Tijd

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the piece begins by setting two layers – a cycle and changing pattern (“blue column” chords) – in opposition, the process becomes more fluid as the cycles and changing rhythmic patterns begin to merge. The numerological symbolism underlying the selection of rhythmic durations was an important consideration for Andriessen. All of the numbers (when shown in units of a quaver) can be derived from either 2 (tempus imperfectum) or 3 (tempus perfectum) through addition or multiplication. Describing binary notation as “an invention of Ars Nova, of rational thought,” Andriessen conceived the binary unit as a “linear” and the triple unit as a “circular” manifestation of time. Translated into conceptual terms, the fundamental opposition between numbers two and three thus translates into the opposition between chronometric and “eternal” time. In addition, the number 6 is often included in the polyrhythmic cycles, signifying another type of “perfect” number that results from either addition or multiplication of 1, 2, and 3.6 In Section V, the second percussion embarks once again on a contracting durational cycle, while three groups of instruments maintain independent durational cycles at the ratio of (7:6.5). This leads to a brief recapitulation of the instrumental hocket between the two percussion groups, in which the composite rhythmic pattern based on 1–2 or 2–2 crotchets returns. From this section onward, the combination of instruments that defines a rhythmic layer changes in a unique and unexpected manner; the voice becomes doubled by a different set of instruments so that at each change in section it also changes in timbre. A stunningly rich soundscape is generated in the penultimate section (section VII) when all the instruments join together to double the voice against the two harps, glockenspiel, and bass gong. Here the instruments split off into four distinctive layers, where the trumpet and double-bass sound short chords with staccato articulation in expanding the iambic pattern. As if to amplify the fundamental paradox contained in St Augustine’s rhetorical claim that “eternity, in which there is neither past nor future, determines both past and future time,” all four layers crescendo to a dynamic climax; the vocal part reaches its highest point at G5 , contrasted by the bass guitar, double-bass, and bass clarinets that pound out the chords in the low register. A maximum point of textural differentiation is attained through the schism in the register of superimposed layers. In the closing section, Andriessen reverses the relationship established at the beginning by having both groups of percussion participate in steady polyrhythmic cycles (at the ratio of 8:7 crotchets or 16:15 quavers), while the remaining instruments bring back the contracting and expanding iambic pattern that was initially assigned to the second group of percussion. Out of nowhere, the log drum breaks out into


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a steady stream of semiquavers to close the piece, gradually dying out over the course of three measures. Needless to say, rhythmic process is not the only factor that shapes the temporal stasis in De Tijd. Adlington’s comprehensive analysis of its harmonic structure traces the extent to which the chordal progressions of both the sustained cycles and iambic patterns derive from either the combination of two seventh chords or chords built on an extension of a given triad (with the exception of the hocketing chords that are more dissonant). He further argues that the chord sequence affirms its symbolization of timelessness by the suspended resolution of the seventh: “every new chord has a sufficiently complex harmonic content to command immediate and full attention” in producing an effect of saturatedness (Adlington 2001: 28). Indeed, the freefloating dissonances and avoidance of their resolutions shape our momentto-moment listening experience of De Tijd; extended triadic sonorities that project overtones in the vertical dimension simultaneously suspend directionality in the linear dimension. When such sonorities are suspended in their cyclical state, perception of time is measured by intuitive time: what Henri Bergson calls duration or perception of time as consciousness itself (1946: 11–29). What De Tijd retains in common with concept works such as De Staat is the use of the voice as a timbral extension of the instrumental soundscape. To the composer, the aural comprehensibility of the borrowed text was not an overriding concern, as he did not intend the voice to be used as a literal tool for expressing St. Augustine’s text; as listeners, we are led to meditate on the ideas that underlie the text rather than the text itself. By dissolving the text into a series of non-verbal musical utterances stripped of speech-based inflections, Andriessen wrestles on purely musical terms with the perceptual paradox that lies at the core of St. Augustine’s inquiry. Not long after completing De Tijd, Andriessen was commissioned to write De Snelheid (velocity) for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the artistic directorship of John Adams.7 He conceived the piece as a “virtuoso scherzo” in the spirit of Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice on the one hand and as an abstract composition that explores the dialectical constitution of velocity on the other (2002a: 179). Although commissioned by an orchestra, Andriessen – in his typical manner – rejected the conventional arrangement of orchestra and added non-conventional instruments such as the saxophone, bass guitar, and Hammond organ. The first two “reconfigured” orchestras, comprised of saxophones, trumpets, horns, trombones, tuba, percussion, and piano, are symmetrically placed in the rear of the third one. The third orchestra, placed in the front, comprises flute, alto flutes,

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Fig. 4.4a: chart of tempo acceleration8

electric harps, bass guitar, Hammond organ, and string sections on both sides of the stage. At first glance, the construction of the tempo and metric structure of De Snelheid suggests some kind of an exercise in tempo or metric modulation; the speed of the ictus or the smallest divisible rhythmic unit accelerates gradually by adding a subdivision of a pulse. As illustrated by Fig. 4.4a, each time the subdivision of the pulse increases from five to six, there is a corresponding rate of tempo acceleration in the ictus (measurable by the speed of the semiquaver). Conversely, if the subdivision decreases from six to five, the speed of the ictus remains the same while the speed of the pulse accelerates. Andriessen’s adoption of tempo modulation can be distinguished from Elliott Carter’s precisely in the avoidance of a seamless pattern of rhythmic continuity as found in the latter’s earlier works such as String Quartet No.1 (1951).9 Contrary to Carter’s practice, Andriessen uses metric modulation to accentuate the discontinuity at sectional junctures through abrupt shifts in the rhythmic pattern of woodblocks and textural mode of stratification. The piece is, after all, about exploring contradictory factors that guide our perception of velocity, and the resultant metaphorical “ride” through the music is bumpy, not at all smooth.


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Ex. 4.4b: cyclical structure of De Snelheid (mm. 20–61)

Besides the scheme of tempo acceleration, De Snelheid reveals further experimentation with rhythmic processes. Andriessen comments: “I wanted to compose a piece in which one would hear a great wheel slowly rotating” (2002a: 175; 2002b: 179). Short chordal gestures are tossed back and forth between the first and second orchestras in a manner that recalls Hoketus, but the hockets are placed within a complex polyrhythmic counterpoint with other rhythmic cycles set into motion. Typically for Andriessen, he builds tension by pushing the process to its furthest extreme before introducing other processes to bring the piece to closure; after the ictus reaches its maximum speed ( = 720), it dissolves into a tremolo and falls out of the texture only to reappear – rather unexpectedly and ironically – at the close of the piece. De Snelheid begins by setting in motion rhythmic layers of three distinct elements and gradually thickening the texture through an additive process. The woodblocks from the first and second orchestras introduce a stream of pulses comprised of five semiquavers per bar within a fixed ten-bar cycle. Superimposed upon this layer are two chords that are tossed back and forth between the first and second orchestras (the beginning of a hocket) and the syncopated entry by the bass drum in the seventh bar. Example 4.4b illustrates the additive process in the hocketing chords beginning at m. 20; as summarized in the second system of Ex. 4.4b, while the woodblocks

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maintain the constant ictus, the composite texture accumulates in rhythmic density through an addition of a chord between the first and second orchestras over the next four cycles. The bass drum gesture is followed by the tom-toms’ strike on the following downbeat to complete what Andriessen calls the “Oong-kah” chord; this gesture played by the percussionist from the third orchestra recurs in the same place within the ten-bar cycle to establish a third rhythmic layer independent from the hocketing chords and the woodblocks. After the fifth cycle when the texture fills up, the hocketing pattern proceeds by what Andriessen calls the “echo” effect; as shown in the sixth cycle, the chord from the composite texture drops out here and there, leaving a shadow of its former existence. Over the remaining layers of woodblocks and hocketing chords, a slow sustained melody appears in the flute (doubled by Hammond organ and double-bass). Because each note is extended over four to five measures, it is difficult to hear it as a composite melody (Andriessen 2002a: 178; 2002b: 182).10 This melody continues past the first metric modulation at reh. 7 where the speed of the ictus accelerates and the metric subdivision changes from 5/16 to 6/16. In actuality, when the ictus accelerates, there is a corresponding acceleration in the slow melody; yet quite to the contrary, the listener is liable to perceive the melody as having “slowed down” in relation to the faster pulsating ictus. In a musical context, our perception of the speed at which we hear a musical gesture is relative to the change in the rate of the pulse. As the slow melody in the flutes winds down, Andriessen develops the hocketing chords between the first and second orchestras by coalescing them into an interlocking progression of varying lengths. By the middle of the piece, the rhythmic rate of oscillation between the hocketing chords accelerates from quavers to semiquavers. Adding to this texture, the third orchestra enters with a slow, two-chord gesture that rises from low to high register as shown in Ex. 4.4c: this gesture is related to the one introduced by the third percussionist at the beginning of the piece – what Andriessen describes as a motionless “Buddha” (2002a: 176; 2002b: 180). In these adjoining passages, we encounter another instance of perceptual paradox; despite the tempo acceleration in the ictus from = 540 to = 720 in moving from the first (reh. 32) to the second passage (21 measures prior to reh. 43), the accompanying gestures do not speed up at the corresponding rate. On the contrary, the interonset duration between hocketing chords slows down by half (270MM to 135MM) and the “Buddha” gesture in the third orchestra slows down at the ratio of 5:3 (30MM to 18MM), as shown by the table of comparison. Thus the listener experiences a simultaneous sensation of having sped up and slowed down. Cross-rhythms (4:3) created


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Ex. 4.4c: comparison of two adjoining sections from De Snelheid (reh. 32/ reh. 43−21 )

Table of comparison: Reh.

Tempo

Ictus

Hocket

“Buddha”

32

Dotted crotchet = 90MM Minim = 90MM

Semiquaver = 540MM Semiquaver = 720MM

Quaver = 270MM

Four-bar cycle = 22.5MM Five-bar cycle = 18MM

43 (-21)

Triplet Crotchet = 270MM

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between the woodblocks and the hocketing chords further energize the composite texture in the second passage. While setting up a carefully constructed scheme of tempo acceleration, the objective of De Snelheid was not strict maintenance of a rhythmic process or to be taken to its logical completion. In many respects, composing De Snelheid represented for Andriessen a process of elimination or simplification to achieve the desired level of contrast and clarity. In the original sketch of De Snelheid, the string section in the third orchestra was given many chords and melodies that were eventually removed in order to simplify the texture. With these residual materials, Andriessen wrote a rather aggressive solo piano piece called Trepidus (1983) that makes use of the six-part harmonies derived from De Snelheid. From a structural perspective, De Tijd and De Snelheid are linked by the productive tension of working out contradictory musical processes in the manner of leerstukken, a distinctive form of “concept” pieces Andriessen composed in order to explore an application of metaphysical principles in musical terms: it seems clear that even in pursuing musical concepts without political overtones, Andriessen conceived these “didactic” pieces modeled on Brecht’s Lehrstück (Visser 1984: 47). Although the sequence of hockets follows an additive process at the beginning of De Snelheid, a given process that establishes expectation for continuation in the listener’s ears suddenly drops out for no apparent reason. It is in this sense that the two studies exemplify what Schönberger calls “an interplay between speculative constructivism and intuitive empiricism” (1998: 8).11

De Materie (1984–88): the genesis of a non-opera In 1985, Andriessen approached Jan van Vlijmen – the director of the Netherlands Opera at the time – about staging the four parts of De Materie (literally meaning “matter”) as a theater piece. After reading the synopsis of the entire work, which presents key historical figures who are united by their scientific, religious, artistic, and political idealism, van Vlijmen recommended Robert Wilson as Andriessen’s collaborator; he regarded Wilson as the only designer/choreographer who could approach this work as a “nondramatic” work or a “non-opera” in compliance with Andriessen’s aesthetic aim (2002a: 191; 2002b: 195). As a visual artist, choreographer, and stage director, Wilson emerged as a major figure in experimental theater in the early 1970s. He received international acclaim for a “silent” opera called Deafman Glance (1971) and went on to collaborate with Philip Glass on the opera Einstein on the Beach (1975), a work which transformed the convention of opera in the postwar


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years.12 Glass and Wilson conceived this non-narrative type of opera as a surrealistic meditation on Einstein’s place in the popular consciousness. For Wilson, the work represented a move away from the complex mise-enscène of his earliest plays toward the abstract geometry of his mature style based on the precise integration of light, movement, design, and duration. Opera simply meant opus or work to Wilson and it did not have to rely on nineteenth-century European musical or dramatic conventions. Meanwhile, Glass’s interest lay foremost in creating a theatrical experience where the audience’s perception of the play is not manipulated by a prescribed narrative or dramatic curve and therefore “the moment of epiphany can take place at a different place each time” (Obenhaus 1987). In the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s re-staging of Einstein in 1984, Wilson filled the space with complex visual and spatial counterparts to Glass’s minimalist music that drew on the theme of dream like allusions and associations. Sometimes an actor narrates a story, repeating it countless times; the content of the story may bear no direct link to the scene or the theme of the opera except for the word “beach.” Robert Stearns comments on Wilson’s Jungian approach to connecting images on stage: As in dreams, shapes and actions present themselves, disappear and return in other forms. We as the dreamers may be delighted, surprised or terrified, but the dream is independent and can’t be controlled. Awake we analyze, interpret and try to find meaning. But Wilson’s art is as elusive as the stuff of dreams. His theater is of images. (1980: 44)

Wilson conceived of such images on a theatrical stage as of three types: portraits, still life, and landscapes. A knee-play, which is a short pantomime that usually involves two or three actors during a scene change, was intended as an intimate portrait in which the audience engages close-up with the actors’ movements and dialogue.13 In contrast, the scenes with background, props, and characters, e.g., the trial scene with Einstein, provided the still life or tableau vivant, while big, sweeping choreography involving dancers in motion represented the landscape (Stearns 1980: 44). Each type of image engages the audience’s perception of theatrical space in an entirely different way. Wilson’s approach to creating a “slow-motion” theater, inspired by his study of Japanese Noh drama, provided an ideal counterpart to Andriessen’s music for Parts II and IV of De Materie. Working with choreographer Suzushi Hanayagi, Wilson selected the actors on the basis of their ability to control their bodily movements, e.g., how slowly they could walk on stage, rather than on conventional acting skills (Van de Weetering). According to Janny Donker, Wilson selected his own dancers and worked with them in

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an intuitive manner, allowing them to spontaneously improvise and experiment with gestures (1989: 54). His method oscillated between vague ideas and precise execution of movements. In the process, Wilson drew various sketches for the background landscape and took meticulous care in the design of costumes and furniture that properly reflect the historical era and tradition, e.g., chairs modeled on the minimalist aesthetics of the artistic group De Stijl (to which Mondrian belonged) were specially created for the occasion. As in his past productions, he expended great care on the lighting; many have commented that the rhythmic element in his use of lighting is comparable to that of a musical score (Innes 1996: 122–23). Several features of his stage design contribute to the non-linear, nondramatic form of the theatrical production. First, the background, props, and actors represent the historical figures of Gorlaeus, Hadewijch, Madame Mondrian, and Marie Curie, yet they retain a mannequin-like pose and never develop into characters that communicate individual sentiments. Second, dance, acting, stage design, and lighting develop into independent theatrical codes or semiotic systems without necessarily coalescing into a unified narrative. Wilson comments on the calculated disjunctions he introduces in the montage form: “What the audience hears and what it sees shouldn’t be the same; at first, this disjunction may look arbitrary, but it isn’t. It fits into an overall structure. Slowly the pieces fall together and add up. More meanings emerge in my theatre because more than one thing is going on at the same time” (Innes 1996: 97). The non-linear theatrical approach in De Materie is manifested most poignantly in Wilson’s treatment of the central figures. Rather than providing a single narrative to accompany the music, he interweaves several images and gestures to create a multi-dimensional narrative, in which seemingly unrelated figures and images are abruptly juxtaposed. So, for instance, in Part I where the philosopher Gorlaeus is featured as the central figure, the figures of Curie, Hadewijch, and Madame Mondrian inconspicuously float in and out of the theatrical stage along with subsidiary characters clad in authentic seventeenth-century costumes. While these figures do not interact in any meaningful way, they participate equally in performing a physical task associated with atomization of matter. If shipbuilding is the main action on stage in Part I, all of the characters participate in assembling parts of the VOC (“United East-Indian Company”) ship, as shown in Fig. 4.5. In fact, the ritual gestures of Noh drama are strongly reflected in the expressions and movements of the central figures; as if they are wearing masks, Gorlaeus, Hadewijch, Madame Mondrian, and Marie Curie act with restrained motion and frozen facial expressions. In Part II, the singer who plays the part of Hadewijch stands motionless, while the accompanying


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Fig. 4.5: photo of Wilson’s production of De Materie (conclusion of Part I)

dancer – her “alter ego,” so to speak – expresses her fluctuating emotions through occasional abrupt, rapid-fire movements. Wilson’s unique solution to illustrating the dichotomy between matter and spirit is embodied in the technique of using multiple actors who perform extreme physical movements (restrained vs. untamed) as manifestations of Hadewijch’s colliding impulses (spiritual vs. physical articulation of love). A similar technique is employed in the expression of Madame Curie’s dichotomized response to grief, where other female characters play out her pent-up emotions. In distinguishing exterior form from inner content, Wilson’s Jungian associations stimulate the audience’s imagination by underscoring the tension between spirit and matter. Although his theatrical presentation is non-linear and non-narrative in its trajectory, it is by no means devoid of dramatic tension. The fundamental opposition between matter and spirit is developed and amplified without recourse to conventional narrative. John Rockwell compares the “visionary” and “mystical” aspects of Wilson’s theater of images to Wagner’s operas in Wilson’s quest toward formulating a total work of art or Gesamtkunstwerk (Rockwell 1980: 16); as Wagner suggested that the individual arts might contain within themselves the idea of totality, it is the quality of interdependence, not dependence, that characterizes the relationship between the set design, choreography, text, and music in De Materie, as will be evidenced by the ensuing analysis. Textual sources. For Andriessen, the choice of texts for the four parts of De Materie presented an important connective thread in formulating a musical commentary on the theme of matter from different, yet complementary, perspectives.”14 The concept also draws on Christian symbolism of

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“fourness” in signifying “earth” and earthly matters. In Part I of De Materie, Andriessen assembled disparate texts from three different centuries of Dutch history in order to convey the idea of revolution in both spiritual and material terms. First, he chose the text from the official document Acte van Verlatinghe (“The Act of Abjuration”) by which the Dutch withdrew their allegiance to the Spanish king in 1581. This historical act represented in Andriessen’s mind the establishment of the first democratic republic in the world. Second, the chorus sings a complete explanation of the actions involved in building a ship taken from Nicholas Witsen’s Scheepsbouw (1960); the subject of shipbuilding was chosen as “a musical metaphor for the eruption of intellectual, and also physical, violence” (Andriessen 2002a: 193; 2002b: 197). Lastly, the seventeenth-century philosopher Gorlaeus appears on stage to sing an aria with text derived from his treatise on particle theory, Ideae Physicae (1651). Gorlaeus’s treatise challenged Aristotelian theories by advocating the atomic physics of Democritus, and he was considered anti-Catholic and a revolutionary because of his position (Andriessen 2002a 192; 2002b: 196). While the three sources are not intrinsically related to one another, they are held together by the hammering chords (which Andriessen calls a modern “toccata”) that form the primary musical layer; the incessant and driving qualities of the hammering chords accompany the physical action of building a ship (matter) and, at the same time, embody the idea of a revolution (spirit) underlying the texts. In this context, the music serves as a connective device that holds together the otherwise disparate textual sources. For Part II, Andriessen adapted the Book of Visions, written by the fourteenth-century mystic Hadewijch. The theme abruptly shifts to the exploration of physical and spiritual love, as Hadewijch’s poetry explores the fine line between courtly and divine love in her vision of encountering Christ (2002a: 200; 2002b: 204). Andriessen’s fluid contrapuntal treatment of the ballade melody signifies the physical and spiritual processes of metamorphosis as Hadewijch undertakes her journey through the cathedral. The opposition between matter and spirit is internalized within the conflicting emotions experienced by Hadewijch. Part III juxtaposes the objective theory of neo-plasticism with a personal monologue by the wife of Mondrian. The title De Stijl refers to the legendary magazine, founded in 1917, which featured works by painters, sculptors, designers and architects such as Piet Mondrian and Gerrit Rietveld who worked with the concept of neo-plasticism: principles of abstraction using elementary devices such as straight lines, right angles, and primary colors. For his musical setting of De Stijl, Andriessen adapted the text from Matthieu Schoenmaker’s book Principles of Visual Mathematics (1916), a source that presumably influenced Mondrian’s turn to abstraction (De Beer


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1985: 27). The text sung by the chorus reinforces two points: the straight line is “the perfect line,” and the cross-figure represents “a ray-and-line reduced to perfection of the first order.” While this text alludes to the sobriety in Mondrian’s approach to art (matter), the second more frivolous text alludes to the painter’s “wild” side (spirit); the text draws from a memoir by an acquaintance of Mondrian that documents the artist’s love for jazz and dancing (Andriessen 2002a: 221; 2002b: 225).15 In direct reference to Mondrian’s love for boogie-woogie, Andriessen embedded the monologue sung by a character who plays the part of Mrs Mondrian against a boogie-woogie played by solo piano on stage. The austere contrapuntal writing that accompanies the text on neo-plasticism (matter) is counterbalanced by the joyful, big-band music that captures the joie de vivre of the roaring twenties. The fourth and final movement of De Materie features a slow pavane, a stately instrumental dance that gradually gains rhythmic momentum. Persuaded by Robert Wilson to include a collection of writings by Marie Curie, Andriessen made an exception to include a historical figure outside Dutch history. Fragments from one of Curie’s scientific lectures were combined with extracts from her diary that describe her grief over the loss of her husband, Pierre Curie, in 1906 (Andriessen 2002a: 231; 2002b: 234). Wilson’s set design and choreography provide an ideal counterpart to Andriessen’s slow pavane, which gradually acquires rhythmic momentum in the course of the movement. Curie and her staff are clad in white formal attire, and as in Hadewijch, dancers express her internal grief through frenetic dance gestures while the figure of Curie remains rigidly still. As the music slowly gathers momentum, the chorus sings a chorale-like melody over a sonnet by Willem Kloos that speaks of eternal love and desire that transcend the material world. The choral entry serves as the prelude to Madame Curie’s monologue in which she delivers a dramatic recitation of her feelings of grief and loss, alternating with a detached commentary on her professional achievement. The sonnet by Kloos echoes the spiritual domain of love that provides a backdrop for Curie, who wrestles with pain associated with death in the physical and material realm. By the end of De Materie, the content of the text has shifted from material accounts of shipbuilding and atomic theory to the spiritual domain of human suffering. Form, symbolism, and texture. Aiming for an overall formal coherence, Andriessen prescribes constructive principles in organizing the tempo, proportions, and tonal structure of the four movements that comprise De Materie. In particular, the formal proportions of De Materie demonstrate a further refinement of previous models with regard to his treatment of tempo and pulse. As illustrated in Fig. 4.6a, the tempo becomes

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Fig. 4.6a: tempo and proportional scheme for De Materie

Ex. 4.6b: the central tetrachord and tonal plan for De Materie

progressively slower in the course of the work while the rates of pulse increase in inverse proportions; the durations of crotchets vary accordingly so that the temporal duration of each part equals exactly twenty-five minutes per movement (Coenen 1997: 9). In departing from the “open” form that Andriessen adopted in his works from the 1970s, the tempi of the four movements were modeled according to the fast-slow-scherzo-finale scheme of traditional symphonic movements. Extending the symbolism of fourness to the motivic and harmonic dimension, the four movements of De Materie are unified by means of what Andriessen calls the “1-2-3-4” chord (see Ex. 4.6b). Given a B as the focal pitch, the tetrachord contains a unison (1) against itself, major second (2) from B to C, major third (3) from C to E, and perfect fourth (4) from B down to F. In application, however, Andriessen allowed for slight deviations so that (2) and (3) encompass both minor and major inflections. In addition, Andriessen uses the B-A-C-H motive pervasively throughout De Materie. From this motive, he derived four diatonic triads that constitute the tonal center for each movement of De Materie (shown in the middle); these triads can be shown to embed the B-A-C-H motive (when re-ordered to I-IV-II-III). Describing J. S. Bach as “a sort of guardian angel,” Andriessen paid explicit homage to Bach as he composed the music for Part I, deriving its structural framework from the temporal proportions of the E-major prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Book I). According to Coenen, Andriessen literally transferred the internal proportions of the toccata-ricercare onto the tripartite musical form of Part I (9).16 My formal chart, shown in Fig. 4.7a,


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Fig. 4.7a: formal overview of Part I of De Materie reh. 0

6

19

26

toccata chords

32 hammer duet

choral entry #1

#2

toccata choral #2

46

49

53 toccata choral #3

Gorlaeus

Text: Incipit:

“Act of Abjuration” shipbuilding L’Homme armé B-A-C-H “Le Sacre”

shipbuilding B-A-C-H E prelude

Ex. 4.7b: opening hammer strikes

refines the tripartition scheme further by illustrating the change in the superimposition of musical layers. The choral and solo vocal entries are framed by the hammering “toccata” chords that constitute the primary musical layer. Quotations from the L’Homme armé (“the armed man”) melody, the “Le Sacre” chord, the B-A-C-H motive, and the incipit from the E-major Prelude form secondary motivic layers by which sections are differentiated from one another. Wilson’s stage design synthesizes ideas drawn from the three texts, namely, abjuration, shipbuilding, and scientific discovery, using change in scenery and lighting to delineate the tripartition of the texts. As shown in Ex. 4.7b, Part I opens with incisive hammering chords that are struck 144 times in gradually accelerating rhythmic sequence. Rhythmic acceleration occurs by means of the decreasing number of crotchets between successive chordal attacks; Andriessen used a logarithmic table to control the

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Ex. 4.7c: L’Homme armé in rhythmic augmentation (reh. 6) LH

LH

“Let it be known that we, forced by extreme distress, after deliberation, …no longer recognize the Prince as Lord in any matter relating to his Sovereignty…”

duration between successive chordal strikes so that it is progressively shortened until the chords are struck repeatedly at the distance of one quaver.17 The chord, which produces a signature Andriessen sound, is comprised of E and B dominant sevenths with altered notes played collectively by flutes, brass, bass guitar, piano, synthesizer, guitar, and strings. The absence of the third (G) and the dissonance formed between E4 and E5 give the chord cluster an unsettling edge. After the initial acceleration, the hammering chords settle into a sequence of chord complexes whose top and bottom voices expand by stepwise motion, oscillating between A6 and B6 in the top register while the bass moves stepwise down from B0 to G0 in approaching the first choral entry (Andriessen and Harsh 1992: 67). As if to amplify the rebellious characteristic of the “toccata” chords, snare drums and bass drums enter with their own hammering gestures in syncopation. The composite gesture eventually settles on E minor, the focal triad of the movement. At reh. 6 (3’36”), the chorus enters to recite the revolutionary text of abjuration against the Spanish king, as shown in Ex. 4.7c.18 Although the “toccata” chords drop off into the background, their pounding rhythm is


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now absorbed into the declamatory recitation of the text. At this point, the L’Homme armé melody appears in horns, guitars, and strings in rhythmic augmentation, beginning on E. Due to the shortness of attack and the temporal distance between successive notes, the quotation is sufficiently dismembered to prevent the listener from recognizing it as the L’Homme armé melody. The change in texture here corresponds proportionally to the passage in Bach’s prelude where the improvisatory flourishes of the introduction give way to a quasi-fugal four-part motet. Andriessen’s deployment of L’Homme armé thus parallels Bach’s adoption of a pre-existing form of a ricercare in the prelude. While the quotation of L’Homme armé in augmentation remains hidden, Andriessen playfully interjects a literal fragment of the L’Homme armé melody in semiquavers played by the trumpet a short while later (7’16”). Likewise, chords derived from the “Sacrificial Dance” of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring punctuate the end of the first choral entry (9’08”) by providing a dramatic closure to the historical act of renunciation. The appearance of familiar quotations provides a momentary glimpse into the intuitive and whimsical side of Andriessen’s creative impulse and such gestures tend to offset the constructive rigor that governs the formal design. He referred to the literal fragments as “the gem on the surface pointing to the geology of what lies beneath” (Andriessen and Harsh 1992: 67). After the chorus drops out at reh.19, the hammering chords undergo yet another form of acceleration, now in counterpoint with the log drum and bass drum. This instrumental interlude segues into the second choral entry (10’24”) in which the text from the shipbuilding manual is recited. Here the composite texture is reduced to absolute uniformity as the accompanying chords support the choral recitation at the beginning of each phrase that begins with “Maakt” (make) (11’50”). The chorus recites the text in rhythmic augmentation as the melodic contour outlines the B-A-C-H motive in the top voice (transposed to E-D-F-E). This passage segues into an extensive hammering duet by two groups of percussion. It represents the rhythmic distillation of the opening toccata chords as the percussionists engage in a hocket of hammering rhythms that come in and out of phase as it gains increasing momentum. Its bare and raucous sound conveys the essence of strife and rebellion. Out of nowhere Andriessen introduces a new texture, a scalar motive in synthesizers and English horns in fast-moving semiquaver; this figuration ushers in Gorlaeus’s entry at the Golden Section of the movement. The vocal writing for Gorlaeus is lyrical and operatic in comparison to the disjunct, declamatory style in which the chorus sings the texts of abjuration and shipbuilding, as shown in Ex. 4.7d. Andriessen intended the chromatic motive, G-G-A,

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Ex. 4.7d: Gorlaeus’s entry (reh. 32, 15’33”)

Ex. 4.7e: choral entry (reh. 49, 20’40”)

with which Gorlaeus begins his solo to stand for the “smallest particles” that comprise Gorlaeus’s theory of atomic principles. As Gorlaeus delivers an effusive aria in which atomic principles refute Aristotelian metaphysics, the chorus continues to recite the text from the shipbuilding manual to form an independent textural counterpoint. At reh. 46, the texture is reduced to Gorlaeus’s monologue, accompanied by instruments that double the vocal part in rhythmic unison. Although the texts for the chorus and Gorlaeus draw from unrelated sources and maintain their independence from one another for a good portion of the final section, the contents of their singing begin to merge at reh. 49; notice how the chorus echoes Gorlaeus’s claim for atomic principles in a call and response format, as shown in Ex. 4.7e. At this juncture, the B-A-C-H motive is transformed into a chromatically descending line in contracting rhythm to signify “death” on a symbolic plane.19 The concluding section of Part I brings back the “toccata” chords for the last time, now rhythmically synchronized with the vocal entry. Andriessen employs a rhythmically decelerating sequence at reh. 55 in lieu of the


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accelerating sequence used at the beginning. The chorus goes back to the shipbuilding manual and recites the basic “materials” used to build a ship in rapid-fire sequence over the toccata chords: “saw, or hand-saw. Jackscrew. Sledgehammers. Iron wedges. Branding iron. Wood ax. Chip pick . . .” It is difficult to imagine listening to Part I as a concert piece without the accompanying visual elements, which provide a non-linear, although dramatic, counterpoint to the hammering chords. Throughout, the idea of rebellion against the status quo is conveyed through the ritualistic and obsessive repetition of the “toccata” chords. The chorus is relegated to the orchestral pit, and although it plays a central role in the recitation of two of the three texts, the rapid-fire articulation of the text makes it virtually incomprehensible. Furthermore, merging the chorus with the “toccata” rhythm at the end is emblematic of the idea of rebellion. Although it is nearly impossible to decipher the text, it is obvious that such symbolic considerations and the composite “rhythm” of the music take precedence over the aural comprehensibility of the text. Like a medieval riddle, historical references and quotations remain to a large extent hidden: e.g., the L’Homme armé cantus firmus functions as an embedded quotation in the background, buried underneath the hammering chords of the toccata. The formal architecture of Part II is based on the proportions of Rheims Cathedral. Andriessen took the architectural plan of the cathedral and calculated the proportions between the pillars that lead to the altar and the circular dome region where the sacrament is stored. Then he devised fifteen “pillar” chords in the music that correspond roughly with the spatial distribution of pillars in the cathedral, as shown in Fig. 4.8a.20 As Trochimczyk points out, the architectural borrowing invokes a tradition that traces back to Dufay’s “Nuper rosarum flores” (1436), written for the consecration of Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral, which relates units of musical time to architectural design (2002: 198). Her vision of Christ at the altar corresponds to the spatial location of the Golden Section (GS) where the twelfth “pillar” chord is sounded. In filling out this structure, Andriessen introduces a slow, undulating ballade as the central theme, as shown in Fig. 4.8b. Coenen comments that the construction of the melody (aba’b’cb’’d) is strongly reminiscent of a ballade composed by the thirteenth-century troubadour Jeaufre Rudel’s “Quan lo rius dela Fontana” (1997: 7). Trochimczyk further points out the numerological symbolism of perfection associated with the number 28, the total number of notes that form the ballade, in medieval theology (2002: 214). The gradually ascending melody is based on an octatonic scale, C-CD-E-F-G-A-B, with an added tone B that appears as a chromatic passing

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Fig. 4.8a: formal correspondences between Part II of De Materie and the structural plan of Rheims Cathedral

Fig. 4.8b: ballade in Part II of De Materie

tone in the last measure. The incomplete descent that hangs on the pitch A prevents the melody from achieving closure; for its initial entry, Andriessen harmonizes the last phrase on a V chord in G minor, accompanied by a 4–3 suspension. This ballade is developed in such a way that the pitch and duration associated with the melody change with organic fluidity. To begin with, the chart (Fig. 4.9a) traces the successive transformation of the main melody with respect to pitch, rhythmic pattern of the initial pitches (number of crotchets), instrumentation, and textural treatment of the theme.21


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Fig. 4.9a: transformation of the ballade theme mm. 1-49 50-108 111-155 169-212 212248260 357408496660 692

timing 0’00” 1’26” 3’07” 4’46” 5’59” 7’01” 7’23” 9’58” 11’28” 14’03” 19’17” 20’28”

pitch C F E E /B F B A E B/E C F E

rhythm instruments texture 4-8-4-8 str, pno, syn unison; complete 5-10- /4-8fl / str, syn heterophony 3-6-/ 4-6 ob, ca / str, fl stretto entries 3-6-/ 2-4 gtr, cl / ob, ca double entries; stretto 2-4bcl, cbcl fragmentation 2-3-2-2 syn, tpt, hn variation 1-1-1-1 voice variation 2-3-4-5 str, syn, fl variation 2-2-2tpt, gtr, str / hn, str distorted; partial 2-3-2-4 voice, str unison; complete 3-3-3-3hn, gtr chromatic alteration 1-2-2-1 voice partial [Timings are based on Nonesuch 79324-2 (CD 1), track 2]

Ex. 4.9b: staggered entries of the ballade theme (reh. 2)

When the ballade is first introduced in the synthesizer and strings, the melody is cast in an iambic rhythm of 4-8-4-8-3-4-7 (in crotchets) – a rhythmic organization that cuts across the designated 3/4 meter. As shown in Ex. 4.9b, where the first “pillar” chord is sounded, the pattern expands to 5-7-5-8 crotchets in synthesizer and strings; flutes lag behind the synthesizer and strings in heterophony with the initial pattern of 5-10-5-10 crotchets. The “pillar” chord is anchored to the focal F minor triad with added tones B and G; the embedded tritone (F–B) is superimposed on the stacked perfect fifths (F–C–G) in capturing the colliding states of instability and stability in the mystic. The irregular pattern of expanding and contracting rhythms, combined with the ascending and descending contour of the

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Ex. 4.9c: double entries of the ballade (mm.168–82) E entry

B entry

13 a2

ob 1/2 corA 1/2

a2

sempre sim.

cl 2/3 cl 4/5

a2

but clear

a2

bcl 1/2

cbcl

"Animalian" sounds

ballade, anthropomorphizes the breathing pattern of Hadewijch, as if the mystic’s fear and excitement is expressed by her irregularity of breath. While maintaining the trochaic (short-long) pattern, the rhythm and texture of the melody continually changes throughout the course of the piece. The entry of strings on E followed by an entry in rhythmic diminution by the oboes in B creates a stunningly rich effect. As if to undercut the seriousness of the ballade that symbolizes Hadewijch’s spiritual commitment to her God, Andriessen introduces a comical countermelody in the bass clarinets, doubled by synthesizers in recurring triplets. Andriessen conceived this motif as a literal allusion to the grunting sounds of barn animals that were typically found in the vicinity of churches in medieval times. Building on Trochimczyk’s claim that these “animalian sounds” provide an aural counterpart to the cathedral’s monstrous gargoyles, one could suggest that they are also the embodiment of carnal love that constitutes Hadewijch’s longing for God. The rhythmic durations applied to the ballade fluctuate without apparent regularity, while contracting in value toward the end. In addition to the fluctuating rhythms, the techniques of heterophony and stretto are applied to vary the texture of the ballade melody each time it is stated. The rhythm of the vocal line also fluctuates wildly, often ending a phrase with an upward projection of a major seventh (E4 –D5 at reh. 24−3 ) or diminished octave (A4 to A5 , reh. 27−3 ). At times, Hadewijch’s yearning for union with God is manifested so strongly at the physical level that she experiences severe pain as if her bones are about to break. When she expresses her wish for an intense carnal experience “to know and taste him through and through,” the trumpet strategically doubles the vocal part in unison (reh. 35). The theme appears in the vocal


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part in its simplest form when Hadewijch sings about the greatest gift being “to satisfy in unending submission.” This marks the only time when the ballade melody appears in its complete form in the vocal part. Hadewijch’s arrival at the altar is followed by an extensive instrumental interlude that develops the “animalian” countermotif (reh. 52–56). This carnivalesque instrumental dance ushers in the transition where the chorus announces the appearance of Christ at the altar, the passage that corresponds to the Golden Section of the movement. The texture then thins to an extended duet between Hadewijch and the chorus. While Hadewijch ecstatically sings in triplet rhythm about Christ giving himself to her in front of the altar, the chorus sings of Hadewijch’s grief and sorrow in not being prepared to meet Him. The contour of the melody emphasizes the minor third ascent from E4 and G4 and the chorus presents a succession of chords built on thirds that expands outward in range and in rhythmic augmentation. The penultimate “pillar chord” (reh. 72) comprises just the focal pitch F and the thinner texture corresponds with the passage in the text where Hadewijch describes the figure of Christ disappearing from her vision. In the final passage that follows the last strike of the “pillar” chord, Hadewijch’s monologue is doubled by the harp and accompanied by sustained chords in the synthesizer and strings. The tetrachord motive, F-A-B-E, is built on a varied version of the “1-2-3-4” chord. As the music hereafter hangs on the cyclical repetition of this tetrachord, the prostrate figure of Hadewijch slowly ascends toward the ceiling amidst the hanging ropes on the stage that represent the “pillars” of the cathedral. Just as the “toccata” chords convey the spirit of revolution in Part I of De Materie, the ballade melody conveys the intensity of Hadewijch’s love for God, which depends on opposing states of pleasure vs. pain, joy vs. sorrow, and union vs. separation. By employing various contrapuntal procedures to alter the ballade melody, Andriessen manages to keep the rhythm of the instrumental and vocal lines organic and fluid. The stability of the “pillar” chords that support the structural framework is continually offset by the instability in the rhythmic flow of the ballade melody; the colliding impulses within Hadewijch are embodied in this tension between matter and spirit, between the physical and spiritual manifestation of love. The third movement De Stijl (“Style”) was originally composed for the group Kaalslag (“Demolition”) for a performance at a large demonstration against nuclear weapons that was organized in The Hague in 1983.22 Just as Andriessen derived Hadewijch’s music from the structure of Rheims Cathedral, he derived the structure for De Stijl from a painting by Mondrian, “Composition with red, yellow, and blue” (1927). It is interesting that

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Fig. 4.10a: Andriessen’s sketch for the formal plan of De Stijl

Mondrian’s influence on Andriessen’s music lies not in a literal transference of the painter’s abstract, non-representational approach to art, but rather in the structural transference of the particular painting. In fact, the potpourri of stylistically familiar and accessible elements based on funk bass, boogie-woogie, and B-A-C-H motives gives the music a strongly dramatic quality, in opposition to Mondrian’s abstract aesthetic style. The lively character of the music is complemented by Wilson’s retrospective and “campy” stage design, which presents men in tuxedos, dancing girls in old-fashioned bathing suits, and Madame Mondrian in a black suit with a top hat against a background of moving geometric shapes in primary colors. While maintaining a non-linear theatrical approach, the appearance of a boogie-woogie piano player on stage and other images provides a narrative framework for Madame Mondrian’s monologue about the painter’s love for dancing. A blue spotlight traces her every move as if she is a heroine in a Broadway musical. This is contrasted with darker moments – often accompanied by the rhythmic augmentation of the B-A-C-H motive – that suggest a sense of awe and fear of the world that lies beyond. The formal structure of this piece is derived not only from a passacaglia with a “funk” bass, but from a choral fantasy that exploits the contrasting superimposition of extremely slow “chorale” melody and faster rhythmic diminution of itself. As shown in Fig. 4.10a, Andriessen divided up the form into twenty-four temporal units that each contain one hundred crotchets. Analogous to the five colors and proportions that are found in Mondrian’s painting, De Stijl comprises five layers of instruments: 1) vocals and trumpets; 2) saxophones; 3) pianos, guitars, and bass guitar; 4) trombones; and 5) boogie-woogie piano. These block-shaped segments are aurally recognizable by the independent rhythmic layers formed by a particular instrumental group or combination of instrumental groups.


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Ex. 4.10b: passacaglia theme based on a “funk” bass (reh. 1)

The plurality of musical references found in De Stijl creates a labyrinth at the compositional surface. Andriessen’s symbolic homage to Schoenmaker is represented by the musical analogue of the “T-shaped cross,” consisting of a three-note pitch sequence with upper and lower neighbor notes, e.g., G-A-B-A, which forms a horizontalized T-shape when spread across four instruments. A geometric representation of the B-A-C-H motive, in comparison, forms two intersecting diagonals when the pitches are spread across four different instruments. The austere juxtaposition of long-drawnout “chorale” sections with light-hearted “funk” bass, boogie-woogie, and big-band music creates particularly striking effects. Although the visual diagram suggests a montage based on a discontinuous succession of sections in block juxtaposition, the musical flow of De Stijl is surprisingly smooth and continuous. The movement allows for seemingly incompatible musical elements to flow into one another with ease, owing to Andriessen’s contrapuntal dexterity and his reliance on a particular hexachord to provide structural underpinnings, as will be explained. The playful quality of this movement emanates from a passacaglia theme based on a “funk” bass. As shown in Ex. 4.10b, this fourteen-bar theme is based on a modified blues scale G-B-B-C-C-D-E-F-F, characterized by the simultaneous inclusion of major and minor thirds and major and minor sevenths. This theme serves as the connecting tissue that gives continuity to the form as it undergoes various types of contrapuntal manipulation, including stretto, proportional canon, rhythmic canon (drum entries that maintain simply the rhythmic profile), sequential canons (each entry occurs a halfstep higher in pitch than the previous one), fragmentation, and quasi-atonal modifications. While cycling through different pitch transpositions within the first two sections of De Stijl, the tonal center of G is reinforced at critical

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Ex. 4.11a: saxophone and vocal entries (reh. 3, 0’22”)

junctures in the piece; for instance, the boogie-woogie music prolongs this tonal center through a dominant pedal on D. The “funk” bass theme is first introduced in the bass guitar, doubled by one of the pianos. Then the saxophone and chorus enter with independent layers of motives that are related to the “funk” bass. The harmonic contents for these overlaid textural layers are based on a transposition of the hexachord (ur-form: G-B-C-D-F-F) derived from the scale of the “funk” bass. As shown in Ex. 4.11a, the pitch content and contour of the first vocal and saxophone entries are based on the hexachord transposed to begin on E and A.23 Polytonal tension results from overlaying the female chorus that outlines the A dominant seventh chord on top of the “funk” bass that outlines the G dominant seventh. Within the first section of De Stijl, the “funk” bass undergoes various transpositions and contrapuntal manipulations.24 The most intriguing contrapuntal treatment is introduced at reh. 15 (3’42”), where a five-part canon on the “funk” bass unfolds in ascending semitone motion beginning with the stretto canons on A in the saxophone, followed by successive entries on A (m. 99), B (m. 105), and B (m. 113) in the trumpets. The succession of entries creates a surprisingly harmonious contrapuntal intersection of parts, devoid of clashing dissonances. Such a passage demonstrates Andriessen’s compositional prowess and mastery of technique that hark back to the Flemish contrapuntalists, such as Machaut, Obrecht, and Ockeghem.


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Ex. 4.11b: “T-cross” figurations (mm. 117–22, 4’37”) C

G D

E

A G

A

B D

The exhilarating five-part canon culminates in the vocal utterance of the “cross figure,” as shown in Ex. 4.11b. At this point, the “T-cross” figuration makes its first appearance in each of the four vocal parts, doubled by the trumpet. In musical terms, the “T-shape” is represented by upper and lower tones that flank the focal pitches, D, G, and B, as shown in the diagrams above the musical examples. Notice how the intervallic relationship between the focal pitch and the upper and lower tones is variable as long as the symmetry is retained: in the first two examples, they are a semitone apart from the focal pitch, while in the third example, they are a minor third away. The appearance of the “T-cross” motive inaugurates the second section of De Stijl. “T-cross” motives appear in different configurations within the slow, instrumental “chorale” that unfolds in the trombones, and is doubled by pianos and guitars beginning at m. 145. Andriessen further transforms the “funk” bass theme into an atonal, angular version and presents it in stretto canon at successive entries of E, E, and F (reh. 23, 7’00”). In an apparent homage to the medieval practice of writing mensural canon, Andriessen introduces the technique of a proportional canon in the bass drums (reh. 25, 7’57”). As shown in Ex. 4.11c, the second percussion’s part becomes rhythmically displaced by a semiquaver rest (see second bar), and the distance between the two parts widens proportionally as the passage continues. Since the drums are not precisely pitched, the composite effect quickly dissolves into a rhythmic canon. Within a few measures, two baritone saxophones enter with the “funk” bass theme on E to rectify the process to

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Ex. 4.11c: example of proportional canon (reh. 25)

Ex. 4.11d: B-A-C-H motive in the manner of a chorale (mm. 272–75)

a stretto canon and the texture builds to a rich succession of canons that unfold on top of one another. As if to top off his mastery of contrapuntal skills, Andriessen pays further homage to Bach by embedding the B-A-C-H motive in a manner that parallels Bach’s chorale variations where the theme appears in slow, rhythmic augmentation over faster-moving diminution of related materials. The trombones state the B-A-C-H motive in rhythmic augmentation over the variation of the “funk” theme on F in the piano, as shown in Ex. 4.11d (10’38”). Out of the texture of fast-moving semiquavers emerges the boogiewoogie music that ushers in the third section of De Stijl. Over the subtly-shifting boogie-woogie pattern above the D pedal, Madame Mondrian raps the story about her husband’s love for dancing.25 Following this extended monologue, the texture returns to the slow instrumental “chorale”; the chorus enters (reh. 44, 18’28”) by outlining the B-AC-H motive in augmentation over the text “cross figure”. The chorale leads to a condensed recapitulation of the opening “funk” bass on G (reh. 46, 19’07”), followed by the vocal entry that brings back the counter-motive on F. And then, out of nowhere, the texture leads to an instrumental tutti that replicates big band music in the style of Stan Kenton. Despite the kaleidoscopic change in stylistic idioms, the music holds together through its


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tonal relationship to G. This passage segues into a full-fledged recapitulation of the “funk” bass in G where the chorus sings the introductory pattern that quickly modulates from the G hexachord to another built on E; this is the first time that the passacaglia theme saturates both the instrumental and vocal textures. The final section returns to the slow “chorale” texture in the trombones, doubled by pianos, guitars, and flutes. Like the instrumental chorale that closes Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, the movement is brought to closure through the austerity and solemnity of the “T-cross” and B-A-C-H motives in the extended instrumental “chorale.” In spite of the apparent incongruity in stylistic idioms that are brought into juxtaposition, De Stijl hangs together by virtue of the strength of its underlying tonal framework. The passacaglia theme retains common tones as it undergoes sequential transformation in a process akin to commonchord modulation in tonal music. The main quotations that feature the boogie-woogie and big band music are likewise grounded in the focal “key” of G or its dominant D and allow for modulation to hexachords in closely related keys with ease and fluidity. Moreover, the ultimate compositional arsenal Andriessen displays in this movement is his mastery of contrapuntal techniques. De Stijl is built on a montage form that integrates seemingly incompatible stylistic genres, yet it is Andriessen’s craftsmanship that enables him to transcend borrowed materials and styles to create a successful integration of passacaglia, chorale variation, and big band jazz. For the concluding movement, Andriessen derived the proportion of the music from the structure of Kloos’s sonnet, dividing the movement into four sections based on the ratio of 4:4:3:3 to parallel the number of lines and stanza breaks in his sonnet.26 The tempo remains at crotchet = 72, while a sense of rhythmic acceleration is induced through increasing the harmonic rhythm. The idea for a pavane arose from Hendrik Andriessen’s Pavane for solo piano (1937) (Andriessen 2002a: 234; 2002b: 238).27 Inspired by Pijper’s “polytonal” style, which was popular at that time, the senior Andriessen wrote a pavane with a harmonic accompaniment that meanders chromatically, though securely anchored to a triad at the end of the phrase to give it stability. The opening section is characterized by slow, sustained harmonies in the upper register. The timbral combination of glockenspiel, vibraphone, piano, celesta, and harp gives the harmonic complex a chiseled edge, like a distant echo that bounces off a glacier wall. A repeating sextuplet motive in the bass and contrabass clarinets interrupts this austere texture, a distant “echo” of the animalian sounds introduced in Hadewijch. The opening chord is based on another variation of the “1-2-3-4” chord. The oscillation between B and

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Ex. 4.12a: Part IV of De Materie (mm.1–7)

Ex. 4.12b: antiphonal chorus (reh. 7, 8’11”)

A in the top notes alludes to the first two pitches of the B-A-C-H motive, and the pitches wander chromatically without direction. The second section comprises an antiphonal chorus of instruments; the addition of chords in the lower register forms a compound melody with the chords from the upper register. Andriessen uses a metaphor of “a very large slow-breathing protozoa[n]” (2002a: 235; 2002b: 239) to describe the alternation of chords between the high and low registers.28 As illustrated in Ex. 4.12b, Andriessen intended the lowest note of the chords in the high register and the highest note in the low register of the two pianos to form a composite melody; as indicated by the lines moving up and down, the composite melody oscillates back and forth between B3 and C4 then slides down to C4 and B3 prior to initiating another pattern beginning on D4 .29 Along the way, the harmonic rhythm steadily accelerates from seven crotchets per chord to an alternation between four and three. Although this technique of chordal alternation is related to the standard hocket, Andriessen


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Ex. 4.12c: choral entry on Kloos’s sonnet (reh. 14, 15’59”)

distinguishes it by means of the wide registral gap between the two parts. One may claim that, as an extension of the hocket technique, the material substance of the oscillating chords is elevated into an expressive metaphor for life itself. The progressive acceleration in the harmonic rhythm culminates in the alternation of chords at the distance of one crotchet apart; the even-paced exchange of high and low chords that utilize the full force of the orchestra strongly evokes the mysterious opening chordal progression in Part II of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring characterized by the oscillation between semitonerelated triads (E minor/major and D minor) over the D minor bass. Above this texture that gradually gains momentum, the male chorus sings the text by Willem Kloos that reflects on love, life, and death, as shown in Ex. 4.12c. The entry of the chorus coincides with the textural build-up in the instrumental parts. The texture reaches a climactic plateau leading up to reh.18; by suddenly dropping the dynamic level to pp, Andriessen intensifies the climactic moment when the female chorus joins in to sing the text: “O desire! The billow breaks over me, by the dark spray of the thrilled waves.” As the antiphonal chords die away, the metallic chords of glockenspiel and piano are struck three times in preparation for Madame Curie’s monologue (23’49”). Leaning lop-sidedly against a tall stool made of metal and glass,

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Ex. 4.12d: the final appearance of the B-A-C-H motive (reh. 22–23)

she recites her letters to her deceased husband: “Pierre, my Pierre. There you lie, like a wounded man with bandaged head resting in sleep. . . . Your coffin is closed and I will never see you again. I forbid them to cover it with the terrible black drapes. I cover it with flowers and sit near it . . .”30 As Curie tries to hold back her feelings, she is accompanied by another dancer who breaks into a frenetic dance and another actress who echoes Curie’s monologue, repeating the same word over and over (“ik, ik, ik . . .” or “loss, loss, loss . . .”) in the background, like a broken record. The juxtaposition of restraint and loss of control renders the emotional depth of Curie’s grief that much more powerfully. Curie’s monologue is framed by arguably the most profound and explicit quotation of the B-A-C-H motive in the course of De Materie. The opening chord from the movement is struck three times prior to Curie’s monologue, as shown in Ex. 4.12d. As the chord that contains the first letter of the motive rings, she begins her monologue. Upon the close of her monologue, the cowbells and rasp present the remaining three chords of the B-A-C-H motive in a rather dramatic fashion, interrupted by an extensive pause in between. As the signifier of the mystery of life beyond what humans are capable of grasping, the B-A-C-H motive sounds one last time as a commentary on the irreparable separation of spirit and matter that accompanies the experience of death. As the last chord sounds (not shown here), the lighting on stage grows dark except to cast a momentary spotlight on the dejected widow as if to emphasize her utter solitude. Unlike Hendrik Andriessen’s or any other form of extant pavane, the concluding movement of De Materie presents us with a pavane without a melody. Stripped of its exterior shape, his pavane is reduced to undulating chords


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without an apparent goal; yet the “void” created by the absence of melody curiously parallels Curie’s emotional “void” and this correspondence heightens the dramatic effect: the irreparable separation between spirit and matter brought on by death. The ascetic restraint suggested by the opening chords (which resemble those of De Tijd) provides a powerful driving force that captures the emotional depth of grief. The gradual rhythmic intensification and climactic plateau occur in the chorus’s singing of Kloos’s poem. The slow, metallic chords, when brought back in conjunction with Curie’s monologue at the end of the movement, assume an entirely new mode of significance as if each stroke of the chord echoes the emotional depth and numbness of Curie’s grief. Characterized by economy and restraint, the music and stage design elegantly embody the fundamental disjunction between emotion and reality, spirit and matter, which underlies Curie’s experience of profound grief.

Metaphysics of being and becoming The reviews of the première of the theatrical production of De Materie in Amsterdam and Rotterdam were undeniably mixed. Eddie Vetter from Het Parool called De Materie “a study in theatrical boredom,” and he criticized what he perceived as incompatibility between Wilson’s minimal choreography and Andriessen’s surly, repetitive music in Part I of De Materie. Paul Korenhof in Leids Dagblad similarly dismissed the theatrical component as full of amusement, but basically pretentious (1989). Only a few critics, such as Roland de Beer in De Volkskrant, found the theatrical production and the music highly impressive, or noticed that the apparent disjunctures between the music and the stage design were part of the paradox that Wilson and Andriessen had sought to emphasize in the production (1989). German critic Ulrich Bumann commented positively on Andriessen’s music for taking historical references beyond the “postmodern sentiments” that have pervaded theatrical productions in recent years (1989). Bumann’s point can be elaborated further by not labeling De Materie as “postmodern” on the basis of the pluralistic references and eclecticism that the work displays on the surface. While the mystical and visionary aspects of Wilson’s theater are romantic in their aesthetic trajectory, Andriessen’s musical setting of De Materie is fundamentally modernist in its aim and construction. Rather than avoiding totalizing form, Andriessen brings unity to the heterogeneous elements by situating them within an overarching formal scheme. In this respect, his aesthetic aim is not dissimilar to George Rochberg’s concept of ars combinatoria in which a pluralistic mélange of styles is brought together as “a way of seeing new possibilities of

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relationships” and “discovering hidden structural connections” (Berry 2002: 239). Yet Andriessen’s stance clearly differs from the “neoconservative” type of postmodernists (a category to which Rochberg belongs) who resort to tonal music as an expression of nostalgic yearning for an imagined cultural golden age of Western civilization. The search for Apollonian clarity and order, avoidance of Romantic sentiments, and engagement with dialectical concepts place Andriessen’s compositional strategies squarely within the tradition of Stravinskian modernism. Nonetheless, in his preoccupation with political engagement and the critical deconstruction of traditions, Andriessen’s aesthetic stance is more aligned with what Hal Foster calls an “oppositional” postmodernism or “postmodernism of resistance” (1983: xii).31 This tendency, which Andriessen develops in his operatic collaboration with Greenaway, will be explored more fully in chapter 6 and in the Epilogue. In what way does Andriessen’s compositional orientation in the 1980s present a departure from that of the preceding decade? Rather than exploiting overt discontinuities through the formal principle of montage (as exemplified in De Staat), his music from this period relies on rhythmic, motivic, and textural strategies for inducing large-scale continuity and continuity within and across movements. Rhythmic processes and layering of textures in De Tijd, metric modulation in De Snelheid, tempo scheme in De Materie, and various types of contrapuntal manipulation that appear in De Stijl articulate the underlying constructive principle that governs the piece. The simultaneous adoption and transformation of the four-movement symphonic form in the construction of De Materie attests to his emerging interest in unifying a composition based on a historical model or synthesis of models. Beyond the purely technical realm, the aesthetic aim that underlies Andriessen’s use of quotations and general approach to musical parody had shifted in character and resonance. The aesthetic neutrality of stijlloosheid (“stylelessness”) that governed Anachronie I (1966) led to an exploration of irony and absurdism in Il Principe (1971) and subsequently to a historical form of homage in De Materie. De Materie is replete with hidden references and numerological symbolism and in this respect reinstates parody as homage, a model adopted by composers such as Alban Berg in his Violin Concerto (1935) in which every number or embedded quotation assumes a symbolic significance related to the underlying theme. Andriessen’s homage to J. S. Bach is manifested literally in the pervasive manner by which he embedded the B-A-C-H motive in all four movements of De Materie. Although many of the quotations are not aurally comprehensible, it is at the symbolic level that he sought to create a connection with the tradition of great


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contrapuntal masters of European art music stemming back to Bach and Machaut. Thus the parodic techniques by which he transformed historical models and references are undoubtedly historical in trajectory. Just as Bach transformed the Renaissance genre of ricercare into a keyboard prelude, Andriessen transformed the genre of toccata into a series of hammering chords, a ballade into a fluid set of contrapuntal variations, a passacaglia that contains a boogie-woogie piano interlude, and a pavane based on oscillation of two chords that develops ever so slowly into a hocket. Along these lines, the exploration of timbre in slowly unfolding musical contexts assumed an important aesthetic aim. The idea of prolonging one texture over a long stretch of time arose originally in the sustained “chorale” writing that Andriessen had experimented with in works such as Ittrospezione III (Concept II) and Contra Tempus in the 1960s. Besides being an obvious homage to Bach, the chorale signified the quotidian practice of singing hymns and chorales at an extremely slow tempo in Dutch culture – an experience which was deeply embedded in Andriessen’s consciousness (as well as in the minds of other Dutch composers). This idea of a sustained “chorale” manifested as heterophony in works from the 1960s (as discussed in chapter 2) and became integrated with minimalistic idioms in works from the 1970s. The “chorale” postlude that closes Part III of De Materie perhaps presented this textural strategy in its simplest form as homage; the juxtaposition of a B-A-C-H motive in rhythmic augmentation over a faster-moving diminution comes closest to imitating the texture found in Bach’s chorale variations. In this sense, Andriessen came full circle to embrace the slogan of “Ars imitatio Artis” after Stravinsky. In coordination with Wilson’s theatrical production, musical content is separated from form through gestures that embody a semiotic and metaphorical network of associations rather than literal forms of representation. The music for De Materie comments on the indissoluble link between matter and spirit through mimesis of mechanical and bodily functions in sound, be it the hammering chords that embody the idea of revolution, the expanding and contracting rhythms in Hadewijch that simulate the mystic’s exasperation, or the motor rhythm of boogie-woogie that serves as a campy reference to the roaring twenties. The “tolling bell” chords, in comparison, acquire different modes of significance in association with the figures of Hadewijch (as a celebration of union with Christ) and Madame Curie (as a token of profound grief). The strength of such musical gestures lies in their power of evocation: to connote rather than delineate an emotional state of being. The metaphysical principles that underlie De Materie rest on these emergent and suggestive states of being and becoming.

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Notes 1. Also in composing De Tijd, Andriessen comments: “Emotions can be a dangerous gauge – as soon as you get the feeling you are getting carried away you should go off to do something else” (Schönberger 1981: 6). 2. Andriessen quotes from Dante’s Divine Comedy (“. . . gazing on the point beyond to which all times are present”) in evoking “the sound of a ‘continuous present’, an awareness of time standing still”. Preface to the published score by Louis Andriessen, De Tijd (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1995). 3. Andriessen also experimented with different manifestations of the “blue columns” in De Staat prior to De Tijd. 4. The technique of “shadow melody” was also applied to music used to accompany the ballet Dubbelspoor (“Double Track”) for harpsichord, piano, glockenspiel and celesta. This piece was first composed in 1984 and subsequently revised in 1994. 5. “The digit 3 occurs in Time as a consistently sustained jambe [iambic] rhythm. That jambe rhythm is constantly subject to acceleration through value sequences such as 6–12, 5–10, 4–8, 3–6, in contradistinction to the binary rhythms which are regular.” 6. Interview with Andriessen on 21 Oct. 2003. 7. Adams had been a fan of Andriessen’s music and took the initiative to conduct De Staat himself two months prior to the première of De Snelheid. See Visser 1984. 8. This chart elaborates on the one Andriessen provided some fifteen years after the piece was written (2002a: 179; 2002b: 183). The original tempo indications that appear in the publication of the score by Donemus deviate slightly from this chart, e.g., the opening tempo is 46 instead of 45, etc. 9. Carter prepares the transition to a new meter and tempo by initiating a change in subdivision through the use of cross-accents and rhythmic grouping prior to when the metric modulation occurs. See Schiff 1983. 10. Andriessen traces the origin of this melody to slow melodies played by the string section in typical American symphonic music. He also views it as homage to American cowboy films. 11. Andriessen comments on De Tijd: “At certain times, I decided to trust my intuition and change the values in the chords so that they were uneven and the proportions inexact” (Trochimczyk 2002: 143). 12. Deafman Glance was the culmination of Wilson’s collaboration with Raymond Andrews, a young deaf-mute boy with whom Wilson explored a world of visual rather than verbal logic. See Wilson 2004. 13. For the knee-plays in De Materie, Wilson chose a satirical cartoon of seventeenthcentury Dutch marriage in which the “hen-pecked” husband is made to suffer various indignities by his wife. 14. The title refers to Marx’s comment; “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness” (1977: xi).


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15. The text was written by the widow of the composer Van Domselaer, who wrote down her memories of Mondrian for the literary journal Maatstaf. 16. According to Coenen, the 144 strokes of hammering chords that make up the toccata (3’) are followed by the motet which encompasses the text from the abjuration (5 1/2’), followed by the entrance of Gorlaeus (15’). The tripartite proportion of 3:5:15 corresponds to that found in Bach’s Prelude. 17. Although a sketch is not included here, Andriessen used a logarithmic table to guide the rate of rhythmic acceleration in order to emulate an exponential curve. 18. Timings are based on CD 1 (track 1) of De Materie (Nonesuch 79324–2). 19. Interview with Andriessen on 25 July 2003. 20. My chart is based on Andriessen’s original sketch for the architectural plan of Rheims Cathedral. The measure numbers in the published score deviate from those found in Coenen’s and Maya Trochimczyk’s charts (Coenen 1997: 2; Trochimczyk 2002: 19). 21. Timings are based on CD 1 (track 2) of De Materie. 22. The group consisted of jazz musicians from De Volharding and pop musicians from De Hoketus which delighted Andriessen, who was set on writing music for what he called the “Terrible Orchestra of the Twenty-first Century” (Andriessen 2002a: 211–13; 200b: 215–17). 23. Timings are based on CD 2 (track 1) of De Materie. 24. A complete chart of transpositions is provided by Kouneva 1991: 10–11. 25. The text, which can be recited either in Dutch or English, is given two different rhythmic configurations. 26. According to Coenen’s analysis, the first two sections each contain exactly 504 crotchets and the next two sections 378 crotchets (11). 27. For a musical excerpt from Hendrik’s pavane, see Andriessen 2002a: 234; 2002b: 238. 28. The Dutch word for the protozoa is the blaasbalg, dating back to the seventeenth century. 29. Timings are based on CD 2 (track 2) of De Materie. 30. Program notes to the CD recording. 31. Unlike the popular or reactionary form of postmodernism, oppositional or resistant postmodernism is concerned with “a critical deconstruction of tradition, not an instrumental pastiche of pop- or pseudo-historical forms. . . .”

5 Ramifications

“Andriessen is a star in the USA,” reads the headline of a review in Het Parool regarding the performance of De Staat in 1986 by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (Vogel 1986). Soon after De Staat won the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize and the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers Prize in 1977, the piece received performances in Poland, Denmark, Russia, England, Canada, and the United States.1 In spite of its popularity, however, the reception of the politically-charged work abroad varied considerably from one locale to another. The British critics were rather cool; their reviews termed the music crude and exhausting, and questioned the relevance of the underlying populist stance (Adlington 2004a: 120–21). By contrast, American response was overwhelmingly positive. Following the US première at the California Institute for the Arts (Cal Arts) in 1983, De Staat was performed by the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (under John Adams) in the same year, at Tanglewood (under Gunther Schuller) in July 1984, and by the New York Philharmonic in May 1986. The exposure of American audiences to Andriessen’s music led to a number of residencies in universities, beginning with Cal Arts (1983), Yale University (1986), the State University of New York at Buffalo (1990), and Duke University (1991). Andriessen quickly acquired status as an American “guru” to a host of young composers in pursuit of a new musical identity that could bridge the distance between modernist and popular musical culture. Particularly noteworthy are the ramifications of Andriessen’s influence on two distinct groups, namely, his alliance with The Hague school of composers in the Netherlands, and the young generation of British, American, and Australian composers with whom Andriessen came into contact during the 1980s. Rather than lumping the music of these composers together as “postminimal” or “postmodern”, I propose to examine the social and cultural contexts that distinguish the aesthetic orientation of Dutch new music ensembles (the LOOS ensemble and De Volharding) from their American or British counterparts and Andriessen’s pivotal role in making the aesthetic and cultural boundaries permeable. Analytical discussions of three ensemble pieces composed during the early 1990s follow: namely, Facing Death, Hout, and Zilver, commissioned by both American and Dutch ensembles. How did the aesthetic visions of composers and ensembles in New York City

R a m i fi c a t i o n s

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and Amsterdam contribute to the discursive social structures and formation of music communities across the Atlantic?

The “hard-edged” aesthetics of The Hague school Since the late 1960s, The Hague school of composers, distinguished themselves from other schools in the Netherlands by being extremely principled in their aesthetic stance. In spite of his frequent residencies abroad, Andriessen maintained his appointment as Professor of Composition at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and worked closely with his colleagues Dick Raaijmakers (who set up the electronic studio in 1967), Jan Boerman, Gilius van Bergeijk, Huib Emmer, Cornelis de Bondt, Diderik Wagenaar, and Victor Wentink (Carl 1987: 14). The “hard-edged” aesthetics of The Hague school became crystallized in the music played by the Ensemble Hoketus, characterized as “typically loud, aggressive, rhythmically energetic, devoid of neo-romantic sentiments, and often amplified or electronically manipulated” (Carl 1987: 14). Specializing in hocket technique, the ensemble performed pieces such as Andriessen’s Hoketus and Wagenaar’s Tam Tam that demanded absolute solidarity on the part of the musicians. In a concert that featured La Monte Young and Terry Riley at the Concertgebouw in 1977, the story goes that Philip Glass shouted “fantastic” in praise of the group’s ability to execute the hocket technique so well (Carl 1987: 14). The group toured in Warsaw, Budapest, Vienna, London, Stockholm, Athens, Berlin, and Paris before disbanding in 1986.2 Because the group consisted of performers some of whom were also composers, Hoketus’s aesthetic commitment was very rigidly defined in a way that resisted commercial appeal. As a consequence, they gained notoriety for turning down works by well-known composers even at the risk of sabotaging cultural relations; for instance, they criticized Michael Nyman’s piece as “too boring with too many simple cadences” and rejected Michael Smetanin’s piece because it was “too modernist” (De Beer 1986).3 Consisting mainly of musicians with a pop background, the ensemble performed music with heavy references to pop genres, e.g., Gene Carl’s “Gray Matter” (1981) and Frank Zappa’s The Black Page (1976)4 ; they even performed together for a short time with a pop group called Mimicry. Huib Emmer, the bass guitarist in the group, summed up their activities over ten years: “We started with an extreme viewpoint in commenting on minimalist music, then began to branch out in other directions by playing different types of music. We exhausted the possibilities. You don’t want to become a clone of yourself” (De Beer 1986). Increasingly, the group began to

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Ex. 5.1: Misha Mengelberg’s Enkele Regels in de Dierentuin (“Some Rules in the Zoo,” 1996)

quibble over how to expand their repertory without diluting their rigorous aesthetic stance. Emmer’s “Singing the Pictures” (1981), which employed montage technique in conjunction with avant-garde writing for the Fender Rhodes, caused disputes in rehearsals. The group needed to work with a conductor for the first time to perform Klas Torstensson’s Sp˚ara (1984) based on a broad spectrum of instrumental possibilities that derive from the complex aesthetics of Iannis Xenakis. When such disputes over performance and future plans got out of hand, the group decided to call it quits in 1986. Before disbanding, Hoketus collaborated with De Volharding in a project called Kaalslag; this “terrifying” combination of ensembles performed Andriessen’s work De Stijl at the Holland Festival in 1985. The members then went on to form other ensembles, notably the piano duo team of Cees van Zeeland and Gerard Bouwhuis, the LOOS ensemble, and Hollandia ZT (a theater group). The LOOS ensemble, created in 1982 by Peter van Bergen, has since carried on the hard-edged aesthetic of Hoketus by combining jazz improvisation with composition. Inspired by the American saxophonist Odean Pope and his trio, Van Bergen wished to explore the possibilities of improvising with small rhythmic cells and bare timbre within a formalized context.5 Since its inception, the group has specialized in performing two types of repertoire: improvisatory music that involves graphic and indeterminate scores and composed music with no improvisation. To illustrate a typical piece from the first category, an excerpt from Misha Mengelberg’s score is shown in Ex. 5.1; highly syncopated, tight-knit rhythmic gestures


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are assigned to tenor saxophone, bass guitar, and percussion to start off the piece. In such improvisational contexts, the performers make instant decisions about how to execute gestures from notated or graphic symbols based on aural cues. LOOS’s radical aesthetic is grounded in the act of “generating music as an experience and experiment in form and content.”6 Rather than using music to please the audience, the players engage the audience to work out the underlying concept through the act of listening. Moreover, Van Bergen sums up the group’s political mission by situating its radical aesthetic within Marx’s materialist account of dialectics: In order to push artistic boundaries, you have to call the status quo into question. Translated into societal terms, this would mean that the establishment should never rest on its laurels. Anything we do that is new is always threatened by its antithesis as the prevailing power structure transforms it into a temporary form of synthesis. There is never a moment’s rest. (Bas Andriessen 1998: 155)

In spite of its anti-establishment posture, LOOS has successfully expanded its mission outward by connecting with avant-garde jazz and music communities around the world; for example, their 1997 performance of De Bondt’s De tragische handeling in a contemporary music festival in Warsaw was enormously successful (Bas Andriessen 1998: 155). They have toured in Poland, Germany, Russia, Canada, the United States, Japan, and Sweden and collaborated with avant-garde jazz musicians such as George Lewis in the University of California at San Diego. To expand their pool of repertory that combines improvisation and composed music, they commissioned works by both Dutch and foreign composers. In the category of composed music, LOOS has specialized in performing music by The Hague school of composers, often characterized by complexity and constructive rigor. Representing this category are pieces by De Bondt and Wagenaar, which share the polyrhythmic structure and layering technique with Andriessen’s De Tijd and De Snelheid, but in many respects surpass their mentor’s work in rhythmic complexity and philosophical rigor. Like Andriessen, De Bondt and Wagenaar profess their allegiance to historical models and their indebtedness to composers from the past; for instance, they conceive their rhythmic language as an extension of musical practices dating back to Ars Nova. De Bondt’s and Wagenaar’s kinship rests on the premise that “composing is exploring” and thus “the will to compose music comes out of the will to investigate musical phenomena and laws” (Hiu 2003). Looking back on his student years at The Hague conservatory, De Bondt credits Jan van Vlijmen with teaching him the serial techniques of the Second

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Viennese School, and Andriessen with orienting him toward composing music on philosophical and conceptual grounds.7 De Bondt’s music from the 1980s demonstrates a unique synthesis of serial and minimalist procedures; working with independent layers of musical materials that form a collage, he developed a number of serial processes, i. e., canon series, to manipulate the borrowed materials with the aid of a computer (De Bondt 1999: 22–24).8 In Het gebroken oor (“The Broken Ear”) (1983–84), for example, De Bondt took the opening motive from Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony Op. 9, fragmented the appearance of the quotation based on his canonic series and then devoted the rest of the piece to its reconstruction (1999: 25). Likewise, in his De deuren gesloten (“Doors Closed”) (1984–85), he took the melodic structure and chordal progressions from the first eight measures of the slow movement from Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and subjected them to the canon series; fragments of these quotations shift and slide over one another in the various layers of instrumentation (De Bondt 1999: 26).9 Schönberger describes De Bondt’s compositional modus operandi as follows: “not only do the borrowed fragments exude an overwhelmingly elegiac connotation, but the process of deconstruction and reconstruction, as a result of the stubborn inevitability with which the compositional cogwheels are set into motion, has an air of ‘manifest destiny’ to it. The partly serial, partly minimalistic, processes that guide the music exhibit a strongly mechanistic, and therefore ritualistic character” (De Bondt 1999: 11). Wagenaar, on the other hand, developed his polyrhythmic technique in a more intuitive manner. An early work called Liederen (1976) for saxophones, horns, trumpets, trombones, two pianos, and double bass displays a striking use of rhythmic unison; this opening texture then gradually shifts to become the basis of a polymetric canon in the middle of the composition, culminating in the embedded quotation from the “Liebestod” in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (Carl 1987: 15–16). While rhythmically more differentiated, Liederen resembles Andriessen’s De Staat in its sectionalized form based on montage, modal harmonies, and textural layering. In a later piece, Metrum (1981–84) for saxophone quartet and orchestra, Wagenaar employs an intricate polyphonic juxtaposition of three layers related by the proportional ratios (9: 12: 16); motives of differing lengths derived from eight chord types give rise to a complex and continually evolving soundscape so that the piece imparts “a feeling of escalation” extending from the smallest element to the overall form (Carl 1987: 21). In Limiet (1985) for string quartet, by contrast, he introduces a sparse, translucent texture with minute shifts in articulation and color and employs metric modulation to control shifts in tempo and rhythmic structure.


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Pay-Uun Hiu distinguishes The Hague school of composers’ and LOOS’s aesthetic stance from other Dutch schools on the basis of their Calvinistic commitment to sobriety and rigor. Their “principled” approach to making music is tightly connected to the Calvinist ethos, she argues, and explains that this is one reason why their music resists commodification or mass appeal. For instance, when De Bondt’s The Tragic Act received its performance at the South Bank, London, in 2002, Tom Service wrote: “whatever the violence of individual gestures, there was little to sustain interest over the course of the whole piece” (Service 2002). Interest in constructive rigor tends to distinguish the aesthetic orientation of The Hague school of composers from that of other compositional schools found within Holland: e.g., students of Ton de Leeuw (Paul Termos, Jan Rokus van Rosendael, Sinta Wullur), whose music features linear, heterophonic development of materials derived from intersections with Asian music; Guus Jansen’s improvisational style characterized by extreme sobriety and irony; Tristan Keuris, who writes for traditional symphonic genres in his own inimitable neoclassical style; Simeon ten Holt’s and Jacob ter Veldhuis’s neo-tonal and accessible forms of minimalism; and the more conservative styles of Rotterdam composers such as Klaas de Vries and Peter-Jan Wagemans. The Hague conservatory has thrived within a tradition that was established in the late 1960s. Their program in composition accepts students who exhibit a strong potential for originality and individuality under the guidelines that emphasize two objectives: “strengthening of individual identity and talent” and samenwerking (“cooperation”). Composers still conduct “ideological” meetings behind closed doors.10 Since the 1980s, many foreign students have passed through those doors to study composition with Andriessen and specialize in the performance of contemporary music that crosses aesthetic boundaries.

The making of an American “guru”: from California to New York City During the 1960s, American colleges and universities demonstrated their renewed commitment to the arts by constructing multi-million-dollar arts centers that housed performance spaces, galleries, and studios. Stuart Hobbs describes the processes by which the avant-garde became institutionalized in the decades that followed; ideals of participatory democracy, political content of art, and modernist as well as radical aesthetics in the fine arts became contained and, in some cases, fossilized within the walls of academic institutions (1997).11 As a result, colleges and universities in North America have hosted contemporary music festivals since the 1970s, offering residencies

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ˆ to renowned foreign composers such as Luciano Berio, György Ligeti, Toru Takemitsu, Witold Lutoslawski, and others. In the 1980s, Andriessen joined the ranks. Jack Vees, who teaches electronic music at Yale University, recalls meeting Andriessen during his first American residency at Cal Arts in 1983. As a guitarist, he performed many of Andriessen’s compositions at their premières in the new music festival co-sponsored by the University of California at San Diego. Cal Arts was at this time a hotbed for contemporary music, with a composition faculty that boasted the presence of Vinko Globokar, Morton Subotnick, and Mel Powell. Vees worked closely with Andriessen during his residency, trying out the bass guitar part for De Stijl that Andriessen had begun to compose at this time. Andriessen’s influence and the hocketing technique in particular can be traced in Vees’s composition called A Refutation of Gravity (1983) for four electric guitars and drummers. Members of the Contemporary Players who performed Andriessen’s De Staat and De Tijd during this festival later formed the ensemble California E.A.R. Unit. Unlike the sunny, laissez-faire disposition of California institutions, the new music scene in New York was polemically divided during the 1980s between “uptown” (e.g., Babbitt, Sessions, and Carter) and “downtown” (e.g., Cage, Feldman, and Reich) composers. To the young composers, this division reflected a battle between the academic establishment (Columbia University, Lincoln Center, Juilliard, and Princeton University) and the freelance world of “downtown” artists and musicians who congregated south of Houston Street. Sally Banes describes how two branches of vanguard artistic trends followed on the heels of 1960s radicalism: the medium-oriented formalism of the 1970s and the deeply ambivalent, ironic, reflexive art of the 1980s (1993: 8). The division in new music most likely emanated from the institutionalization of the “high” modernist and formalist schools of composition on the one hand and the emergence of postmodern culture from the amalgamation of avant-garde and popular music on the other. The young musicians and composers inhabiting New York City in the 1980s thus gravitated toward radically different poles. Even before Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, and David Lang founded Bang on a Can (BOAC), they were transformed by Andriessen’s music.12 They looked up to Andriessen as their role model in bridging the gap between the uptown and downtown musical scenes. In the program notes that accompany their CD Industry, the following encomium appears: The Dutch composer Louis Andriessen has been an inspiration from the start. When we first heard his music in the early 80s, it completely resonated with us. The sounds were beautiful, made up of bold strokes, nothing subtle.


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It was rebellious and original but also intellectual. . . . To us, Louis was the missing piece, a tie to the rigorous thinking of European classicism but inspired by American minimalists. He was also the first European composer we had encountered who was versed in the European modernist tradition but recognized that rock’n’ roll existed, who strongly acknowledged the existence of America. (CD Industry 1995)

According to Wolfe, disillusioned by the confinement of new music within academic walls, the three composers got together to “make a new home for a new generation of composers” (Bang on a Can 2003). Lang describes their effort partly as a gesture to “heal the wounds of modernist composers” who had become alienated from the public at large.13 Gordon saw their mission as an ideological commitment to composers such as Elliott Carter, whose music was performed in Carnegie Hall, and Glass and Reich, whose music was typically performed in museums. To the three, composers from both the uptown and downtown camps were equally revolutionary. Building on Martin Bresnick’s all-night marathon concert at Yale University, they inaugurated a twelve-hour marathon concert in 1987, featuring twenty-three compositions by both uptown and downtown composers, such as Milton Babbitt’s Vision and Prayer (1961) and Steve Reich’s Four Organs (1970). Andriessen’s Hoketus also received a performance by members from the original ensemble, BOAC, and the California E.A.R. Unit. Program notes were eliminated for the occasion in order to avoid any form of indoctrination; the packed audience comprised mostly non-specialists who showed up out of curiosity. They quickly established a steady following and the marathon concert became an annual event. The BOAC composers’ compositions from the early 1990s collectively emphasize raw physicality of sound. This quality is exemplified by their CD Industry, which features Andriessen’s Hoketus and Hout along with music by Wolfe, Gordon, and Lang. Julia Wolfe’s Lick (1994) takes a funk motive from James Brown and develops it into a post-minimal style of fusion. The funk style is captured in her use of slap guitar and “hard” attacks on offbeats. Andriessen’s influence can be traced not only in the instrumentation (saxophone, electric guitar, piano, cello, bass, and percussion), but also in the rhythmically charged pauses between the opening chords, layering of semiquaver motives with different cross-accents, and extensive use of hockets to break up the rhythmic attacks. Lang’s Anvil Chorus (1991) exploits a rhythmic process set into motion in a more rigorous and abstract manner. In the spirit of Varèse’s Ionisation, this percussion piece sets metallic instruments in continuously evolving rhythmic dialogue with one another. Gordon’s Industry (1992) features a

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solo cello spinning out a languid, modal melodic fragment that gradually transforms and gains dynamic and rhythmic momentum through electronic manipulation. All the pieces in one way or another pay tribute to the human condition in the post-industrial age by exploring the power of repetition simultaneously as a form of ritual and as an expressive device. On the British front, Steve Martland has played a prominent role in adopting Andriessen’s anti-establishment ideology and contributing to a movement, which has been described as the “British New Wave”; amplified, muscular, and powerfully rhythmic, he merges pop and jazz idioms in music written specifically for The Steve Martland Band (Stanley 1996: 14). Martland was one of the first foreign students to study with Andriessen at the Hague Conservatory between 1982 and 1985. He first learned about Andriessen when Hoketus performed in London on tour. Upon meeting Andriessen through Rzewski, Martland decided to study composition with him in Holland. In an interview, Martland commented that “without Andriessen, he would not have become a composer” (Lelong 1996: 255). Of all Andriessen’s students, Martland has done the most to acknowledge the function of the composer in society through his commitment to music education.14 In addition to assisting Peter Maxwell Davies with his composition course, he has established his own summer school for underprivileged student composers and has provided composition lessons free of charge (Stanley 1996: 17). Martland’s music reworks Andriessen’s trademark formulas of hockets and ground bass into his own hybrid idiom based on rock, jazz, and medieval music in Principia (1990) and Danceworks (1993). While Principia makes use of two chords cast in continually varying rhythmic and instrumental combinations, Danceworks assigns ostinato figures to saxophones, guitars, and pianos in a manner that strongly recalls De Staat in coloration and rhythmic characteristics. In contrast, Patrol (1992) for string quartet, explores the slow, contemplative side of Martland’s creative imagination, drawing simultaneously from techniques of Scottish folk fiddling and medieval isorhythm for contrapuntal elaboration. This three-movement piece for string quartet attests to Martland’s versatility as a composer whose stylistic range far exceeds what is commonly attributed to British New Wave. The “crossover” label often affixed to Martland’s music stems from its overall accessibility – melodies and rhythmic processes that are easy to listen to – and thus offers a window through which to entice a younger generation of audience to appreciate new music. ∗∗∗ In 1993, the first definitive book on Andriessen appeared in Dutch. De slag van Andriessen, a collection of essays edited by Frits van der Waa, is a kind of


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liber amicorum, written by colleagues and students. Van der Waa consulted the composer when he embarked on the project in commemoration of the 1993 festival of Andriessen’s music in The Hague (supported by the Johan Wagenaar Foundation). “De slag” can be interpreted as a blow, stroke, or beat – a term that refers literally to the strike of “toccata” chords from part I of De Materie. The term also serves as a metaphor-at-large for Andriessen’s aesthetic position; he refers to the essays in the collection as “a weapon to fight against academicism and the so-called ‘avant-garde’ in other countries” (Van der Waa 1993: 11). The essays shed light on Andriessen’s aesthetic stance and music from different angles: the novelist J. Bernlef comments on influences of jazz; Hiu discusses the origin of the hocket technique developed by the Hague School; Schönberger’s probing essay traces the influences of Stravinsky and “chorale” writing in Andriessen’s music; and provocative essays by his foreign students, Martland, David Dramm, and Edward Harsh, contemplate Andriessen’s contribution from broader historical and cultural perspectives. The Dutch perspective is summed up by Van der Waa in the introduction: “Andriessen’s music is reductionist par excellence. It is explicitly dialectical. . . . The addition of pattern A and B does not yield the sum of their patterns (A + B), but rather A + B + (A + B). Hoketus is a rigorous example of this modification of laws” (1993: 46). Analogous to artists such as Mondrian, Picasso, and Stravinsky who work by “selecting, reducing, and combining parts in a dialectical manner,” Andriessen brings about “direct collision and change of laws” in his art and impels the listener to undertake his or her own contemplation of the world (Van der Waa 1993b: 41). In comparison, Harsh’s essay explores the differences and similarities between Dutch and American cultures, drawing connections between the anti-academic posture in Vees’s compositions and the romantic ideal in Lang’s music to illustrate two sides of Andriessen’s creative influence on American composers. In particular, Harsh’s musing over Andriessen’s Mausoleum as embodying the tension between anti-romantic and romantic ideals is insightful; he develops this tension as a symbol of “the ambivalent feelings many young American composers have toward nineteenth-century music” and the alienation experienced by young composers in dealing with its hegemonic status in the music world (Van der Waa 1993b: 100–03). On a less political note, Dramm then discusses the rich complexity of Andriessen’s small-scale compositions like Melodie and Symphony for Open Strings, in which the composer works with extreme restrictions and compares their significance with works by Morton Feldman and John Cage (Van der Waa 1993b: 133–47). In spite of its diverse and somewhat disconnected perspectives, this collection of essays conveys the contributors’ irrepressible enthusiasm and excitement

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for Andriessen as a catalyst in bridging the cultural divide between New York City and Amsterdam.

Analytic explorations: from bebop to Bach Compositional traits of Andriessen’s ensemble pieces from the early 1990s demonstrate a continuation and further refinement of concepts and techniques explored in the works from the preceding decade. Facing Death (1990) is related to On Jimmy Yancey (1973) in the superficial sense that Andriessen foregrounds jazz as a primary reference; yet the later work differs from the earlier in its deployment of a through-composed, developmental form that integrates a quotation from Charlie Parker into a hybrid idiom. In comparison, Hout (“wood”) and Zilver (“silver”) represent Andriessen’s preoccupation with rhythmic processes and transformation of metaphysical principle into an abstract form of musical inquiry following De Tijd and De Snelheid. Facing Death for string quartet, commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, was composed during Andriessen’s residency at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He loves to tell the story about how Thelonious Monk complained one night after a performance about playing “wrong” wrong notes (Van der Waa 1993: 140). Facing Death may be construed as Andriessen’s own expression of this double negation. The piece incorporates a bebop melody from Parker’s Ornithology, yet it does not constitute a parody in the usual sense. Perhaps the best way to describe the piece is in terms of a continual development (or deconstruction) of Parker’s improvisation through fragmentation and interpolation of “wrong” or misguided harmonies. Andriessen indicates two types of rhythmic articulation in the score: swinging the rhythm (JT = jazz time) or executing the rhythm precisely as indicated (NT = normal time). The extremely fast tempo of crotchet = 220 MM is an attribute carried over from Parker’s bebop playing. The form is through-composed and does not divide into sections based on recurrences of thematic or motivic elements. Considering the length of the piece (twenty minutes), it is highly unusual for Andriessen not to employ any kind of systematic procedure for organizing the internal sections, as reflected in his comment that “Facing Death is actually a development without an exposition or recapitulation” (Andriessen 2002a: 270; 2002b: 272). The piece begins with a twenty-eight-bar introduction in the bebop style. Andriessen develops the triplet motive from Parker’s Ornithology with clear tonal orientation; E is established as a tonic through repetition of E and G at bars 7–8 and through its dominant B. Example 5.2a illustrates the first violin part, which after m.4 is doubled at the unison or octave by the other strings.


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Ex. 5.2a: Facing Death (mm.1–12)

Ex. 5.2b: quotation from “Ornithology” (mm. 27–34)

Just as Parker’s Ornithology oscillates between G major and its parallel minor in melodic inflections, the introduction of Facing Death alternates between major and minor thirds in the transposed context of E.15 When the literal quotation of Ornithology appears at reh. 2, however, it is anchored to a dissonant harmony that poignantly defamiliarizes the reference; as shown in Ex. 5.2b, while the first and second violins state the theme in E, the cello and viola sustain the F minor seventh chord with a dissonant clash between E seventh and E ninth. The chordal progression from F to B implies the ii – V progression, although the expected resolution to the tonic E is cleverly evaded. Following this passage, the literal quotation of Ornithology never returns. In reference to the remaining passages, Kevin Whitehead remarks: “the variations have very little to do with bebop phrasing, timing, or harmonic extensions” (1999: 243). Rather than dismissing the bebop references completely, I interpret the rest of the piece as an exercise in double negation. The music brings back fragments of Parker’s improvisation on the bebop melody in different guises, maintaining the unison texture except for brief cadential passages in which the four parts split up in register to sustain an extended harmony of one sort or another (anchored to the ii – V or V- I cadence with a

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Ex. 5.2c: Facing Death (reh. 26, mm. 269–77)

smattering of “wrong” notes). A noticeable shift in texture occurs beginning at reh. 9; while maintaining the texture of rhythmic unison, the cello begins to play alternately in parallel sixths, fourths, and fifths against the upper three strings. The harmonic progression seems to gravitate toward atonality at reh. 26, where each fragment of the bebop melody is interrupted by a series of sustained dissonant chords. Despite the addition of “wrong” notes that obscure the tonal logic of the progression, the bass notes are anchored to a “disguised” fifth progression (with tritone interpolation) as shown in Ex. 5.2c. The doubling of three G’s above the bass note D negates its potential function as dominant to G, although the following tritone substitution on A fulfills that function. The tendency of G to function as a dominant is, in turn, averted by the intrusion of the melodic fragment on D at the end of m. 277. Facing Death, in this way, retains certain vestiges of tonal function without ever making a full transition to either bebop or atonal styles. Andriessen inserts fragments of the bebop melody in rhythmic unison throughout the middle section in such a way that the listener never quite loses sight of the initial reference. By the time the piece reaches the coda in which the four parts come together in rhythmic unison, the texture has dissolved into a hybrid idiom that is based neither in jazz nor in atonality. Following a final ascent to an ostinato motive in the high register, the piece concludes with a semiquaver motive that presents a four-part harmony of E minor with an added diminished fifth (B). To the end, the piece is about infusing “wrong” notes into the harmonization in lieu of a conventional bebop cadence. Compared to On Jimmy Yancey, in which the boogie-woogie assumes an explicit and thematic function and then becomes “alienated” by the presence of other styles, the jazz quotation in Facing Death assumes a concealed,


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Ex. 5.3a: opening of Hout (main motive shown in bracket)

hidden role: a point of departure for creative development rather than functioning as the main gesture that holds the piece together. By deconstructing the reference to Ornithology through and through, Andriessen strips it of melodic identity and tonal orientation. Perhaps this process of defamiliarization serves as a metaphor for the way memory functions in confrontation with death – bits and pieces of the memories of our lives flash in front of us at an alarming speed without any form of coherence. The piece can also be interpreted as an ironic commentary on jazz musicians like Parker whose career in the “fast lane” led to his premature death. Commissioned by the LOOS ensemble, Hout was written for a quartet of instruments consisting of tenor saxophone, marimba/woodblock, guitar, and piano. Like much of Andriessen’s music from the 1970s, this fast-paced piece in four-part canon engages the performers in precise execution of rhythm. True to the spirit of The Hague school, Hout is about perseverance. The main motive is found in the opening three measures: a dyad in semiquavers outlines a wedge that expands to a minor ninth, as shown in Ex. 5.3a. The tenor saxophone (in B) states the motive and the three other instruments enter in stretto canon, where successive entries are separated at the distance of one semiquaver. The composite effect created is a composed-out “delay”; as if the gesture had been put through an electronic reverberator, one hears the three subsequent entries as the echo of the first and not as layers independent of the saxophone. Taking E as an axis tone of the wedge, the opening motive partially outlines an ascending scale in Dorian mode (E-F-G-A), counterbalanced by a symmetrical descent from E to B that spans a perfect fourth. The modal implication changes kaleidoscopically as chromatic alterations are introduced one by one in the subsequent measures.

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Fig. 5.3b: formal overview of Hout mm.

timing

section

texture

mode

1–18.5 18.5 – 57 58 – 64 65–120 121–67 167.5–193

0’00” 0’48” 2’21” 2’50” 5’09” 7’06”

Hout motive Hout motive 1st episode 1st development 2nd development 2nd episode/ 3rd develop.

canonic canonic homophonic canonic canonic canonic

194–210

8’11”

3rd episode

211–36 237–43 244-

8’53” 9’58” 10’15”

4th development transition Hout motive

compound melody canonic unison unison

E Dorian -> chromatic F Dorian -> chromatic E Dorian chromatic chromatic sequence of suspension D octatonic -> chromatic G7 -> chromatic chromatic C Dorian-> chromatic E Dorian -> chromatic

[Timings are based on Sony Classical 5K 66483, track 2]

The remainder of the piece can be interpreted as a developmental variation of the Hout motive, transposed and varied in pitch level and interspersed by episodic passages in which the four parts come together to participate in a homophonic sequence in the style of J. S. Bach. My interpretation of the formal division is shown under Fig. 5.3b. 16 The canonic texture culminates in a cadence at the end of each section and the start of a new section is articulated by the recurrence of the motive either transposed to a different pitch level or modified in various ways. For example, in its second entry at m. 18.5, the melodic and rhythmic pattern of the canon begins to deviate more aggressively in pitch and rhythmic pattern and the sections increase in length. As the piece unfolds, the canonic texture takes on greater interest via contraction and expansion of rhythmic units. To diffuse the intensity of the canon at a close distance, Andriessen introduces episodic passages in which the four parts come together in rhythmic unison. Interestingly, the passages that I have designated as episodes are based on Bachian counterpoint: compound melodies that descend by a fixed intervallic pattern typically found in sequential passages in Bach’s music, as shown in Ex. 5.3c. In the third episode, the four instruments come together to form a compound melody, outlining a descending intervallic pattern over the stationary bass note on G. The developmental sections that follow typically begin with previously stated material and vary the motivic ideas further through sequences that energize the rhythmic texture. Example 5.3d shows such a passage in which


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Ex. 5.3c: third episode (mm. 195–97)

Ex. 5.3d: Hout (third development, mm. 186–88)

the rhythmic pattern gradually contracts in length from 9, to 7, to 5 semiquavers in conjunction with a harmonic sequence that comprises a chain of diatonic seventh chords. In addition, the accents on the offbeat continually displace the metric accents to maximize rhythmic tension prior to settling into an episodic passage (analogous to Ex. 5.3c) in which the four parts come together in rhythmic unison. The piece closes with an abbreviated return of the main motive at m. 244 when a woodblock clap on the downbeat punctuates the recapitulation of the main motive, interjected by a measure of rest. The unexpected sound of the woodblock simultaneously alludes to the title of the piece and

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Ex. 5.4a: formal scheme of Zilver (Andriessen’s sketch)

provides a whimsical touch at the end. Although commissioned by the LOOS ensemble, this piece, along with Hoketus, became part of the staple repertoire performed by the BOAC ensemble over the years. Evan Ziporyn, who has played the lead saxophone part, comments on the extreme degree of mental and physical concentration it takes to keep the four-part canon in place.17 Zilver (1994), a companion piece to Hout, similarly refers to the material constitution of the instruments being featured: silver flute and vibraphone. Commissioned by the California E.A.R. Unit, the piece pits two groups of instruments – flute, clarinet, violin, and cello against vibraphone, marimba, and piano – in a game of expanding and contracting polyrhythmic cycles. Andriessen intended to draw on the canonic procedures employed in “Hadewijch” from De Materie. The timbral combination also recalls the “blue column” chords from De Tijd. The formal sketch of the piece in Ex. 5.4a shows how Andriessen first composed the content inside the boxed area in the middle, then added the three sections numbered 0, 1, and 2 to create a symmetrically balanced form. The construction of the piece recalls that of De Tijd with respect to the rhythmic processes based on contracting or expanding sequences and that of De Snelheid with respect to the juxtaposition of accelerating rhythmic cycles against slower, steady ones. The piece begins with the flute and vibraphone playing a descending chromatic melody from B6 to E5 , accompanied by a rhythmic sequence that begins with a pattern of 6–7–7 quavers. At reh. 1, the second group enters with a harmonized progression of a descending chromatic line from G5 , as shown in Ex. 5.4b (vibraphone and marimba double the top voice of the piano an octave above). Although many of the chords contain dissonant extensions, the root motion that supports the chromatic upper line has a tonal basis. While the intervals between the lowest and highest notes oscillate to and from consonance to dissonance, note how the linear progression based on outer intervals of 6–6 prepares for the 7–6 suspension in the inner voice at m.11.


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Ex. 5.4b: Zilver (reh.1, piano part only)

After this introductory passage, the texture changes to a polyrhythmic interplay between the first group of instruments (fl/cl/vln/vlc) and the second (vib/mar/pno). Presenting the descending chromatic line beginning on E5 , the second group articulates a sequence of staccato chords that gradually contract in rhythmic duration while the first group maintains the 6–7–7 quaver pattern established at the onset of the piece. From reh. 3 onward, the two groups of instruments embark on a polyrhythmic canon, in which they maintain rhythmic independence from one another while sharing the same harmonic and melodic properties. Instead of the descending chromatic line, the melody now features ascending modal and chromatic segments, harmonized by clustering adjacent tones of the given scale. As shown in Ex. 5.4c, Andriessen staggers the rhythmic entries of the two parts so that the vertical alignment is different each time, even if the two parts proceed by the same polyrhythmic ratio (4:3) and share the same modal configurations. The table in Ex. 5.4d summarizes the overall polyrhythmic relationship between the two groups of instruments and the melodic structure of the top voice in the main body of the piece (reh. 3–24).18 There are three discernible phases in which the polyrhythmic relationship between the two groups changes in the course of the piece. In the first phase (reh. 3–8), the first group of instruments maintains a steady crotchet pulse while the second group’s pulse contracts in rhythmic value against it. In the second phase (reh. 12–17), the pulse of the first group contracts and forms a steadily broadening polyrhythmic relationship with the second group as the ratio changes systematically from 5:4, to 4:3, to 3:2, to 2:1. The third phase is characterized by a gradual acceleration in the subdivision of the pulse in the second group from triplet, to quadruplet, to sextuplet against the steady

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Ex. 5.4c: Zilver (comparison of reh. 7 and 14)

crotchet pulse. The juxtaposition of increasingly faster subdivision of the pulse against a slow melody in the other part is a further refinement of the technique of “chorale” variation Andriessen introduced in “De Stijl” from De Materie. The melody undergoes kaleidoscopic change in modal configuration, oscillating between modal and partially octatonic segments within phases 1 and 3, and tending toward Aeolian (natural minor) within phase 2. The following postlude (reh. 25–28) presents a condensed recapitulation of the introductory passage (reh. 1–2) with the order of entries reversed so that the piece ends, as it began, with the vibraphone/flute duet. Even if Charlie Parker’s bebop provided the impetus for composing Facing Death, Andriessen manages to transform it into a “concept” piece that demands attention on the part of the listener to grapple with its underlying meaning. If Hout presents a rigorous contemporary exercise in three-part canon, Zilver extends the principle of rhythmic diminution in chorale variation, demanding the utmost concentration and endurance on the part of


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Ex. 5.4d: polyrhythmic and tonal relationships in Zilver (reh. 3–26)

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

reh.

timing

∗

3 4 5 6 7 8 10 12 14 17 18 19+4 21 23+1 24

2’39” 3’20” 4’06” 4’28” 5’02” 5’36” 6’18” 7’24” 8’02” 9’16” 9’35” 10’18” 10’44”

8: 10

2.5: 2 2: 1.5 1.5: 1 2: 1 2: 1 ( triplet) 4: 1

11’57”

6: 1 ( triplet)

rhythmic ratio

8: 7 8: 5 8: 3 8: 2.5

scalar construct F-G-A-B-C-D-E D-E-F-A-C-D-E B-C-D-E-E-F-C-E E Dorian C Aeolian (partial) B-C-D-F-A-B-B-C B-C-D-E-F-G-G-A C-D-F-G-A-B C Aeolian D Aeolian / E Aeolian B Aeolian C-D-E-G-A-B A octatonic C Aeolian F Aeolian

∗ polyrhythmic ratio is based on the number of semiquavers (×) per attack between the two groups

[Timings based on New Albion Records B000000R4I, track 1]

the specific ensembles for which they were written. In composing music for groups of musicians that embrace his aesthetic vision, Andriessen has continued to abide by his credo from the 1970s, that is, to critically engage the musicians in the act of performance.

New music community as a heterotopian site Louis likes to discuss the philosophy and vision behind what makes a piece of music . . . There is something about his personality that is like a call to battle. Are you for him or against him?. . . He makes people feel part of a movement. An entire generation of young composers has been drawn to Louis Andriessen’s rigorous radicalism. Refining rebellion with discipline is an important idea for our time. (Bang on a Can 1995) – Gordon, Lang, Wolfe

Why were the young American composers captivated by Andriessen’s radical vision in the 1980s? In “Of Other Spaces,” Foucault defines heterotopia as “something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted” (1986: 24). Foucault emphasizes that utopias are fictional and refer to imaginary spaces, while heterotopias, like theaters and gardens, comprise a symbolic juxtaposition

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of separate spaces that coalesce into a single real space (several sites that are in themselves incompatible). Unlike public spaces such as a market or park, heterotopian sites are not freely accessible; as with religious sites or prisons, one must submit to certain rituals or commit a specific act to gain entry (Foucault 1986: 26).19 Sally Banes describes the emergence of alternative artistic communities in New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1960s as comprising this mythic space of dissent, embodying the idealistic inversion of the dominant culture in the inhabitants’ commitment to democratic ethos and community-building processes (1993: 13). The BOAC composers’ vision was clearly guided by such commitments to contesting established boundaries of music making through widening their repertory and building a new audience base. Foucault’s paradigm provides a useful framework through which to examine and compare new music communities that emerged in Amsterdam and New York City as heterotopian sites of anarchism and rebellion in the postwar era; such sites are characterized by a symbolic juxtaposition of incompatible aesthetic trends, as demonstrated by the “inclusive” concerts that Andriessen and his colleagues started in Amsterdam in 1972 or the BOAC’s marathon concert in 1987 that brought together modernist, avant-garde, and popular music under one roof. Even after the tumultuous decade of the 1970s, Andriessen’s commitment to composing music for alternative ensembles has continued to be grounded in an egalitarian relationship between composer, musicians, and audience. He maintains the attitude that one has to form one’s own ensemble in order to control the process of musical production unmediated by exterior forces such as media and commercial endorsements. All of the composers who came under Andriessen’s influence have formed their own ensembles (LOOS, BOAC All Stars, Chez Vees, California E.A.R. Unit, The Steve Martland Band) to secure a similar goal. The formation of specialized ensembles is one concrete measure of how new music communities in New York and Amsterdam have established their heterotopian sites and marked their differences from within. While the proliferation of new music ensembles is a global postwar phenomenon, the groups that have adopted Andriessen’s instrumentation (including brass, piano, guitar, percussion, electric bass) clearly set themselves apart from other groups such as Speculum Musicae, “Pierrot plus”20 ensembles (such as the Fires of London started by Peter Maxwell Davies), and the Philip Glass Ensemble, by crossing over into pop, rock, and jazz. Especially in Holland, the coexistence of specialized ensembles within a close geographic space results in a complex matrix of competing forces within the so-called heterotopia.21 Inspired by Andriessen, many composers and musicians have emigrated from the United States to Amsterdam in idealistic search of an artistic


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fulfillment they could not find in their homeland. But for many artists and musicians, Amsterdam turned out to be an illusory utopia. Newspaper critics have expressed concerns about whether artists and composers are capable of striving for the highest ideal under subsidy; insulated from aesthetic developments that take place in other countries, the Dutch musical climate can easily give way to parochialism (De Groot 2001: 813–14). For Wolfe and Gordon, who each received a Fulbright grant to stay in Amsterdam in 1991, the differences in cultural values were made starkly apparent during their nine-month residency. Expecting everyone else in the Netherlands to be versatile and charismatic like Andriessen, both quickly discovered that Andriessen constituted an exception rather than the norm.22 While impressed by the artistic freedom and the system of subsidy afforded to the arts, in the end they preferred the extremely competitive environment of New York City, where their inner drive was tested in a competition for “survival of the fittest.” Other American students of Andriessen, such as Dramm, Ron Ford, and Jeff Hamburg, have nonetheless flourished in the Dutch artistic soil where they are given opportunities to write music for ensembles without compromising their social and political stances (Hamburg 1986: 41–49). Dramm, a native of San Diego who met Andriessen during his residency at Yale, chose to pursue a career as a performance artist and composer in Amsterdam precisely because of the freedom to engage in experimental fusion of genres without commercial intervention (Oskamp 2003: 77–78). It is important to point out that differences in the social structure of funding have shaped the ideology and praxis of new music ensembles across the Atlantic in fundamentally different ways. The social-democratic system of subsidy allows Dutch musicians to exercise their aesthetic ideals without censorship. Hiu argues that the ensemble culture operates as an extension of verzuiling – a social system that has compartmentalized different religious groups into separate communities within Holland.23 Ensemble LOOS distinguishes itself from BOAC or Martland’s band in its aesthetic autonomy; like its predecessor Hoketus, LOOS is committed to the pursuit of radicalism as a fixed point of identification in maintaining the aesthetic boundaries that separate it from numerous other ensembles. In contrast, BOAC is an organization that subsists on institutional grants and private funding within a capitalist framework. Although the group came together initially to rebel against conservative institutions like the symphony orchestra, its relationship to the public has been built on an ethos of participatory democracy and the elimination of boundaries. The BOAC composers’ inclusive philosophy has led them to write symphonic works for orchestras as well as to collaborate with non-Western music ensembles (e.g., Balinese gamelan) in

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further expanding their idea of experimental fusion. While the Hague school rejected American composers such as John Adams and Philip Glass for introducing commercially “diluted” forms of minimalism since the late 1970s, BOAC has maintained close alliances with American minimalist composers by collaborating with Glass and Adams, and continuing to showcase music by Steve Reich and Terry Riley in their concerts. BOAC has created a niche market based on the longstanding support of an urban group of artists and intellectuals; since 1999, their grass-roots program called the BOAC People’s Commissioning Fund has enabled the commission of more than fourteen works by American composers who successfully bridge contemporary classical and popular styles (Tommasini 2002; Brackett 2002: 213). Aside from the funding sources, Dutch and American ensembles have adopted Andriessen’s ideological aim to “bridge lowbrow and highbrow music” toward different aesthetic goals. Hoketus and LOOS incorporate popular music into their musical language primarily for philosophical exploration; familiar references are put through the “grinding” process of alienation in order to illuminate an underlying concept. By contrast, popular music plays a more explicit, integral role in the compositions of the BOAC composers and Steve Martland. For example, Lang’s Are You Experienced? (1987–88) and Gordon’s I Buried Paul (1996) foreground references taken from their popular music idols (Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles) for the sake of exploiting a mix of rock and conventional instrumentation.24 Martland, who continues to perform in Holland, has experienced the clash of cultural ideology on several occasions; when his piece Drill (1987) received a performance in Rotterdam, he half-jokingly referred to The Hague composers as “mafiosos” who came only to criticize the piece for not being dissonant enough (Martland 1987: 4). Nonetheless, Martland, along with the Steve Martland Band, have successfully brought together pop, jazz, and contemporary classical idioms in sold-out performances abroad and have offered a wide range of educational workshops to young musicians with the support of the British Council (Caldwell 2006). The stark differences in the ethos of performance between the American and Dutch/British ensembles may be illustrated by comparing their interpretations of Workers Union. The BOAC All Stars have performed this work since the group’s inception and their performance tends to be jazzy, electrifying, and virtuosic. The piece appears in their CD called The Gigantic Dancing Human Machine in which Andriessen’s music is characterized as “earth-shattering and tribal in its elemental power.”25 In contrast, the solo percussion arrangement made by Tatiana Koleva – featured as part of the


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Elektra Ensemble’s performance during the Andriessen Festival in London (2002) and New York City (2004) – restores the piece to its rugged edges and proletarian strife. Working in close collaboration with Andriessen, Koleva came up with a solo percussion installation, a soundtrack, and visual materials based on the idea of collectivism. Its initial theatrical performance in collaboration with Theater Hollandia was staged in the freight station of KLM airline at Schiphol airport in 1998, amidst people and machines at work around the clock (Koleva 2004). In her concert version of the percussion installation, Koleva appears in a worker’s uniform; her intense yet dispassionate performance renders the ethos of proletarian strife that much more powerfully. An even more startling rendition of Workers Union was produced by De Volharding during the festival of Andriessen’s music in London, synchronized with a film that displayed destructive images of American media as a form of commentary on the events of September 11, 2001. While the performance elicited a polarized response, one critic remarked that “the visuals gave the music a desperate and frenetic energy” in creating a genuinely convincing multimedia performance (Service 2002). It is undoubtedly in the hands of the Dutch ensembles such as De Volharding – having “persevered” as a group after thirty years – that Andriessen’s mission to use music as social commentary is renewed. Foucault describes the last trait of heterotopia in terms of a function it has in relation to all the space that remains, a function that unfolds between two extreme poles (1986: 27). If the extreme poles in the context of this discussion connote commercial (profit oriented) vs academic (non-profit oriented) music, Andriessen’s radicalism clearly steers toward the latter. Since the 1960s, American colleges and universities have provided a safe haven for avant-garde artists and composers to celebrate their differences from those who belong to the commercialized, media-oriented domain, thus protecting distinct enclaves of heterotopia.26 Speaking of his American residencies, Andriessen commented that he has no need to be part of an establishment, but immensely valued his contact with the avant-garde world: “Having a fine conversation with Morton Feldman walking up Broadway is much more important than the attention one gets at large music festivals” (Vogel 1986). The performances of De Staat by major symphony orchestras have certainly not deflected Andriessen from his basic premise: to write music for “democratic” ensembles. And this is precisely the posture that separates him from composers such as Adams, who has become increasingly “mainstream” by writing music for traditional ensembles and symphony orchestras, or Glass, who has established himself as a film composer for major Hollywood blockbusters. Since his return to Amsterdam, his compositional

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orientation has continued to evolve in new directions. In particular, his operatic collaboration with Greenaway ushered in a new aesthetic orientation in the latter part of the 1990s. As the following chapter reveals, Andriessen turned to opera – a genre that he considered to be the most bourgeois art form – and infused it with a new form of vitality and radicalism. Notes 1. De Staat received its Amsterdam première on November 28, 1976, followed by performances in Copenhagen, Warsaw, and the Holland Festival in 1978. 2. Andriessen recalls how Olivier Messiaen came to hear the group at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Messiaen apparently was intrigued by Andriessen’s piece Hoketus and identified “Greek rhythms” in the hockets (Interview with the composer on 21 October 2003). 3. The ensemble apparently got into serious trouble by refusing to perform a work by the Australian composer Michael Smetanin, drawing criticism for damaging cultural relations between Australia and the Netherlands. 4. According to Jonathan Bernard, Zappa deliberately wrote The Black Page to be difficult and chose the title because the written pages on the score were literally black from all the rapid and intricate rhythmic notation. 5. Bas Andriessen 1998: 153. 6. Taken from LOOS ensemble’s website under the subtitle of “The Concept.” 7. Interview with Cornelis de Bondt on 16 October 2003. 8. De Bondt developed a computer program that calculates the so-called canon series in two steps: a fragment from a musical quote is dissected into a table of chords and a number of pulse layers based on the rhythmic ratios extracted from the quote. The computer puts back the sequence of chords and rhythms from the respective tables following the rules that: 1) at any point where the pulse layers coincide, only the original chord may be sounded and 2) the chord sequence of the various pulse layers is canonic (De Bondt 1999: 23). 9. Here he took the rhythmic ratio of 2:3 from the quotation of Purcell’s aria from Didos and Aeneas in De deuren gesloten and obtained rhythmic ratios of 4:6:9 to construct the pulse layers and distilled harmonies from the quote to construct his chord table. 10. Taken from the website: http://www.koncon.nl/, accessed on 12 March 2004. 11. The trend was established, for instance, by the residencies of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg at Black Mountain College in 1948. 12. According to Martin Bresnick at Yale University, he was the first to introduce Andriessen’s De Tijd to Gordon, Lang, and Wolfe – soon after the release of the CD – and they were simply blown away by the music. 13. Interview with David Lang on 26 July 2003. 14. For his current projects in promoting musical education at home and abroad, see Martland’s website under Schott Music at http://www. schottmusic.com/autoren/KomponistenAZ/show,3530.html.


15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

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Ornithology is also based on the chord progression of “How High the Moon.” Timings are based on the CD recording for Bang on a Can: Industry (track 2). Interview with Evan Ziporyn on 28 Feb. 2003. Timings are based on the CD recording for Zilver (track 1). Foucault thus emphasizes that such a site “presupposes a system of opening and closing that isolates [it] and makes [it] penetrable” (26). “Pierrot plus” refers to the instrumentation of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (1912), which ushered in a new model of chamber music ensemble in the course of the twentieth century. The ensembles are fully or partially subsidized by the government, depending on merit. The only contemporary music ensembles that are fully subsidized, to my knowledge, are the Schoenberg and Asko ensembles. Interview with Julia Wolfe on 26 July 2003. Interview with Pay-Uun Hiu on 30 Oct. 2003. Bernard 2003: 129. David Lang describes the piece as owing “something to the American experimental tradition” after Cage, Brown, and Rzewski. See David Lang, Program notes to Andriessen’s Workers Union. Hobbs refers to the University of Illinois School of Music as one case of cultural radicalism becoming incorporated into colleges and universities (1997: 134).

6 Operatic collaboration with Peter Greenaway

We don’t go to the opera for the plot! It is the ambience, atmosphere, and the experience of live theater that are important. The plot is only the cement that holds the story together and sometimes the cement is made of bad quality. We have to muster the courage to get past our preoccupation with the text and put our faith in the images. Opera offers the filmmaker the kind of freedom that cinema cannot afford – Greenaway. (Bruls and Engeler 1999: 12) We have been able to do without a plot since Meyerhold. His working method with techniques of montage and tableaux vivants formed a starting point for new developments in theater and music, which have persisted up until today. In the early 1960s, to compose an opera was the most stupid thing one could do as a ‘revolutionary’ artist. It was considered a bourgeois art form with boring music and outdated scenarios. Yet transformations in theater have brought about changes in opera since then. I have composed for theater for a long time and hopefully contributed to its transformation – Andriessen. (Bruls and Engeler 1999: 10)

The decade of the 1990s marked a period of fruitful collaboration between Louis Andriessen and the experimental filmmaker and artist Peter Greenaway in Rosa: A Horse Drama (1994) and Writing to Vermeer (1999). Andriessen had long admired films by Greenaway before their collaboration and saw something of himself in the way the filmmaker juxtaposes “intellectual material and vulgar directness” in his cinematography (2002a: 239; 2002b: 242). In his cinematic work, Greenaway has defied narrative convention in favor of multi-layered presentations involving analogy, allegory, and metaphor (Elliott and Purdy 1997: 27).1 His aesthetic sensibilities derive from late seventeenth-century European Renaissance painters such as Vermeer, Frans Hals, and Velasquez, and he has often worked to transfer the spatial conception of such paintings to cinematic space. Moreover, following Brechtian techniques of distanciation, he frequently operates the position and the movement of the camera independently of the characters in his films to emphasize the disjunctures between the interior world of the characters and the external action (Kallitsis 2002). Collaboration with Andriessen nonetheless presented opera as an uncharted terrain and a new challenge for Greenaway. Opera became a medium in which he could experiment further with texts, images, and live

O p e r a t i c co l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h Pe te r Gre e n aw ay

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action as independent, intersecting, and multi-dimensional fields. In Rosa and Writing to Vermeer, Greenaway’s materialist aesthetic governs much of his orientation in the emphasis given to the construction of images, space, and treatment of material for its own sake (Elliott and Purdy 1997: 39).2 In foregrounding images and objects as primary (as opposed to these elements being subsidiary to a plot), Greenaway generates meanings and associations that are seemingly disconnected from the underlying narrative. Following many operas produced since Glass’s and Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach (1975), Greenaway manipulates images and objects on stage based on the principle that words, music, and settings function independently within the total work of art (Novak 2003). From a postmodern perspective of bricolage, such objects become divorced from their referents (signifieds) and become “empty” signifiers: one may marvel at them simply for the sensory experiences and free associations that they afford to viewers.3 As made evident by the opening epigraphs, both Greenaway and Andriessen wished to transform opera from its dependence on the conventional nineteenth-century narrative formula to a theatrical form inspired by the experimental work of Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler and Vsevolod Meyerhold.4 Greenaway conceives the plot as essentially a “cement” that holds together the sequence of events and nothing more. He follows Meyerhold’s deconstructive notions of eliminating scenery and presenting the actor as the principal mechanism of theatrical expression and of replacing plot with montage and tableaux vivants.5 Rosa offers a large-scale parody in the Brechtian tradition by satirizing stereotypical characters that occupy Hollywood films: e.g., the brutal male antagonist, the servile mistress, and the coy investigator. The elements of violence and brutality are explored from an objective, critical distance; as Andriessen comments: “For me the opera is – and [I] hope it comes across – a parody or a lampoon of Hollywood film music. It should be as sharp as possible. The only way that I can accept the violence of Rosa is as a satire” (Trochimczyk 2002: 72). As the characters oscillate back and forth between the illusory and real spaces of the theatrical world, their identities continually shift and the narrative becomes filled with double meanings. In stark contrast to Rosa, Writing to Vermeer foregrounds scenes of domestic serenity inspired by the paintings of Johannes Vermeer (1632–75). The quotidian affairs of women and children in Vermeer’s household are presented in a series of tableaux vivants and constitute the inner world of the opera. Such scenes are interleaved with scenes from the outer world depicting the turbulent socio-political conditions of seventeenth-century Holland. As the interior and exterior worlds eventually collide, the female protagonists become aware of the prospect of an “irony of fate” that lies ahead. In the process, the audience is made to contemplate

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the paradoxical situation without being offering forced closure or nostalgic sentimentality. Andriessen’s craftsmanship as an opera composer reached its apogee in these two works. Complementing Greenaway’s non-narrative dramaturgical approach, he worked with montage and non-developmental techniques in structuring the musical forms. His previous experience writing music for the theater group Baal in the 1970s had amply prepared him to meet the challenge. Most significantly, he began to experiment with traditional leitmotifs as a means of commenting on a character’s psychological condition independent of the sung text. In Rosa, such leitmotifs are transformed from scene to scene to portray characters sarcastically, while in Writing to Vermeer, his use of leitmotifs takes on a wide range of signification beyond the comic or the satirical; he suspends dramatic continuity by juxtaposing formal principles of development and stasis, progressive transformation of leitmotifs against aleatoric placement of motivic fragments, and symmetry and palindrome versus irregular forms of interpolation. All of these factors fed into the radical separation of form and content during the making of Writing to Vermeer, a departure from the aesthetic unity and explicitness of historical references that governed the structure of De Materie.

Rosa: subverting the narrative Andriessen and Greenaway’s collaboration began in 1991 with the making of a special television documentary for a series called Not Mozart, an irreverent alternative to the Mozart Bicentennial. As the story goes, after being approached with the commission by Annette Moreau from the BBC, Andriessen immediately suggested Greenaway as his collaborator for producing M is for Man, Music, and Mozart (1991), reportedly telling Moreau: “I like his films very much, and I recognize in his work what I like in music: this combination of aggression and strangeness and extreme formalism” (Schwarz 1994: 11). The commission became a way of commemorating Andriessen’s twentieth anniversary of working with the alternative ensemble De Volharding. Jazz singer Astrid Seriese was quickly added to the team of collaborators. Combining his Baroque love of excess with the portrayal of arcane rituals, litanies, sexuality, and alchemy, Greenaway devised a film that depicts the creation of man through medieval alchemical processes, resulting in a prototype who is refined through exposure to movement and music. The music for M is for Man, Music, and Mozart provides a perfect accompaniment to Greenaway’s exploration of images and choreography, infusing each change of scene with dramatic energy and punctuating every move with directness


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of expression rather than reducing the music to mere sound effects. The film bears no explicit connection to Mozart, other than in the form of an oblique tribute that dramatizes the creation of music as the last and highest achievement in the alchemical creation of manhood. To accompany the film, Andriessen composed four songs separated by instrumental interludes in the manner of a suite. The first song, written by Andriessen and Jeroen van der Linden, depicts the creation of man; it uses an alphabetical sequence – suggested by Greenaway – as a frame and structuring device: “A is for Adam and E is for Eve. B is for bile, blood, and bones.6 C is for conception, chromosomes and clones,” and so forth. When the alphabetical sequence reaches “M,” the film provides scenes that characterize its associations progressively, from “M is for man,” “M is for movement,” “M is for music,” to “M is for Mozart.”7 Andriessen composed the opening piece as a cabaret song in the style of Weill: a steady pulse and bass line accompany the spoken text. Phrase endings in the song are demarcated by short, snappy gestures from the trombone and trumpets. In the instrumental interlude that follows Andriessen combines various source materials, including quotations from Mozart’s piano sonatas (K. 310 and K. 545) in a grandiose medley supported by bass progressions that draw alternately from tonal modulations in Mozart’s music, Stravinsky, and bigband jazz. Jonathan Cross discusses the ways in which the Mozartian quotations are “fetishised” through fragmentation and scoring for jazz instruments as well as the “covert ways” in which Andriessen’s harmonic and textural treatment alludes to Stravinsky (1998: 184–86).8 Stravinskian gestures indeed pervade Andriessen’s writing of M is for Man, although the intertextual references extend to Darius Milhaud, Eisler, and the composer’s own theatrical works from the 1970s. In the Vesalius Song, for example, the descending bass line and the slow saxophone melody strongly recall the introduction from Milhaud’s Création du Monde (1922) – a piece that belongs to De Volharding’s repertory and was perhaps intended as a tribute. In spite of the plurality of references, the internal movements of this suite are unified through recurrence and subtle transformation of thematic ideas in ways that presage his development of leitmotifs in Rosa and in Writing to Vermeer. Following the successful reception of their initial film project, Greenaway approached Andriessen with several possible scenarios for an operatic collaboration. At first they disagreed over the script for The Baby of Mâcon, which contained so much dialogue that it would have forced Andriessen in the direction of a verismo opera (Andriessen 2002a: 243; 2002b: 245). However, Greenaway’s suggestion of a work about the assassinations of various composers immediately attracted Andriessen’s attention:

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Rosa revolves around the deaths of Anton Webern, John Lennon, and a fictitious Uruguayan composer named Juan Manuel de Rosa. Greenaway’s unconventional script for Rosa critiques the convention of opera, making constant excursions between the characters and the imaginary audience; this dialogical structure alone distinguished the work from a standard psychological drama (Andriessen 2002a: 244; 2002b: 247). Based on Greenaway’s script, containing dialogues interspersed with extensive commentaries on the characters and imagined responses from the audience,9 Andriessen more or less extracted a libretto for the opera. Saskia Boddecke was appointed to direct the choreography and stage design. The dramaturgical design of Rosa is thoroughly Brechtian in presenting a social critique through parody of an established genre: all of the characters are caricatures of stereotypes found in classic Hollywood westerns.10 The historical setting is Uruguay in the 1950s. Rosa is a fictional character based on Juan Manuel de Rosa, the general who massacred two million South American Indians in 1857 (Greenaway 1993a: 239). In the opera he is a Uruguayan composer, trained in Paris, who writes for Hollywood westerns. Greenaway describes him as: “A wastrel. A slob. Certainly talented, [he] wants to be thought well of – up to a point – then loses interest.”11 The character of Madame de Vries, the investigator of the murder of Rosa, is: “sharp, bright. Nobody’s fool . . . [she] uses pleasure and sex cynically.”12 In contrast, Esmeralda, the submissive lover of Rosa, is a shallow, hapless woman who was brought up by a rich father and a religious mother to serve men, and who dreams about a “cruise around the big cities of America with Rosa driving a stretch-open-top white car.”13 Rosa is a despicable villain who abuses Esmeralda and pays more attention to his horse than he does to her. While the story of Rosa could have been presented following the narrative convention of opera, Greenaway did everything to avoid a linear trajectory of storytelling. Librettos for operas, including those written in the twentieth century, such as Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges (1919), Puccini’s Turandot (1925), Carlisle Floyd’s Susanna (1955), and John Corigliano’s Ghost of Versailles (1987), typically follow the conventional narrative formula of introducing a form of conflict in which tension generated from expectations of resolution builds and sustains dramatic continuity. Typically, the audience discovers the source of conflict and speculates on the sequence of events that will lead to its eventual resolution. A normative pattern of storytelling thus entails what Paul Ricoeur identifies as chronological, the diachronic sequence of events that make up the narrative, and configurational, the transformational nature of the actions that affect the reading of the whole (1984: 67). Furthermore, Roland Barthes, in his text S/Z, proposes a system of codes


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through which to dissect the thematic and sequential elements that interact polyphonically within a narrative. He refers to these codes as the proairetic (sequence of actions), the hermeneutic (posing and resolving an enigma), the semic (character descriptions), the symbolic (abstract meanings), and the referential (meanings that arise from cultural contexts) (Barthes 1974: 261–63).14 At the dramaturgical level, the stage production of Rosa violates the standard narrative model of conflict followed by resolution, as well as Barthes’s narrative codes, in fundamental ways. First, there is an ongoing quest (a murder investigation) but no restoration of order at the end. The plot offers no closure at the end of the opera, just ten clues which suggest that the murder was a conspiracy and that Rosa was somehow assassinated. Breaching Barthes’s hermeneutic and proairetic codes, an enigma is posed, but the path to the “truth” about the assassination is never reached. Second, there is no agency at work that transforms the characters in the unfolding of the opera. Rosa, the antagonist, is never redeemed. Esmeralda remains hopelessly servile; her wish to become the black mare comes to fruition only when she is stuffed inside the horse’s cavity to be cremated with the animal. Third, the identity of the characters (Barthes’s semic code) is continually obfuscated. Many of the characters take on multiple identities in the sequence of the opera. The blond singer – who describes the emotional and physical abuse suffered by Rosa’s fiancée in scene 2 – is revealed to be Esmeralda in disguise. Madame de Vries is both a Texas whore and the Investigatrix. Two gigolos (Alcan and Lully) become cowboys, take on the roles of Esmeralda’s brothers, and then possibly become the mysterious assassins who shoot Rosa. These shifting, unstable identities constitute Greenaway’s technique of distancing to convey the message that the characters are merely caricatures, not to be taken as real. In particular, his (mis)treatment of the heroine Esmeralda forces the audience to re-examine the narrative convention of redeeming the operatic heroine from an evil fate that has befallen her. This technique is carefully aligned with Andriessen’s intention that “the musical ideology of Rosa should be summarised as a game of double meanings” without any ready-made solution given (Andriessen 2002a: 243; 2002b: 246). Moreover, the temporal flow of the narrative in Rosa is complicated by the motion to and from what Michael Issacharoff calls the mimetic and diegetic dimensions of space (Bryand-Bertail 2002: 23).15 The mimetic space constitutes what is immediately visible: e.g., the presence of an investigator, reporters, coffin and other objects that establishes the mise-en-scène of a murder investigation. The diegetic space, on the other hand, constitutes the invisible space created in the imagination of the audience through dialogue.16 Embedded within the outer framework of a murder investigation

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is the retelling of the story involving Rosa and Esmeralda. Opposing images that represent the mimetic and diegetic collide within the virtual world; for instance, in a domestic scene where Esmeralda sings a song of lament as she irons Rosa’s shirt, “bovine spirits” played by naked men appear at the back of the stage, conjuring up the image of a slaughterhouse. The audience experiences temporal and spatial lapses as they are lured into the cinematic world of the two lovers where the boundaries between fact and illusion are continually blurred. Two shots heard in the background signal the assassination of Rosa. Then we are abruptly led back to the murder investigation. The Investigatrix performs a ritual to marry Esmeralda to Rosa after his death, based on newspaper reports stating that they were married. This scene is then interrupted by a crucified figure of Rosa riding on an eviscerated horse with Esmeralda stuffed inside – a depiction of the netherworld in the diegetic space. The plot does not provide closure, but rather leaves the audience to ponder the contradictory and fragmented set of clues left behind. And it is in this sense that the notion of causality – the primary criterion of standard narrative – is entirely subverted. From the perspective of music and drama combined, the Brechtian concept of alienation plays an important role in preventing the audience from empathizing with or being seduced by a character. In his notes to the “antiopera,” Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (“The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny”), Brecht emphasizes the need for a radical separation of the elements in order to rid the theatrical experience of the process of fusion which produces a hypnosis or intoxication on the part of the audience (Willett 1992: 37–38). In epic theater, the spatial and temporal dimensions of the stage become redefined through various distancing techniques; instead of the centralized physical space of Western theater, the space becomes fractured and separated through the techniques of montage (Bryand-Bertail 2002: 18–20).17 In the staging of Rosa, cowboy films run continuously in the background while Rosa interacts with Esmeralda and the horse on stage. Just as the theatrical space is fragmented into multiple sites, seemingly incongruous, the music oscillates back and forth between a medley of Latin tunes and horse-riding music and musical quotations from Stravinsky and Brahms. In fact, Kurt Weill’s musical setting of Mahagonny anticipates the strategies adopted by Andriessen: closed form, choral commentary, parody of familiar tunes with exaggeration and distortion, and montage.18 These musical strategies engage the audience in a dynamic process of working out the levels of disjunction introduced in the course of the spatial and temporal progression of events. In composing the music for Rosa, Andriessen wished to explore accessibility as a subject by alluding to the type of music that people instantly recognize from television, film, and popular music (2002a: 242; 2002b: 245). He had


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frequently composed “instant” music that incorporated popular music for the theater group Baal during the 1970s, not realizing until much later how little time it took for him to compose music for theater in comparison to concert music. Since writing De Materie, he wished to resolve this discrepancy by merging his intuitive ways of working on theater music with the more rigid formulaic manner in which he composed concert music. Like Greenaway’s stage settings and characterizations, the musical setting of Rosa presents a stylistic synthesis of parodied materials and other recurring elements within the formal structure of the opera that relies heavily on montage and tableaux vivants. Pushing the concept of “accessibility” to its extreme, Andriessen parodies light-hearted tunes to convey sentiments that range from the comic to the macabre in the manner of Ennio Morricone, the composer of music for Spaghetti Westerns such as Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). In Andriessen’s music, popular Latin tunes are juxtaposed with a melody from Brahms’s waltz, Op. 39 No. 2, and chords reminiscent of the “Sacrificial Dance” from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913) while Esmeralda and Madame de Vries alternate between jazz and operatic styles of delivery. While he does not quote Bach’s music directly, Andriessen employs a choir throughout the opera to provide objective commentary in the tradition of Bach’s Passions. Although linked by leitmotifs and other motives, each of the twelve scenes forms a self-contained musical unit without a transition or bridge. Arnold Whittall comments on Andriessen’s employment of closed forms in Rosa as a distancing technique in the Brechtian tradition, as it “stops any possible flow of psychological development in its tracks” (2003: 171). Andriessen also prevents psychological development through the use of montage or abrupt juxtaposition of musical fragments; this is particularly evident in scenes 6 and 7 where a medley of Latin tunes creates a continuous shift from one style of music to another. A chronological tour through the leitmotifs and other recurring motives reveals, nonetheless, a sequence of transformation that lends large-scale coherence to the dramatic structure of Rosa. What I designate leitmotif 1 (L1) is a theme derived from Andriessen’s instrumental work Hout (1991), played in unison by the tenor saxophone, marimba, guitar, and piano in the overture. As a signifier of mystery and tragic circumstances surrounding Rosa’s death, this leitmotif recurs in various guises throughout the entire opera. This motif unfolds in semiquavers that form an expanding wedge; unlike the instrumental piece it is derived from, it is framed by a diatonic tetrachord, E-F-G-A, sustained in the woodwinds, strings, vibraphone, and synthesizer, as shown in Ex. 6.1. Following this initial entry, a succession of chords interjected at the fortissimo dynamic level punctuates the texture of the “Hout” motif at irregular temporal distance. These jarring chords anticipate the “Sacrificial Dance”

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Ex. 6.1: the Hout motif (L1) in Rosa (mm. 1–6)

Ex. 6.2a: succession of chords in the overture (mm. 13–16)

Ex. 6.2b: Rosa, scene 5 (reh. 15)

chords in conveying a sense of brutal interruption. As shown by the arrows in Ex. 6.2a, the chords are primarily built on a combination of triads and sevenths and are related to one another by intervals of a tritone or a seventh in the bass. These chords from the introduction are transposed and re-contextualized at the close of scene 5, where the chorus reiterates Esmeralda’s wish to be “a black bride in a church rather than a white whore in a stable,” as shown in Ex. 6.2b. The chords, punctuated by silence between


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Ex. 6.3: Madame de Vries’s motif of investigation (L2)

Ex. 6.4a: Esmeralda’s lament based on Brahms’s waltz (scene 3)

each word, echo the deep-seated anguish of Esmeralda’s misguided wish, yet from a critical and objective distance. The chorus amplifies the element of irony in her twisted wish by contrasting harmonization of the words “black bride” with the tritone motion E-B in the bass, immediately followed by a major third E-G in the bass to accompany the word “church.” This example points to just one instance of how the motives and chordal gestures acquire new meanings through their association with the sung text. Following the overture, Madame de Vries begins the investigation with the words: “Let me describe the stage,” as shown in Ex. 6.3. Imbued with cynicism and indifference, the words are set to an angular motive, which is sung senza vibrato. The vocal line is accompanied by the saxophone, which unfolds the semiquaver motive associated with the Hout motive. This motive functions as the second leitmotif (L2), signaling a return to the objective process of investigation from the diegetic and virtual world of the two lovers. When Madame de Vries reappears as the Investigatrix in scene 9, she sings the leitmotif in rhythmic augmentation, transposed up a minor second to heighten the dramatic effect. A supreme example of irony as satirical device occurs in scene 3 where Esmeralda sings to her mother about her desire to become a horse in order to be loved by Rosa. Here a joyous, uplifting semic quality of the Brahms waltz is turned into a lament motive for Esmeralda. As shown in Ex. 6.4a, the major mode of this leitmotif 3 (L3) flatly contradicts her state of anguish and resignation as she describes herself as “an animal” according to Rosa. L3 undergoes transformation at critical junctures as the opera unfolds. When Rosa utters the cruel words: “A man and his horse are closer bound than a man and a woman can ever be,” Andriessen skillfully uses this motif to accompany Rosa’s verdict. The signification of this leitmotif undergoes ironic reversal: while it was used initially to convey Esmeralda’s wish to be loved by Rosa, here this message is negated by Rosa’s wish to be united with

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Ex. 6.4b: inverted form of L3 sung by Rosa (scene 11)

Ex. 6.5: Stravinskian chords as signifier of brutality (scene 4, reh. 11)

his horse. Furthermore, an inverted and transformed version of the melody appears in scene 11, where Rosa floats away into the netherworld and sings about riding women and horses, as shown in Ex. 6.4b. Andriessen infuses the passage with irony by alternating between ascending major and minor thirds at the end of the phrase while the word “nightmares” puns on “nighthorses.” Here again the sung text negates the positive signification of a Picardy third. This motive plays a central role in linking the disconnected spirits of the two lovers: in tossing Esmeralda’s leitmotif to Rosa, Andriessen flirts with an expected reconciliation between Rosa and Esmeralda, yet the inverted and transmuted version of the leitmotif subverts this expectation. In the end, the horse remains the only mediating link between the two characters in this love triangle. In addition to the fifteen chords that accompany the Hout motif, the chords from the opening of Stravinsky’s “Sacrificial Dance” are interjected throughout the opera in ways that continually evoke images of violence and brutality, appearing most prominently as gestures that conclude scenes 4, 6, 8, and 10. Example 6.5 shows the chords used at the end of scene 4 to accompany the diegetic image of the slaughterhouse run by Esmeralda’s family. The Stravinsky quotation here assumes a dual role in commenting


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Ex. 6.6a: Madame de Vries’s cabaret-style song

Ex. 6.6b: parody of Latin tune (scene 6, reh. 6)

on the narrative text and making a mockery of the cinematic tradition in which such chords have been used to dramatize violence. To parody classic Hollywood films, Andriessen has Madame de Vries sing a saucy cabaret song in a jazz voice at the beginning of scene 5. This tune in 12/8 meter establishes the atmosphere for Rosa’s appearance on stage. Following four measures of L1 that open the scene, the bass guitar introduces the ostinato motif shown in Ex. 6.6a. The change in instrumentation and musical style conveys a sense of Rosa’s lifestyle of debauchery. In the subsequent scenes that depict Rosa’s career as a composer of Western films, Andriessen intensifies the montage effect by introducing a medley of familiar Latin tunes as an obvious homage to Morricone. Example 6.6b shows a familiar tune used in Westerns to convey “machismo”: the tune is played flamboyantly by the trumpet, accompanied by a “horse-riding” rhythm in the middle register in changing meters. A modified circle of fifths progression in the bass reaches a cadence on A, accompanied by a harmonic cluster of A7 and F on the accented quaver.19 Musical montage accompanies cinematographic montage, although by no means synchronized; as the medley of Latin tunes is heard, sequences from classic Western films are projected onto several screens at the back of the stage. Finally, the concluding scene (12) opens with “funeral march” music that synthesizes previously heard musical elements in contrapuntal layers. Upon the dotted rhythmic pattern characteristic of a funeral march in the bass,

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Ex. 6.7: large-scale chordal and pitch connections in Rosa

Andriessen superimposes the four-note “Hout” motif at two rhythmic levels, as a semiquaver motive in the middle register and as semibreve configuration in augmentation. This scene unfolds in a slow tempo of crotchet at 66MM, a suitable tempo for a funeral procession. Andriessen builds the texture by superimposing layers: the vocal parts that recite the clues of the murder investigation are added to this processional music one by one, resulting in a gradual accumulation of textural density that builds to a climax on the words, “Too many clues. Ten are enough.” While utilizing “closed forms” (modeled after Bach’s Passions) and montage as basic compositional technique to interweave quotations and allusions to popular Latin songs, Andriessen never loses sight of the traditional means of introducing large-scale coherence of form through transformation of motives and chordal connections (Ford 1993: 81). A comparison of the beginning and closing harmonies provides one way in which to illustrate the large-scale coherence of the work. As shown by Ex. 6.7, the opening and closing chordal gestures in successive scenes can be related in their registral, pitch and intervallic configurations. For instance, the focal pitches in the bass, F and C, are symmetrically placed at the beginning and end, and the deviation to D and G occurs in the middle. The opening tetrachord above the bass, {E, F, G, A}, is contained as a literal subset in the opening chord in scene 4 (where the identity of Esmeralda is revealed for the first time) and as an abstract subset in many of the succeeding chords. In scene 6, the chord is reduced to a diatonic cluster spanning from C4 to E5 , emphasizing the major third in the Brahms waltz. The close of the opera offers a delightful incongruity when the Index singer appears after the curtain falls. The singer appears on the side of the balcony and begins to rap in hip-hop style an index of scenes and people involved in the opera in alphabetical sequence: for example, “Abattoir: the location of the opera. A slaughterhouse in Fray Bentos, Uruguay, scene of the death of the composer, Juan Manuel de Rosa. Argentine: A large South American


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country named after man’s most desired commodity,” and so forth.20 This segment was born out of Greenaway’s wish, yet again, to subvert operatic convention, in this case by introducing a completely unrelated character to comment on the story. Various newspaper reviews have commented on the role of violence and cruelty in this opera,21 and it is easy to see how its treatment of Esmeralda might be construed as misogynistic. However, a more profound level of irony emerges when one views this opera as a caricature of Hollywood films that exploit sexuality and violence. Rosa and Esmeralda are hyperbolic versions of familiar stereotypes. They are not to be judged, but rather to be looked upon with simultaneous horror, fascination, and bewilderment. Despite the offensive display of violence and nudity, the physical distance and the fragmentation of theatrical space effectively prevent the audience from identifying with these characters as people and instead encourage the audience to regard them as puppets. In the subsequent film version of Rosa produced in 1999,22 Greenaway transmutes the Brechtian angle by portraying Esmeralda as a willing victim of sado-masochism; he reinforces this image through close-up scenes that capture her expression of nihilistic pleasure combined with emotional derangement. Although Rosa retains an impersonal, puppet-like quality throughout, the gazes exchanged between Esmeralda and Madame De Vries establish an unspoken bond – as if to acknowledge their complicity in the actions that take place. In the climactic moment when Rosa is shot, the closeup of Esmeralda’s prolonged scream exudes such expressionistic horror that it altogether nullifies the effect of distanciation found in the theatrical version. Anne Midgette reflects on the confrontational and challenging aspect of this opera in her review of the film: “Rosa takes American society in particular into its sights, skewering the politics and mores encoded in classic western films. In it artists become martyrs to the machinations of a system that forces the facts before it to fit the framework of the narrative it wants, rather than just observing them . . . Art as a mirror of society, with contemporary relevance and challenge: you look for it in the galleries of Chelsea, perhaps at the Joyce Theater but not very often in the opera house” (Midgette 2004).

Writing to Vermeer The genesis for the second opera arose from Greenaway’s longstanding interest in the paintings of Johannes Vermeer (Woods 1996).23 Drawing inspiration from the Dutch painter, Greenaway sought to replicate the quality of

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the “timeless” present and geometric balance in Vermeer’s paintings in the stage design: Seldom has so much domestic serenity, without moralising or heroics, been successfully depicted in Western art. The content, and the language with which that content is expressed, are most successfully complementary. The firm geometrical perspective creates balance and a firmly rooted sense of safety and steadiness. The use of color creates warmth and a desirable atmosphere. The split seconds of activity create the sensation of movement and a great sense of the present tense. And the depiction of sunlight creates an ambience of life and joy. This content organized in this language suggests a reachable ideal, but this ideal has to be strenuously preserved. (1999: 23)

Indeed, in an examination of Vermeer’s paintings, one is struck by his subtle use of light, interiority, perspective, and most of all by the serenity of his subjects: women performing simple domestic activities such as pouring milk, reading or writing a letter, playing a musical instrument, and so forth. Such images stand in stark contrast to works by contemporaneous painters such as Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) who depicted scenes of war and of men in public venues. Vermeer provides us instead with a voyeuristic glimpse into the private world of women’s daily activities. Embedded in such paintings are deliberate references and symbols, such as objects in the background that provide allegorical or social commentary on the subject portrayed. Vermeer is also known for his use of camera obscura: a visual technique that sharply illuminates certain objects or parts of the subject against their background (Nash 1991: 30–31).24 After giving a lecture in 1996 at the opening of the Vermeer exhibition in The Hague, Greenaway approached Andriessen about collaborating on a second opera based on Vermeer’s paintings. Greenaway conceived of a libretto based on a fictional account of three women who write letters to Vermeer while he is away on a trip. Two of these women are based on real life figures, Catharina Bolnes, Vermeer’s wife, and Maria Thins, his motherin-law; the third woman is a fictional character named Saskia, who works as Vermeer’s model. Actual paintings by Vermeer that portray the domestic activities of women and children were used as sources for the libretto and stage design. To provide a “dialectic” framework to the opera, Greenaway and Andriessen came up with the idea of introducing sudden ruptures or interpolations from the turbulent outer world into the inner world of women and children. Andriessen comments: “We could provide ‘windows’ that break into the domesticity and serenity of Vermeer’s home life, and thus allow


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the viewer to see what was really going on in the world at the time, in the same way the painter Lucio Fontana slashes his canvases with a knife” (Van der Waa 1999b: 14). Contrary to the themes of domestic serenity featured in Vermeer’s paintings, Dutch society in the seventeenth century witnessed tremendous growth in the arts and, at the same time, turbulent changes within the socio-political and economic milieu: The year of Vermeer’s visit to The Hague [1672] has been called Holland’s Year of Disasters. It saw military disintegration, the largest financial crash in the Republic’s short history, and a great public demoralisation. The overthrow of the Republic itself seemed very possible. . . . Even, to the month, as Vermeer was authenticating the paintings in The Hague, the territorially ambitious Louis XIV, seeing himself as a Catholic hero, was invading the South of Holland. (Van der Waa: 21)

Riots and street fights erupted between Catholics and Protestants and explosions occurred on the streets. Eventually the dykes were flooded to protect the city from French invasion. Greenaway and Andriessen project filmic images of events from the external world, such as the tulip trade crash of 1637 or street fights between Catholics and Protestants, onto the stage in order to anchor each scene in its historical moment. Actions onstage are temporarily suspended during the interpolations. Electronic sound effects by Michel van Aa frequently accompany such disruptions. The interpolations cut across the otherwise quasi-symmetrical outer proportions of the six scenes.25 Dramatic “windows” into the real world at first remain disconnected from the internal world of women and their affairs. A procession in the form of a candlelight vigil signals the first interpolation (#1) and anticipates the tragic events to come, though its significance remains opaque and disconnected from the preceding scene of women scrubbing and washing clothes. In scene 2, two interpolations depict the tulip trade crash (#2) and accidental gunpowder explosions in the street (#3). These interpolations are ironically juxtaposed with scenes depicting the joyous birthday celebration of Vermeer’s son, Cornelius. In scene 3, the stage features triplicate figures of Saskia in yellow and blue at one end of the stage, while Maria, Catharina, and children dressed in black and white congregate around a banquet table at the opposite end. The characters speak about their concerns for each other, and a lack of interpolations in this scene prolongs the sense of stasis and the characters’ alienation from the outer world. The second half (scenes 4–6) of the opera is marked by a definite change in the emotional state of the characters. As their anxiety and fear become

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explicit, their secluded world begins to intersect and resonate with the turbulent affairs of the outer world. Catharina comments on the family’s financial hardship by describing how she and Saskia have worn the same yellow dresses and pearl necklaces for five years. The rate of interpolation increases, juxtaposing scenes that feature women’s hysterical laughter (#5) with street fights (#7) and riots (#9) at an accelerating rate. These interpolations gain dramatic momentum toward the climactic footage of the French invasion (#10). This last “window” is the most dramatic: a film projection of the French troops invading Holland is paired with a quotation of Lully’s Turkish March from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670). Through electronic manipulation, the music becomes progressively more distorted, symbolically simulating the effect of “drowning out” the enemy force by voluntarily flooding much of Holland. The narrative thread in the inner world of the women also dissolves into fluid images and figurative representations of water, blood, metallic cages, and pouring rain. Within this dualistic framework, the opera straddles two parallel realms: the ontological realm in which socio-political events unfold in chronological time, and the psychological realm that foregrounds the experiences and emotions of women and children engaged in domestic affairs, seemingly removed from the outer world. Unlike the narrative strategy in Rosa in which the hermeneutic code is suspended (the resolution to the enigma is not given), here Greenaway manipulates the temporal realm (sequence of events under the proairetic code) by interjecting “slices” of the outer world into the inner world of women, then gradually dissolving the boundaries between these parallel worlds. Like Greenaway, Andriessen took inspiration from aspects of geometric balance found in Vermeer’s paintings to model the formal proportions of the opera. He was especially struck by Vermeer’s central placement of mirrors and windows to reflect light. To create a musical analogue of the perspectival construct of light in Vermeer’s paintings, Andriessen adopted a mirror or palindromic form for the overall proportions of the opera (Van der Waa 1999b: 16). Instead of adhering strictly to the retrogression idea, he introduced an asymmetrical division in the “reflected” half of the opera by employing the numerical proportions of John Cage’s Six Melodies for violin and piano (1950), charted at the top of Fig. 6.8. The final distribution of crotchets within the six scenes shows a significant deviation from the proportions outlined. Scenes 3 and 4, which mark the center of the palindrome, are further divided into eight sections, whose proportions are derived from another work by Cage, Sixteen Dances (composed circa 1950). A sketch from the composer’s archive illustrates how the outer symmetry is offset by irregular placement of instrumental interludes and filmic interpolations.26


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Fig. 6.8: Andriessen’s formal outline for Writing to Vermeer ratios scenes # of crotchets:

7: 1 (1463)

7: 2 (826.5)

8: 3 (1672)

8: 4 (1672)

6: 5 (672)

8 6 (826)

Furthermore, in doing away with nineteenth-century dramatic forms, Andriessen introduces a new concept for integrating montage with nondevelopmental and aleatoric techniques derived from music by Cage: John Cage created non-developmental music in the 40s and 50s – a static condition inspired by non-Western culture. Cage played, therefore, an important role in shaping the structure of ‘Vermeer,’ but not for the music. We have chosen a kind of development here that allows for dramatic moments to appear. I wish to introduce a state of opposition between the sung text and the underlying emotions. What the characters sing is not what they write about in their letters. The women sing about matters that they do not dare write about, for example, that a child may die or that Vermeer will be assaulted during his travels. There is communication at two levels: what you hear and what I will tell you as a composer. This development shall be made visible in the production and the images in a form of deconstruction. (Bruls and Engeler 1999: 10)27

The music unfolds, indeed, through prolonged areas of stasis balanced by dramatic continuity. By weighting the distribution of dramatic interpolations more heavily toward the second half, Andriessen offsets the symmetry in the temporal proportion of the outer form. The narrative implication is that more significant transformation occurs in the second “reflected” half of the opera as the women’s contact with the outer world intensifies. Andriessen further comments: “The intention is that you begin to sense that the women are in fact rather involved with the world around them, and that fears and concerns we all share begin to resonate in their singing. . . . There is a certain degree of contradiction between the non-developmental stasis in the music of Cage and the dramatization of the music” (Bruls and Engeler 1999: 17). As in Rosa, Andriessen works with a diverse range of borrowed themes and motives in fleshing out the musical design of Writing to Vermeer. As shown in Fig. 6.9, the selected themes and motives appear as building blocks in constructing the framing overture or interludes, leitmotifs, or aleatoric sections in the middle two scenes. A borrowed theme by Cage or Sweelinck forms the central melody in the construction of an extended overture in scenes 1, 2, and 5; such themes are used to set a particular mood for the scene as well as to instill unity within the scene through subsequent contrapuntal elaborations. On the contrary, quotations found in scenes 3 and 4, with the

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Fig. 6.9: list of borrowed themes and motives

Scene 1: Cage, Six Melodies/mvt.1 (CG) Scene 2: “Ick voer al over Rhijn” (SW2) Scene 3: “Est-ce Mars” (SW3); Theme from Jurriaan Andriessen’s “Magnificat” (JA) Scene 4: “Mein junges Leben hat ein End” (SW1); Pavane hispanica (SW4) Scene 5: Malle Symen (“crazy” Simon) (SW5); Quote from Rosa (Brahms’s waltz) Scene 6: Stravinskian chords; Lully, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (LL)

exception of “Mein junges Leben hat ein End,” are distributed in fragmentary fashion and contribute to the temporal stasis that characterizes the middle portion on the opera. For example, an ascending third motive C-D-E in the violin and the accompanying chords (centered on A minor) from Cage’s Sixteen Melodies (CG) is quoted literally in the opening overture of Writing to Vermeer. The quotation of Cage’s music blends rather seamlessly with the rest of the overture, building on the sparse texture and somber mood. In arranging this quotation from Six Melodies for a large ensemble, Andriessen instructed the violins to adopt a Baroque style of string playing (legatissimo with a lot of bow and little pressure) to induce a somber and “pure” sound (2002a: 320; 2002b: 323). The next five themes (SW1, 2, 3, 4, 5) are well-known folk tunes that Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck used as themes for keyboard variations. In particular, “Mein junges Leben hat ein End” (SW1) serves as the central leitmotif throughout the opera to link the characters’ affection for Vermeer as well as their feelings for one another. As in a Wagnerian opera, it takes on a discursive specificity of location, mood, and ethos as it undergoes continual transformation. The placement of theme SW 1, sung only in its entirety by Saskia at the Golden Section in the opera, presented an important structural consideration for Andriessen. Although I do not elaborate here, other folk tunes set to keyboard variations by Sweelinck (SW2, 3, 4, 5) are equally important; for instance, SW2 and SW5 articulate the opening of scenes 2 and 5 as central themes within a Baroque-style sinfonia. Lastly, Lully’s “Turkish March” from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (LL) is quoted in the last dramatic interpolation, which depicts the French invasion of Holland.28 In contrast to these themes, Andriessen works with a range of motives and fragments of borrowed themes to inject stasis into the temporal continuity of scenes 3 and 4. Example 6.10 reproduces Andriessen’s sketch for the


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Ex. 6.10: Andriessen’s sketch for the motives

[x, y, z are my additions to Andriessen’s sketch]

motives derived from works by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Anton Webern, and the folk-tune “Est-ce-Mars.” Andriessen employed aleatoric procedures, tossing dice to fill out the middle two scenes of the opera with chance-derived combinations and sequences for placing these motives. To facilitate discussion, I have added the following designation to motive 3 under Ex. 6.10: Z denotes the outlining interval of minor ninth (G-A), X denotes the embedded tritone interval (A-D), and Y denotes the perfect fifth (D-G). Inversion of major seventh is identified as Z’ and that of perfect fourth as Y’. The calculated transformation of structural agents, e.g. motives and themes, shapes the narrative codes and deconstructive strategy in the unfolding of the opera. To begin with, Fig. 6.11 charts the correspondences between a given text or topic and thematic, motivic, and/or harmonic elements that recur in the opera. Here, character refers to one of the three women or the children of the Vermeer household, topic to the content of the women’s letters to Vermeer and specific text sung by the character(s), and theme and motives refer to those introduced in Ex. 6.10. Each scene introduces a different borrowed theme from Sweelinck, yet SW1, the central leitmotif, is the only theme that recurs in various guises throughout the six scenes. Only at the Golden Section is the theme revealed in its full form, accompanied by the original text: “Mein junges Leben hat ein End, mein Freud und auch mein Leid” (“my young life has an end, my joy and also my sorrow.”) Through its recurrences, albeit in varied forms, SW1 provides dramatic continuity in the unfolding of the opera. Other aspects of this chart will be explained more specifically in the ensuing analysis. Throughout the opera, semic codes (description of time, place, and characters) are established by the distinct timbral and gestural characteristics attributed to the three female protagonists, Catharina, Maria, and Saskia. Vermeer’s wife, Catharina, who symbolizes motherhood and earthiness, is

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Reh.# characters topic

theme/motive/chords

(

SW1)

Scene 1

1st letter 1st letter “miss Saskia” “into the light”

r.3 r.12 r.15 r.28

C/ch M/ch

r.0 r.9 r.29 r.30

[interlude] C/ch/M 2nd letter M/ch “peace of mind” S

C/ch

H1 stadpÿpers SW1’ SW1’/3, picc.

Scene 2

Scene 3 1 r.0 2 3 r.5 4 5 6 r.16 7 8 r.22 Scene 4 1 2 r.5 3 r.13 4 r.14 6 7 r.24 8 r. 28

[interlude]

SW2 SW’2 SW1’ tutti, SW2

S/C/M S/M C/ch S/ch M.ch S C/ch

1a/b, 2a/b, 3, SW3’ 2a, 3, SW3’ 2a, 1a/b, 3, SW3’ 3rd letter C’s pregnancy 4, 3, 1a 3 “blue” 2a, JA, SW3’ baby’s conception 3, SW1’ “calm anxiety” 3, SW3’ “love you” SW1’

S/ch C/M/ch M/ch C S S/M S/M

2nd letter H2, 3 “mother’s money” SW4, 3 “it’s all women…” JA 3,4,5, SW1’ “Mein junges…” SW1 in full 3, 2b SW2, 1, picc.

Golden Section

Scene 5 r.0 r.14 r.17 r.28

[interlude] SW5 C/ch 5th letter SW1 “boys swam” Rosa quote S/M “come back, Saskia” SW5’/SW1’/2

r.0 r.9 r.14

[interlude] C/ch

r.19 r.35 r.52

C/M/ch S C/M/ch

Scene 6 SW1’/2 picc., 3 “if you never come back” “kiss you” “sign of love”

Strav. quote H3’, 3 SW1’ JA, H3’ [C=Catherina, M=Maria, S = Saskia ch=children, JA= quote from Jurriaan Andriessen]

Fig. 6.11: thematic and textual correspondences in Writing to Vermeer scenes


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Ex. 6.12a: harmonic units (H1-H3) associated with Catharina and children

Ex. 6.12b: stadpijpers motive associated with Maria (scene 1, reh.12)

12 picc 1 fp

pp

picc 2 fp

pp

fl 3 fp

pp

corA 1 f

legato

pp

f legato

pp

corA 2

signaled by a steady pulse and consonant harmonization, namely a chordal complex built on E-dominant seventh and A-major triad as shown by the reduction in Ex. 6.12a. This harmonic unit (H1) is related to subsequent harmonic units (H2, H3) that open scenes 4 and 6; H2 and H3 feature similar undulating rhythms and intervallic constitution to those in H1 (although the “leading-tone” accidentals are neutralized in H2), yet exert greater dramatic weight in their timbral dispersion across the entire instrumental range and also by anchoring the harmony to the bass note E. Unlike the fluid, water-like quality associated with Catherina, Maria, Vermeer’s mother-in-law, is depicted as a miserly, fussy old woman on the one hand, and as a clever and indispensable matron on the other. She has not only financed Vermeer’s career as a painter but also secretly arranges for Saskia to be rescued from her father’s ploy to marry her off. Her initial entry, as shown in Ex. 6.12b, is accompanied by a quasi-modal melody played by the English horn that represents the stadpijpers (street musicians in the service

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Ex. 6.12c: chordal complex associated with Saskia (scene 2, reh. 30)

(assigned to picc/ob/pno/hrp/perc)

of the city). The phrase cadences on an extended dominant-seventh chord built on E, related to the harmonic complexes associated with Catharina. Lastly, the entry of Saskia, the radiant model adored by everyone, is characterized by a decisively higher and brighter timbral combination of piccolo, keyboard, and strings presented in an agitated sequence of semiquaverbased rhythm. These characteristic gestures signal her presence throughout the opera. As shown by the reduction in Ex. 6.12c, the chord associated with Saskia’s arrival juxtaposes two major triads built on D and C with the added pitches A and B; this chord is followed by its transposition up a step. Andriessen’s skillful manipulation of the central leitmotif shapes the hermeneutic code – the dynamic process by which an enigma is posed and resolved – in Writing to Vermeer. Varied fragments of the theme SW1 (Sweelinck’s “Mein junges Leben hat ein End”) appear in the first three scenes to link the characters’ sentiments for their loved ones prior to the theme’s full statement at the Golden Section of the opera. Thus, through the fragmented appearances of the leitmotif, an enigma is posed, yet its full meaning has not been revealed. As shown in Ex. 6.13a, SW1, in its stepwise descending melodic contour spanning an octave, accompanies texts that speak of a collective yearning for love and peace and for Vermeer’s safe return. The two varied recurrences within the first scene avoid melodic closure by either following the partial descent from D5 to G4 with an ascending gesture or by ending on an unstable leading note. In the second example, the word “light,” which symbolizes stability and well-being, is left hanging on a leading tone of D minor without resolution. The leitmotif attains melodic closure only when Maria sings of “peace of mind” (with a complete octave descent) and the children extend the phrase by singing about “sleep.” In scene 3, when the children collectively sing the text “yours with all my love,” the music cycles through SW 1 twice with a complete octave descent. The significance of the central leitmotif undergoes a critical transformation when it is presented in its original and full form, as shown in Ex. 6.13b. Accompanied by harpsichord, Saskia sings of an unquenchable sorrow that eats away at her youthful life. From a dramaturgical perspective, this moment presents a critical point of convergence between the inner and outer worlds. Saskia’s suffering and departure from the Vermeer household


Ex. 6.13a: varied fragments of SW1 and textual correspondences

Ex. 6.13b: Saskia’s presentation of SW1 (scene 4, sec. 6)

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Ex. 6.13c: SW1’ in augmentation (scene 5, reh. 35−8 )

is wholly influenced by the ongoing feud between the Catholics and Protestants and her father’s wish to marry her off rather than have her continue to work as a model in a Catholic household. In this cathartic moment when she confronts her sorrow by singing the leitmotif in full, the dramatic irony is unveiled; the women, for the first time, become aware of their destiny – although Vermeer returns from The Hague unscathed, his life comes to a tragic end in 1765 as a result of war and financial downfall. From a structural perspective, the varied fragments foreshadowing the eventual presentation of the theme illustrate the concept of cumulative setting. In relation to Ives’s music, Peter Burkholder defines cumulative setting as a formal strategy by which the borrowed or paraphrased theme first appears in fragments, often varied, and its identity is gradually assembled and clarified through its appearance in full toward the end (1996: 138). As a structural alternative to the nineteenth-century notion of musical climax, such a technique exposes the theme in its simplest form as a way of encapsulating a moment of epiphany or revelation. In this context, however, the moment of epiphany coincides with SW1’s transformation from a positive mode of signification (“hope,” “peace,” and “light”) to a negative one (“sorrow” and “death”) in the accompanying text. The development of SW1 continues after this critical point in the opera. After an interpolation in scene 5 that features a riot and a lynching, the instrumental parts swell to the chordal section in the tutti that follows; the descending contour associated with SW1 is spread out over eleven measures in rhythmic augmentation and at the dynamic level of fff, as shown by the reduction in Ex. 6.13c. The piccolo part spells out a tritone descent of G – D (X) and this motion is paralleled by flutes 2 and 3 in stacked fifths (Y). Flute 3 continues to descend from G to A after the piccolo stops and sustains D.


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Ex. 6.14: Quote from Jurriaan Andriessen’s Magnificat (scene 4)

The combined effect is a tremendous surge in emotion that dwindles to an inconclusive end. The disintegration of SW1 from a descending minor scale to this chromaticized and inconclusive form takes on a powerful dramatic resonance. The factor that disrupts the proairetic or linear continuity of events in the opera is the non-developmental procedure Andriessen introduces in the middle two scenes. The aleatoric distribution of motivic fragments (presented in Ex. 6.10b) provides non-dramatic counterforce to the cumulative effect of SW1. Throughout scene 3, stage actions are reduced to the figurative representations of Saskia writing letters at one side of the stage and the Vermeer women patiently waiting at the other. The passage of time appears to slow down as the actions on stage are minimized. Coincidentally or not, this is the only scene that offers no “windows” onto the outer world. To maximize the sense of stasis, Andriessen adopted John Cage’s procedure of determining the sequence and combination of predetermined musical elements based on chance operations. He comments: “I even went out and bought two dice, because I really wanted to perform the act of throwing them. . . . I had a list with eight segments of music and eight rests of different durations, and then I just threw the dice and saw what came out” (Van der Waa 1999b: 16). Through chance operation, the combination and transposition of these motives are continually varied within the internal sections comprised by scenes 3 and 4. Sound and silence intermingle in the resulting sparse and fragmented texture. The symmetrical placement of a borrowed theme from music by Andriessen’s older brother, Jurriaan, further suspends the linear sense of time. As shown in Ex. 6.14, the music incorporates an exact quotation from Jurriaan’s “Magnificat” when Maria and the children sing “it’s all women that you paint.” Notice how the descent from G and F (Z) and the tritone

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between F and C (X) is emphasized in the harmonization. The tritone in the bass suspends forward motion and enhances a static sense of time. In the “reflected” half of the opera (scene 3), this phrase returns transposed and slightly modified. Saskia and the children sing about Catharina’s next baby being a boy because “Catharina insisted on wearing so much blue.” The melodic span outlines the descent from C – B (Z’) while the bass oscillates between B and F (X). Coincidentally or not, the focal pitches in both passages, C-F-G and F-B-C, outline the trichord (016), corresponding to motive 3. From both musical and dramaturgical perspectives, the temporal stasis in the middle two scenes suspends the resolution of the central enigma: can the women expect Vermeer’s safe return from The Hague? The fragmentation of motives and lack of linear momentum mirror the psychological framework of the female protagonists, patiently waiting for Vermeer’s return with no end in sight. Lastly, musical strategies Andriessen introduces to comment on the discrepancy between the sung text and the women’s emotions play an important role in enhancing the dramatic irony that lies at the heart of the opera. Andriessen comments: “Gradually, you hear that the negative emotion comes forth in the music and in the singing; it does not manifest itself in the written text because the text is strictly domestic and simple. . . Their voices and their manner of singing are permeated by anxiety while they still sing the words of their happy letters to Vermeer” (Trochimczyk 2002: 234). Through profiling the characters’ emotional state, the instruments generate a range of significance beyond what the sung text can adequately express. For example, Ex. 6.15a illustrates a passage from the overture where Andriessen strategically foregrounds the minor ninth (Z) and/or tritone (X) in harmonizing a theme or chordal unit. These intervals are used throughout the opera to inflect tonal melodies negatively. As the piccolo plays the notated passage one octave higher, a wide registral gap is inserted between the piano (E5 ) and the piccolo (E7 ) that doubles the melody at a minor ninth above. The timbral combination creates an eerie effect that casts an ominous spell at the start of the opera as if subtly to foreshadow the tragedy that lies ahead. The piccolo motive comes back in various guises to create a negative or ironic signifier to the sung text. For instance, where Catharina sings about Saskia’s marriage, the interval G –A (Z) bridges the vocal part and the piccolo in order to offer an ironic commentary on Catharina’s optimism (scene 1, reh. 7). Likewise, when Maria sings about her desire for Vermeer’s safe return (scene 1, reh.14), Andriessen provides a similar commentary by making the vocal entry on F clash with the English horn’s G.


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Ex. 6.15a: harmonization of the piccolo line (scene 1, reh. 1)

Ex. 6.15b: harmonization of SW2, “Ick voer al over Rhijn” (scene 2, reh. 1)

The dark shadow that looms behind the women’s domestic serenity is, indeed, captured in the persistent dissonant treatment of the borrowed themes. In the same manner, the instrumental interlude that opens scene 2, Andriessen’s musical setting of “Ick voer al over Rhijn” (SW 2), juxtaposes major sevenths E-E and A-G at the tritone to produce a negatively-charged harmonization of the otherwise diatonic melody, as shown in Ex. 6.15b. When theme SW2 is applied to the vocal entries in stretto (scene 2, reh. 25), a similar combination of intervals is used to inject dissonance into the melody; the dissonances intensify this passage in which Maria and Catharina simultaneously engage in monologues about “making babies,” with the result that ´ strategy neither one is listening to the other. Such effects recall Béla Bartok’s of planting musical motives in the orchestral accompaniment to play out

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Ex. 6.16: quote from Stravinsky (scene 6, reh. 15−2 )

the initially repressed emotions of the characters in the opera Bluebeard’s Castle (1911). Other quotations function as referential codes that index explicit references to borrowed models and mood invoked by the sung text. Andriessen features brief quotations of themes used in his previous opera, Rosa, namely, Brahms’s waltz and Stravinsky’s “Sacrificial Dance” from The Rite of Spring. These themes serve to heighten the spoken text and are not subjected to further transformation or development. The Brahms quotation is reconfigured into a melody Catharina sings about her boys swimming in the dyke in warm weather (scene 5, reh. 7). As she expresses pleasure, the melody takes on a positive signifier of water that correlates with the joyous topical characteristic of a waltz. This effect sharply contrasts with the characters’ image of water as a destructive force, accompanied by a literal quotation from Stravinsky’s “Sacrificial Dance” (at reh. 154 or the B section of the rondo) in Ex. 6.16. Here the sung text fuses macabre and comic elements as the children make light (“Splash!”) of Catharina’s anxiety. The Stravinsky quote signifies much more than an indication of the potential danger that may affect Vermeer’s life. This quotation signified to Andriessen a moment of profound irony that exposes the dualistic conditions (e.g., life/death) on which human existence hinges.29 ∗∗∗ The analytical observations introduced here by no means comprehensively describe the network of thematic, harmonic, and textual associations found in Writing to Vermeer, whose structural and semantic configurations create


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dynamic oppositions. The irregular distribution of dramaturgical interpolations offsets the symmetry in the formal proportion of the tableaux vivants. Andriessen’s oppositional formal structure effectively balances the developmental and non-developmental processes by employing aleatoric and montage techniques. Certain thematic elements (SW1, SW2, SW3) assume the function of leitmotifs in linking and unifying the characters’ sentiments across different scenes and contribute to the cumulative setting of form discussed earlier. Other motivic elements and quoted materials remain invariable and enhance the sense of stasis in the temporal continuity. The structure of this opera also coheres on the basis of the different combination of intervals, especially X, Y, Z and Z’ extracted from motive 3, that are used to harmonize the borrowed themes and other critical passages throughout the opera. In the instrumentation, the use of piccolo to double the tonal melody at a dissonant interval points to one prominent strategy by which Andriessen creates a musical analogue to the effect of “shadow” in Vermeer’s paintings. The positively charged themes and negatively charged harmonization thus result in a kind of musical chiaroscuro (play of light and shadow) without tending toward reconciliation.30 In Writing to Vermeer, irony operates at an implicit, hidden level as a subject unto its own. Adhering to Hegel’s definition of irony as “infinite absolute negativity,” musical gestures acquire a paradoxical mode of significance in simultaneously affirming and negating the meaning of the words.31 To emphasize the distinction between irony and satire, Andriessen quotes Schlegel: “Mit der Ironie ist durchaus nicht zu scherzen” (“Irony is not something to make fun of”). Invoking Kierkegaard’s distinction between two types of irony, he departs from the conception of irony as stimulus (as a device) to irony as terminus (as the subject itself), a “romantic” form of irony that can be traced to the writings of Schlegel, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and others (Sheinberg 2002: 33–35).32 At a broader metaphoric level, the decontextualization of SW1 affirms the act of yearning as a trope that fuses life and death to form an inseparable semantic unit. Unlike the romantic form of irony, in which contradictory meanings are transformed into a new state of transcendence, the oppositional topics remain fused and open-ended. The continual transformation and distortion of certain thematic and motivic elements mirror the fluid and vulnerable conditions of the women in the progression of the opera. By introducing poignant dissonances into the harmonization of essentially diatonic themes, Andriessen conveys the dual and inseparable nature of their emotional and physical universe: the shadow of impending doom that trails the women’s optimistic plea for safety and the protection of their loved ones.33 Once the exterior world has penetrated the interior world of the women at the Golden Section of the opera, the

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metaphorical union of these worlds is established; the further dissolution of leitmotifs past this point signifies the dissolution of this union into an infinite chain of negation.34 As Arnold Whittall comments, the conclusion of the opera is surprisingly Wagnerian in the way the women’s declaration of devotion “embodies contained ecstasy rather than unbridled Dionysian abandon” (2001: 12). It is in this ironic state – hovering between impending tragedy and contained ecstasy – that the opera comes to a halt.

On the interface between music and drama Both Rosa and Writing to Vermeer do away with standard narrative or metanarrative in favor of contrapuntal and oppositional ones. The two operas nonetheless differ in their aesthetic trajectory and the levels of disjunction introduced between music and drama to create such effects. Joshua Cody locates Greenaway’s pervasive eroticism, Baroque excesses, and detached portrayal of violence within the tradition of Spanish surrealism of the 1920s: “The technology of disassociation between Andriessen’s cold lyricism and Greenaway’s stunning visual explorations results in a moving poetry of alienation, nostalgia, and sentimentality that quite lives up to its surrealistic predecessors” (1994: 19). While the images may indeed suggest a connection with modernist surrealism, the didactic and satirical intent that underlies the production of Rosa traces back to Brechtian Lehrstück; through hyperbole and pastiche, the story of Rosa openly subverts narrative convention in order to engage the audience in a broader critique of Hollywood films as a “fetishized” commodity. Andriessen’s deployment of leitmotif likewise inverts its traditional function – as a means of identifying with a character or emotional state – for the sake of promoting the distancing effect. A radical shift is observable in Greenaway’s dramaturgical experimentation in Writing to Vermeer. Tina Rehn describes his theatrical innovations as follows: Peter Greenaway’s theatre is a theatre of shadows. Similar to his films it works with aesthetic ‘doubles’, thereby drawing on analogous performance concepts from the history of the media arts. By mirroring all kinds of art forms – form from painting, photography and film, literature, music, opera, dance, theatre, performance, architecture and exhibitions, to new media such as video and digital imaging – Greenaway’s oeuvre manifests itself as a hybrid art which, in its total aesthetic concept, oscillates between visual, literary and spatial art. (1999: 30)

With the aid of choreographer Saskia Boddecke, Greenaway often creates “doubles,” by multiplying the main characters by three and outfitting


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them in identical costumes. His visual concept is always multi-layered and involves fragmentation of the theatrical space; continual projections of images appear in the background, simultaneously with the action on stage. Rowena Braddock and Nicholas Routley invoke the concept of “productive disjunction” to characterize the ruptures in the libretto and the dramaturgical processes.35 In Rosa, such techniques of fragmentation were limited to certain scenes, often used to amplify the text through exaggeration. In Writing to Vermeer, Greenaway advances this technique to push the boundary of spatial representation; he discusses how the technology of virtual reality has opened up new possibilities for “reutilizing” perspective to create multiple dimensions of spatiality (Cody 1994: 17). He employs a transparent screen (scrim) upon which he projects scenes that operate independently from or in counterpoint to the action on stage. At other times, he takes the literal and figurative elements in Vermeer’s paintings and develops them into a multi-layered projection of filmic images, where the actors and objects intersect with the projected images in theatrical space. By juxtaposing the virtual and the physical on stage, Greenaway transgresses the boundaries and materiality of objects and figures to represent inner and outer worlds simultaneously. In the “reflected” half of the opera, the boundaries between the projected and physical spaces become increasingly blurred. The film projection of interpolated scenes in the outer world begins to merge with the women’s actions on stage: blood falls on the center of the stage after the film projection of the lynching of two brothers, metallic cages appear and enclose the women, and water pours down and immerses them on stage after the projection of the French invasion. Paralleling Robert Wilson’s approach (discussed in chapter 4), the materiality of objects, images, and actions on stage is given primary emphasis over its relationship to the text or the underlying narrative. These interfaces may be interpreted as different means of deconstructing the boundaries between real and illusory space, and ontological versus experiential realms of existence in the Derridian sense.36 That is, the production of Writing to Vermeer leans toward the philosophical form of deconstruction that aims not at reversal, but at reconfiguring the order within a given binary. Greenaway’s multimedia presentations “deconstruct” the material and virtual spaces of theater by allowing these spaces to intersect and merge. Furthermore, the symbolic references to five sources of fluid – ink, varnish, milk, blood, and water – are woven into the narrative and stage action with dualistic significance: water is at once a potentially destructive force and indispensable for maintaining life. The gushing water that falls on the women at the conclusion of the opera speaks of their survival as well as of the tragedy about to befall the Vermeer household. In moving beyond parody

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as satire, Andriessen also deploys musical gestures as a necessary supplement to the text; music here functions not only as an addition to the text, but also as an indispensable element in referencing the excluded side of the binary, be it the ontological (life versus death) or psychological state (ecstasy versus anguish) that seeks expression within a given musical utterance.37 Just as shadow enhances the source of light in Vermeer’s paintings, music takes on indispensable qualities of “shadow” without which the effect of light cannot be expressed or sustained. The enunciation of the text depends on its musical expression to give it depth of meaning, since the words in themselves convey little other than the facts pertinent to the women’s daily lives. Leitmotifs play an essential role in sustaining a psychological link between the women and children as they express their concerns about one another in their letters to Vermeer and in the absence of direct dialogue with each other. As Lawrence Kramer puts it, “the act of addition exposes an unacknowledged lack that the supplement is needed to counter” (1991: 111). Music as an additive element simultaneously completes the whole and puts the wholeness into question. The deconstructive logic of supplement further manifests itself in Greenaway’s concern that form and content influence one another while still retaining their independence. The tripartite representation of the characters indicates his concern for symmetry and forms an integral part of the narrative, which explores different character traits of the three female protagonists. The textual references in the libretto to color, time, and light are played out on stage in ways that reveal their literal and symbolic associations with the characters, yet the visual manifestations of the references are to be experienced for their materiality. Andriessen’s compositional strategies complement Greenaway’s dramaturgical motivations, blurring the boundaries between literal and figurative modes of expression in art. He demonstrates how music is self-referential and at the same time capable of signifying or referring to things outside of itself. Writing to Vermeer differs from Rosa and earlier works in the specific strategies Andriessen introduces for music to provide a sustained psychological commentary on the sung text. Even in the absence of words, instrumental music generates a paradoxical commentary that simultaneously affirms and negates the female protagonists’ unspoken emotions. Unlike the strategic way in which a single mode of verbal-musical utterance conveys the essence of the drama in Britten’s operas (as Philip Rupprecht convincingly argues), the semantic tension in Writing to Vermeer hinges on the duality of utterances between music and the sung text.38 It is only in the coda where this duality dissolves into a vast electronic wash of sound (composed by Michel van der Aaa): the electronically amplified echoes of leitmotifs and words


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from the previous scenes merge with the sound of pouring water onstage to complete the process of deconstruction. Although the subject of this opera is Vermeer’s women, and the musical and dramaturgical conception draws from Vermeer’s paintings and the music of other composers, the intertextual references do not produce a postmodern pastiche. While the technological modes of production invite postmodern readings, Greenaway’s aim was neither to create a “messy vitality” nor “postmodern chaos” – associated with what Jonathan Kramer calls radical postmodern art – out of the overlaid images and actions on stage (1995: 22).39 In addition, to label this opera as postmodern according to Frederick Jameson’s definition, “cannibalization of styles that effaces history,” would be grossly misleading given its historically accurate framing of events (65–6). Perhaps a more appropriate way to identify Greenaway’s affiliation with postmodernism is to focus on his use of technology toward what he calls the “breakage of the frame”: in getting rid of the monolithic frame that has dominated cinematographic and theatrical space, he explores the art of perspective from multiple and contrapuntal angles (Cody 1994: 17). If Rosa incorporates deconstructive tools as a formula for reversal, Writing to Vermeer advances such techniques in order to further break down the boundaries of representation that inhere between text and image and between form and expression. In the process, the didactic and satirical intent that underlies the production of Rosa gives way to a more profound confrontation with irony as an agent of catharsis in Writing to Vermeer.

Notes 1. Greenaway has gained renown with films such as The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), A Zed & Two Noughts (1986), The Belly of an Architect (1987), Drowning by Numbers (1988), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989), Prospero’s Books (1991), The Baby of Mâcon (1993), and The Pillow Book (1996). 2. Greenaway’s film is set at the crossroads between an old art of “reading” and a new art of “seeing.” Also Peter Bürger discusses how the avant-gardists, in their use of montage, treat their material as just material (Bürger 1984). 3. Bricolage, a term borrowed from Claude Lévi-Strauss, is applied to avant-garde productions in the 1970s which used collage, pastiche, found objects and installations that reassembled aspects of everyday consumerism as a reaction against high modernism (Hartley 2002: 22–23). 4. Hanns Eisler, a composer who was closely associated with the political theater of Brecht, reacted against the late-Romantic tradition of “art for art’s sake” and argued that music should be engaged in the struggle for human liberation. Vsevolod Meyerhold, the Russian theater director and producer, led the revolt against naturalism in the Russian theater. His book, The History and Technique

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of the Theater (1912), explains his theory of “biomechanics,” which reduced the actors’ individual contribution to a minimum in the interests of the play. 5. A scene presented on stage by costumed actors who remain silent and motionless as if they are portraying a scene from a painting. 6. While the alphabetical sequence parallels the formal structure used in the collaborative opera Reconstructie, Andriessen claims that the similarity is purely coincidental (interview with Andriessen on 12 Dec. 2002). 7. Interview with Andriessen on 12 Dec. 2002. The remaining three songs were written by Greenaway, with references to the sixteenth-century anatomist Andreas Vesalius, the Polish writer Bruno Schulz, and the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. 8. Cross locates “uncritical fetishisation of Stravinskian moments” in this particular piece by Andriessen. 9. For instance, when the horse is first introduced to the audience, Greenaway interjects an imagined response from the audience: “The woman in the brown suit in Row B, Seat 21 (an expensive seat) is disturbed. A horse? How can they let a poor, dumb creature perform like this? Circuses have long given up exhibiting performing horses. Circuses now use motor-bicycles in place of horses. Why can’t they use a motor-bicycle?” From the original script for Rosa by Peter Greenaway (1993b: 28). 10. For instance, Brecht used parody to provide satirical social commentary by depicting Adolf Hitler as a Chicago gangster in The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui (1941). This work parodies Hollywood films such as westerns and gangster movies by creating a satirical slant on Hitler and his rise to power. 11. Information taken from the character notes that Greenaway faxed to Andriessen on 16 March 1993. 12. Greenaway’s character notes. 13. Greenaway’s character notes. 14. Barthes’s codes also parallel Umberto Eco’s distinction between plot and forms of narrative discourse in reference to modern literature (Eco 1994: 34–35). Patrick McCreless applies Barthes’s codes to his Schenkerian analysis of tonal forms, in which themes and motives constitute the semic code and voiceleading and harmonic progression the proairetic code (1988: 11–12). Other semiotic theories on narrativity have been applied widely to analyses of tonal and early twentiethcentury music (see Newcomb 1987; McCreless 1991; Leydon 1996). 15. These terms apply to theatrical space and are not to be confused with the standard usage of diegetic (source which is visible on the screen or implied to be present by the action) vs non-diegetic sound (source which comes from outside the action) in film analysis. 16. The diegetic is equivalent to what Greenaway calls the negative space in cinema. 17. Bryand-Bertail comments on how epic music signifies two simultaneous but contradictory spatio-temporal dimensions: for instance, an uplifting marching song may be accompanied by a text that describes slaughter, creating a level of contradiction that invokes irony.


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18. Besides the usual parody of cabaret songs, Weill embeds a distorted and exaggerated quotation of Thekla Badarzewska’s “The Maiden’s Prayer” to portray the image of the city of Mahagonny as a false paradise in scene 9. The effect of dramatic irony is similar to Andriessen’s distorted quotation of Brahms’s waltz in Rosa. 19. Andriessen could not tell me the exact origin of this tune, but he considered it an obvious reference to Morricone. 20. According to Andriessen, the audience did not know what to make of the Index singer, who went on to rap for about ten minutes past the close of the opera. 21. Reininghaus 1995; Trochimczyk 2002: 56. 22. The film version was aired on Dutch television (NPS Ned 3) on 20 Dec. 2004 and first shown in New York on 3 May 2004. 23. Greenaway has transposed Vermeer’s paintings into scenic space in his earlier film work such as A Zed and Two Noughts (1987). 24. Camera obscura is a portable box with a mounted lens, a precursor of the photographic camera, which was used to project images using light. It is frequently associated with Vermeer’s pictorial mode of representation, which juxtaposes focused and slightly out-of-focus elements. 25. The concert version differs slightly from the theatrical version in its content and order of the interpolations. 26. For the actual sketches, see Andriessen 2002a: 313; 2002b: 316 and Trochimczyk 2002: 270–71. 27. English translation by the author. 28. The decision to employ Lully’s theme in the last interpolation was reached collectively through discussion with Peter Greenaway and the stage designer, Saskia Boddecke. 29. Interview with the composer on 12 Dec. 2002. 30. In an interview, Andriessen has commented on the concept of verzoening (reconciliation) in dealing with death as a form of catharsis. Here the light vs dark metaphor may be extended to convey the notion of moving from “darkness” into “light” as one gains acceptance of the inevitability of death. 31. Andriessen traces his understanding of irony to Hegel’s dialectical theory in which every condition of existence embodies its opposite in a state of tension (2002a: 329; 2002b: 332). 32. Sheinberg credits Kirkegaard as the first philosopher since Plato to connect irony to the alienation stage of the dialectic process and then to differentiate between alienation as a device and an end in itself. 33. In particular, Andriessen comments on how Saskia, the model, remains completely oblivious to the tragic course of events that surrounds the women. 34. The combined effects of euphoria and dysphoria can also be equated with what Esti Sheinberg refers to as “existential irony.” The concept of “existential irony” applies to Sheinberg’s discussion of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 (2002: 198–204).

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35. They describe the play of productive disjunction that operates at multiple levels in the opera as a “disturbance, suspension, or violation of conventional or normative expectations” (Braddock and Routley, forthcoming). 36. Under its conventional definition, deconstruction focuses on the hierarchies implicit in systems built upon binary oppositions (e.g. good/bad, male/female) and aims at a reversal of them: in short, it points to a form of dismantling convention popularized by feminist and post-colonial discourses that have emerged in recent years. The philosophical form of deconstruction (based on Jacques Derrida’s writings), by comparison, argues that the excluded side of the binary opposition operates implicitly within metaphysics and contains aporias or blind spots; the reversal is a temporary, strategic move that reorganizes the hierarchy, but does not change or reverse the system. Derrida argues that writing, as an addition to and a substitute for speech, works via a deconstructive logic (Derrida 1973; 1998). 37. Derrida describes death as a supplement to life in the sense that it is through the idea of death that we structure life (1998: 183). 38. Rupprecht argues that the text and music comprise a fused signifier in Britten’s operas; he speaks of the prominence of “single utterances” of texted music “whose uncanny reverberating force springs from a careful ‘staging’ in relation to larger dramatic unfoldings, as well as on the distinctive profile of local gesture” (2001: 5). 39. According to Jonathan Kramer, a radical form of postmodern art treats discontinuity and fragmentation as an end in itself. As an example, he cites John Zorn’s Forbidden Fruit in which contrasting musical excerpts constantly interrupt each other, precluding a regular temporal flow and creating “postmodern chaos” (1995: 15).

7 Contemplative works

Now that I’ve reached sixty, it is time to enter the nineteenth century – Andriessen (2002a: 283; 2002b: 272). The Trilogy is very classical, if not romantic in its [use of] leitmotifs. And with this you create memories of earlier moments. It is the most vulgar, but also the clearest, way of creating relationships – Andriessen (2002a: 283; 2002b: 285). Carnival brings together, unites, weds and combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the lowly, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the stupid . . . – Bakhtin (1973: 101).

After decades of proclaiming his anti-Romantic stance, Andriessen’s declaration that he is “ready to enter” the nineteenth century catches one by surprise. This attitude does not indicate a radical shift in aesthetic orientation but rather evidence of his maturity as a composer in being able to confront the musical ghosts of the past. More specifically, it reflects his interest in exploring the roles of metaphor and narrative in music, although not by any means in the sense of a conventionalized program or plot.1 Works from 1996 to 2004 reveal Andriessen’s growing preoccupation with the subject of death; the contemplation of death (and consequently of the meaning of life) becomes a metaphysical quest to be approached from different cultural and historical perspectives. Andriessen juxtaposes texts and musical signifiers as memento mori, objects that allude to death at the iconic and symbolic levels of generalization, much like the vanitas (a still life consisting of a collection of objects) that symbolizes the brevity of human life and the transience of earthly pleasures. His interest in the “vulgar” provides an important connective thread with earlier works such as Rosa. Among its many connotations (e.g., crude, banal, unpretentious), Andriessen’s interest in this concept manifests itself in the directness of musical expression, that is to say, music’s unmediated power to communicate an emotion or an expressive state. In the first movement of the Trilogy of the Last Day, seemingly incongruous musical gestures, e.g., the hammering chords in the overture, the gruesome silences, or a simple folksong sung by a boy soprano, are abruptly juxtaposed. Expressive oppositions produced through juxtaposed musical signifiers contribute to

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the formation of what Lawrence Kramer describes as narrativity – a dynamic principle that gives teleological impulse to musical gestures in conjunction with or in the absence of an explicit narrative (plot) – and narratography as the discursive processes by which we construct a reading of narrativity (1995: 101).2 Conflicting musical gestures appear in fits and starts and destabilize the musical continuity by commenting on a wide range of emotional states (such as fear, anger, lament, resignation) that arise during confrontation with death. Often, the sung text provides an extra-musical frame to the music, as an accessory and a message for a posteriori contemplation. Music in this context retains its primeval power of utterance, connected yet untainted by any fixed relationships to the accompanying text; it is in this sense, I argue, that music acquires a narrative function independent of the text in the Trilogy. The characterization of vulgarity in the Trilogy also speaks to Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque. All values, thoughts, phenomena, and objects are brought together to break down the barriers that separate the living from the dead. Boundaries between the vernacular and sacred are continually blurred. Parodic references, enacted in such contexts, are purposefully ambivalent. Quotations and allusions to Tchaikovsky, Bizet, and Saint-Saëns are both intertextual and parodic in resonance. On the one hand, Andriessen embeds them into the musical context as signifiers (e.g., the “death” motive from Bizet’s Carmen) in acknowledgement of their historical usage. The “bell” motive, signified by the descending minor third, appears in different guises throughout the Trilogy. The tritone assumes the historical signifier of diabolus in musica in “Dancing with the bones.” On the other hand, such signifiers are parodic in the light of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque realm in which every aspect of the external world is relativized. Bakhtin speaks of parody as an indispensable agent in the enactment of the carnival: “everything has its parody, because everything can be reborn and renewed through death” (1973: 104). Related to the carnivalesque is the medieval and Renaissance notion of the grotesque, which celebrates the interrelationship and the ever incomplete character of being. The infusion of folktale and Andriessen’s own farcical poem in the Trilogy embodies the spirit of the carnival in humor and inventive freedom. In the same vein, Arnold Whittall remarks that the allusion to Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre in this piece is “more Bruegelesque than Baudelairean” (2001: 9). Indeed, rather than echoing the French symbolist poet’s obsession with decadence and reveries, Andriessen’s music presents a vulgar albeit comical portrait of death in keeping with the Flemish painter’s vision. As Pieter Bruegel drew human caricatures and exposed man’s folly with realism and vitality in paintings such as The Blue Cloak (1559), Andriessen’s

Co n te m p l a t ive wo r k s

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diabolical scherzo brings out the positive, regenerative power of carnivalesque laughter to defeat the terrifying impact of death. Elaborating on such a vantage point, this chapter constructs a reading of the Trilogy with focus on how the formal construction and musical signifiers lend expression to Kramer’s concept of narratography and Bakhtin’s theory on the carnivalesque. This will be followed by a summary of Andriessen’s more recent works, which expand on the themes of madness and suffering in La Passione (1992) as well as the allegorical significance of death in Inanna (2003) and Racconto dell’inferno (2004).

Form and expression in the Trilogy of the Last Day De Laatste Dag (“The Last Day”). “The piece must creak as if the lid of a nineteenth-century coffin were slowly opening,” remarks Andriessen with regard to the first movement of the Trilogy of the Last Day. Considering the sheer force with which the ensemble and male choir burst out in ff dynamics, the piece does more than “creak” like the lid of a coffin. What is fascinating is the process by which two texts that are not intrinsically connected become metaphorically linked through the carefully crafted structure of interpolation. The male choir begins by delivering the first three lines from Lucebert’s Het laatste avondmaal (“The Last Supper”), an expressionistic poem about a mass grave witnessed during World War II.3 The English translation for the poem begins as follows: “The last bread charred, the last colour slide of the sunset glow, the last body in the mass grave, the raising of the last body, the final dragging away of the last remains, the last arrogant conceit, . . . the last supper in the light of the last supper . . .”4 By correlating images of a mass grave and war casualties with the biblical significance of the Last Supper, Lucebert’s poem places an ironic twist on the institution of the sacrament – the consecration of bread and wine – as a symbol of communion with God. The poem is expressionistic in Lucebert’s subjective depiction of inner turmoil through manipulation of images, e.g. wine turning to vinegar, and the decapitated body as the burning cup. The third-person discourse gives objective distance and at the same time adds intensity to the poet’s negative message (“the last arrogant conceit,” “all is bitter”) that the sacrifice of human lives has been made in vain. The second text is taken from a bizarre nineteenth-century Dutch folksong Een juffrouw met haar meid (het ellendig doodhoofd) (“A lady with her maid – the wretched skull”) that describes a woman’s search for the skulls of her deceased parents. The text exudes a certain playfulness and innocence in spite of the description of gruesome images the protagonist witnesses

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during her encounter with the underworld. The letters F1 to F4 show the exact placement of the text in the music. Excerpts from Een juffrouw met haar meid [English translation] “A woman brave and stout, went to the charnel house. And there she sought through the skulls with care, until she found one with tufts of grey hair. Really, I believe, she said, That I have found my mother’s head. From it I now can learn. What the hereafter might yet bring ere I lay it to rest.” (F1) “Hear what I have to say: She took the skull away. She set it down upon a table wide. And laid her mother’s portrait beside. Gazing at them side by side, she cried: God, oh, God. How could it have come to this? Once to be so beautiful. And now wither’d to an ugly skull. How could this have come to pass.” (F2) “The skull then spoke and said: I am not your mother’s head. I am the death’s head of a wretched man. Much pain and suff’ring have I seen. The lady was struck dumb. And cried: Oh, death’s head. With the gift of tongues, please tell me I pray: where are my parents gone? Wilt thou thy parents see, step now into your room. Behold her father seated in a flaming chair. His hands bound round with glowing chain, the while a fiendish snake around his body coils.” (F3) “And so it came to pass. A woman and her lass did to the graveyard go.” (F4)

While the two texts seem to bear no extrinsic connection with one another, the juxtaposition creates a pairing of expressive oppositions: horror and decadence (Lucebert) versus ludicrousness and innocence (folktale) are brought together under the same roof. By adapting the oral form of narration – what Bakhtin refers to as skaz (1973: 157–59),5 Andriessen infuses a profane and comical element into his carnivalesque depiction of death. Andriessen devises a formal context in which the texts are ingeniously melded together, as shown under Fig. 7.1a. Over the course of a twenty-six-minute span, different fragments of the folktale (F1. . F3) are inserted between recurrences of the overture (O) where Lucebert’s poem (L1, L2) is sung by the male chorus. My analytic annotation below his sketch divides the movement into four sections based on the recurrences of text and theme types. The blackened areas signify “black holes,” pockets of silence accompanied by minimal gestures that provide relief to the dense contrapuntal texture that surrounds them. In the overture, Lucebert’s apocalyptic vision of death is portrayed by misalignment of rhythmic layers, which was born out of Andriessen’s idea of the “failed unison” (2002a: 274; 2002b: 276).6 As shown under Ex. 7.1b,


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Fig. 7.1a: Andriessen’s sketch for “The Last Day” [analytical annotation by author]

the male choir enters on an ascending melody on E in hockets, doubled by guitar, synthesizer, and cello in the bottom layer. Against this ascending line, two instrumental layers form a counterpoint of two descending sequences of varying length in cycle, as shown by the brackets. The four-part harmonies that constitute the descending sequences are closely related (taken from a list of twenty-two chords that he devised for the Trilogy) although the top notes of the sequences do not align (2002a: 277; 2002b: 279). Lacking uniformity in the value and ordering of rhythmic units within each sequence, the three parts proceed out of synchronicity from one another. One possible interpretation for combining two descending sequences and an ascending vocal part is suggested by Lucebert’s poetic expression that refers to opposing physical motions: “dragging away of the last remains” and “raising of the last body.” The uneven length of each sequence represents, in other words, an iconic portrayal of bodies being piled up in the mass grave. Andriessen makes effective use of orchestration to maximize the brutal soundscape of the overture: oboes, trumpets, and horns add gravity to the articulation of the first descending layer, while piccolo and vibraphone attacks in the second layer trail behind the first like a distant echo. Unlike the polyrhythmic layers in Zilver where the two parts are neatly differentiated with respect to register and timbre, the two descending sequences overlap in timbre through their mutual inclusion of piano. While the bottom layer reinforces the vocal line, the length of its melodic cycle varies and the irregular metric placement of the starting pitch E continually shifts the listener’s perception of where the downbeat occurs.

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Ex. 7.1b: “The Last Day” (mm.1–8, reduction)

The cacophonous overture (mm.1–31) gives way to the primary thematic material in the movement, which Andriessen calls the unendliche Melodie or “self-transposing” canon.7 As shown under my reduction in Ex. 7.1c, the voices and strings drop out and the remaining instruments divide into two layers: the upper layer (A) introduces the canon where the rhythmic pulse regroups the written meter 3/4 into 4/16. The dotted-quaver pulse creates a polyrhythmic ratio of 4:3 against the crotchet pulse of the lower layer (B). While the lower voice does not strictly adhere to the pitch sequence of the canon, it replicates much of its contour (see bracketed areas) to make the rhythmic augmentation aurally palatable. To Andriessen, the use of this canon presents simultaneously a tribute to J. S. Bach and the Dutch graphic artist Maurits C. Escher: “In his metamorphoses, the graphic artist Escher did what I have done in this piece. For example, he gradually transforms birds into fishes. This sort of metamorphosis is the idea behind the continually transposing melody which forms the basis of the entire piece” (Andriessen 2002a: 278; 2002b: 280).8


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Ex. 7.1c: “self-transposing” canon at the rhythmic ratio of 4:3 (reh. 3)

As the canon progresses, the polyrhythmic interaction between the two layers becomes gradually liquidated through motivic compression and metric changes. The style of writing here is strongly reminiscent of De Snelheid, in which rhythmic layers mechanically grind away in seemingly endless loops while maintaining a common tactus. Toward the end of a long developmental process, the upper voice is reduced to a descending chromatic line C-B-A-A-G that expands and contracts in rhythmic interval through added values. As the canon in two parts comes to a grinding halt, a boy soprano enters with the first line of the folktale, as shown in Ex. 7.1d. Over the drone (A and D) sustained in the double bass and low woodwinds, the child sings a tune anchored in D Mixolydian mode based on a folktune from the Brabant region of the Netherlands. This mode, incidentally, is closely linked to the harmonic structure of the opening overture. This

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Ex. 7.1d: vocal entry (reh. 12) mf deciso child Een juffrouw kloeken

struis

Ging

naar het been der huis Waar zij de doods koppen zocht uit el - kaar,

Tot

db dbcl dbsn

Ex. 7.1e: “black hole” (reduction, reh. 20)

moment provides a welcome relief from the dense canonic texture that precedes it. Beginning with the first entry of the boy soprano, Andriessen strategically interjects variations of the canonic material in short fragments, often preceded and followed by the “black hole” – pockets of silence with rumbling gestures in the lowest registers of the double bass, piano, and woodwinds, as shown in Ex. 7.1e. The music oscillates back and forth between the “black hole” and canonic development, where the latter acquires increased rhythmic propensity with each repetition. “The boy represents Life, a very simple metaphor,” Andriessen explains (Van der Waa 1997: 12). One may infer that the low rumbling strings in the “black hole” signify the lugubrious realm of death, while the canonic development – as a metaphor for the emotional urgency of the protagonist in search of her deceased parents – signifies the frenetic realm of the living. Each time the narrator returns to continue the tale, the music shifts to a different key. The protagonist’s false hope for the discovery of her mother’s head is accompanied by a shift from D to D major (F1); her subsequent lament is accompanied by a shift to C major (F2); and the shift to F major (reh. 32) corresponds to a poignant moment when she has a vision of her father burning in flames (F3). In the last scene, the tonal stability of F major disintegrates, and harmonies based on the tritone accompany the gruesome vision of death. This scene segues directly into the


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recapitulation of the overture, which brings back Lucebert’s expressionistic poem in full force. The interruptive force of the Stravinskian block juxtaposition thus serves a dramatic function in commenting on the unbridgeable chasm between life and death. Even the manner in which the canonic writing becomes progressively freer contributes to the narrative principle at work. Unlike the mechanical means by which the canon was deployed at the beginning, the developmental process becomes increasingly more fluid after the first entry by the boy soprano. For example, Andriessen employs the chorale variation technique, where the slow-moving rhythmic augmentation of the canon unfolds against a faster countermelody in semiquavers at reh. 37. The legato articulation of the theme by woodwinds and strings is combined with short attacks of each melody note by the instruments in the top layer in a manner characteristic of Andriessen’s orchestration.9 The rhythmic fluidity in the canonic process extends from the technique Andriessen used to capture the emotional vulnerability of the mystic Hadewijch in De Materie. The incessant drive of the semiquaver motive in the accompaniment comments on the futile search undertaken by the protagonist in the folktale. It is in the third section where the music builds in romantic grandeur, culminating in the programmatic reference to Tchaikovsky. Following the canonic development at reh. 37, the rhythmic momentum builds up to a dramatic apex (reh. 39). Here, under the expressive indication of Appassionata, Andriessen presents what he calls an “expressionistic tutti”; a rhythmic augmentation of the folktale theme unfolds in A major, which is pitted against a succession of extended tonal harmonies related at the tritone: the primary melodic tones A and B, for instance, become the dissonant extension of FM seventh (A = sharp ninth, B = sharp eleventh, D = thirteenth). The striking of the gong at the end of this progression amplifies the romantic sense of yearning. As part of the contrapuntal elaboration following this juncture, Andriessen introduces further development of the folktale theme as well as a section based on the signature “Oong-kah” chords. Prior to an abridged recurrence of the chorale variation technique applied to the canonic materials, another programmatic indication (“Triumphant”) appears at reh. 45. The boy soprano enters for the last time in the initial key of D major, announcing the departure of the woman and her lass to the graveyard. An extended version of the Appassionata motive (transposed to G major) follows the vocal entry to amplify the expressive state of yearning. The fourth section begins abruptly with the second recapitulation of the overture, where Lucebert’s poem is sung now to its completion. The melody

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Ex. 7.1f: rhythmic augmentation of the folk song (reh. 39+2 )

of the overture returns, however, with chromatic liquidation [E-E-G-BB] and animated sextuplet figures in the accompaniment (reh. 51). After five measures, the overture is brutally interrupted by the Espressivo passage (reh. 52) in which the melody and harmonization from the opening bars of the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (F-E-D-C-B-C) is heard, epitomizing the romantic sense of yearning (Andriessen 2002a: 280; 2002b: 282). Three measures of “Oong-kah” chords follow, at which point the overture picks up again; this time it builds in rhythmic and dynamic intensity up to the climactic section where the “bell” motive [D-B] appears in the voice, doubled by woodwinds and keyboards in parallel ninth chords. In the final section, the canonic and folk song motives become synthesized in a dense web of contrapuntal texture that builds to a state of apotheosis. It is in this final stage of striving that the opposite states (life vs death) are reconciled into a transcendent state of contemplation. Lucebert’s poem is superimposed over layers of material that merge the folktale theme, overture, and fragments of the self-transposing canon. In this musical rendition of the human cry, all elements are brought together into a grandiose finale that speaks to the bitter existential condition (“last supper tasted of blood and sweat”) expressed in the poem. In his review of the première in Amsterdam, Frits van der Waa describes the expressive oppositions in the Trilogy as reminiscent of Mahler: This sort of opposition – between the grandeur and quotidian, between complex and almost banal – gives Andriessen’s Trilogy of the Last Day a Mahlerian allure. Not that it borrows one note from Mahler, but the dramatic effect is based on the same principle. (1998b)


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While incorporating passages that evoke Mahlerian romantic angst, Andriessen skillfully prevents a display of sentimentality. And it is precisely the structure of interpolation that prevents the developmental strategies from getting out of hand. The “self-transposing” canon undergoes continual metamorphosis and disintegration until it becomes interrupted by the boy soprano’s delivery of the folktale. The Appassionata motive then expands the expressive state of yearning, which is abruptly followed by the hammering “Oong-kah” chords. Such moments of rupture – a sudden halt in the continuity of musical expression – mirror the conflicting impulses and confusion that accompany one’s confrontation with death. Following Kramer’s theory, one could argue that the ruptures constitute the narrative or the dynamic principle at work, while the metaphorical expression of this conflict constitutes Andriessen’s narratographic account of death. The instrumental writing presages Writing to Vermeer by using music as a powerful vehicle to comment on the emotional underpinnings of the text. The piece produces a narratographic sequence of events that mirrors the bitter and fragile responses to death depicted in the two texts. The continual development of the canon, for instance, signifies the endless trials and tribulations of the human condition. The interpolated structure is a natural extension of the montage technique used in De Staat and Mausoleum from the 1970s, the latter defined by a stark juxtaposition of stylistic extremes in tribute to the Russian anarchist Bakunin. What distinguishes the construction of “The Last Day” from Andriessen’s earlier montage technique is the manner by which the composer instills developmental strategies of nineteenth-century music and quotation of Tchaikovsky into the discontinuous structural framework without compromising the objective principle of montage. It is in this sense that he “enters and exits” the musical realm of the nineteenth century unscathed. De Weg (“Tao”). If the first movement is expressionistic, the second is characterized by restraint and contemplation. Rather than accompany the text with musical gestures that superficially evoke East Asian sounds, Andriessen presents the listener with an austere, minimal, and translucent soundscape. In this movement, two texts are introduced one by one, rather than repeating the interpolated structure used in the first movement. Foremost, Andriessen drew inspiration from Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, a philosophical source which he had in his possession for many years. With the aid of the sinologist Burchard Manveld, Andriessen studied the meaning of the Chinese characters associated with chapter 50 from the Tao Te Ching. The second text is by a Japanese poet and sculptor, Kotaru Takamura (1883– 1956), who describes the daily activity of a knife whetter.10 The two poems

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are again metaphorically linked by the main ideas posed: the futility of pursuing worldly matters and excessive dependence on life. Tao Te Ching (Number 50) by Lao-Tzu When one is out of life, one is in Death. The companions of life are thirteen [one-third]; The companions of Death are thirteen [one-third]; And when a living person moves into the Realm of Death, His companions are also thirteen [one-third]. How is this? Because he draws upon the resources of Life too heavily. It is said that he who knows well how to live meets no tiger Or wild buffaloes on his road, and comes out from the battleground untouched by the weapons of war. For, in him, a buffalo would find no butt for his horns, a tiger nothing to lay his claws upon, and a weapon of war no place to admit its point. How is this? Because there is no room for Death in him.

“Knife-Whetter” by Kotaro Takamura Silently, he whets a knife. As the sun sets, he keeps on working.

Concentrating on every moment, He whets the knife in the shade of green leaves. Pressing the blade down, His sleeves gradually tear, changing the water, he goes on whetting. His moustache turns white. But to what purpose? Is it anger, necessity, nothingness Such concerns do not seem to matter. or the pursuit of an infinite sequence that he is after?

A word about the translation of the fiftieth chapter of Tao Te Ching is necessary: an alternative translation for “thirteen” is included since the characters also connote “ten has three” or one-third (Ch’en Ku-ying 1977: 231). Contrary to its Western connotation, thirteen does not carry a symbolic reference to death. In fact, the association between thirteen companions and dependence on life lends itself to different interpretations. In my preferred interpretation, Lao-Tzu means to say that one-third of the population will die young (“disciples of death”) while the remaining two-thirds are given the promise of a long life. However, by being driven by earthly desire and material possessions, one can forfeit the promise of a long life. The tiger and buffaloes are symbolic of temptations that stand in the path of a proper way to nourish one’s life. The Taoist principle of wuwei (“non-action”) provides a link to Takamura’s depiction of a knife whetter who devotes his life to the same activity day after day; it communicates the message that by carrying


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Fig. 7.2a: Andriessen’s sketch for Tao [with the author’s annotation below]

out daily tasks without questioning, people realize their own naturalness in the world. In constructing a form for this movement, Andriessen devised a sketch based on his metaphor for the pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama’s role as “a very large spider that slowly descends along a fine thread” (Van der Waa 1997: 13). As shown in Figure 7.2a, while comprising sections that flow seamlessly into one another, the movement intermingles two descending lines in melodic contour: the first refers to the pitch level at which the instrumental theme (T1) becomes systematically transposed and the second descending line (beginning at the “reversed” Golden Section) traces the entry pitch of the theme (T3) played by the solo piano. As the second line crosses over the first, the pianist continues to make her descent to the last section where the koto accompanies the recitation of the poem by Takamura. The three thematic areas recur in a cyclical manner throughout the movement to bring back “memories of earlier moments” and transform them into a new state. As shown by my annotation below the sketch (Fig. 7.2a), the structure of thematic recurrence also demarcates the transition from one expressive state to another by producing a narratographic sequence of events: the gradual descent and accumulation of density correlates with a move from the celestial (T1) to the earthly domain (T2); the entrance of the solo piano (T3) signifies human suffering that ultimately leads to death. The black squares refer to the second theme (T2) where Andriessen alludes to music by Claude Vivier, the French-Canadian composer who met a tragic

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Ex. 7.2b: T1 from Tao (mm.1–10, reduction)

and untimely death. The union of the three thematic areas ushers in the “death” motive of a descending minor third, which signified the tolling of the bells in the final section of “The Last Day.” The final score deviates to some extent from this sketch with respect to the precise pitch entries. The opening theme (T1) can be construed as a type of celestial music, comprising two melodic strands in the violins that intertwine into what Andriessen refers to as a “complementary melody”; each strand is doubled by an instrument an octave above, using an extended technique of bowing the crotales and vibraphone to generate multiphonics or overtones. As shown in Ex. 7.2b, the interonset duration (measured by the number of semiquavers between adjacent attacks) for the complementary melody is uneven, shifting in value by additive or subtractive processes, between mm. 3–8. This texture repeats itself in cyclical units of seven to eight bars, articulated by the recurrence of the head motive, C-B-G, and one of the twenty-one sustained chords played by the harp and strings. With each repetition, the melody acquires chromatic pitches and loses its initial modal flavor. Although it is not made apparent by the reduction, subtle changes in instrumentation are effected at every juncture where the opening chord returns; at m. 8, for instance, the crotales drop out and the glockenspiel plays the upper voice of the complementary melody in conjunction with the violin. Framing the recurrence of T1 is a chord sustained in the harp in the high register, doubled by string harmonics. This chord distinctly evokes the sound of shô (seventeen-pipe mouth organ) used in gagaku where it carries a cosmological symbolism of a phoenix’s cry extending upward to heaven (Andriessen 2002a: 268).11 The cyclical structure here is also strongly reminiscent of Vivier’s Lonely Child (1981); the opening melody in Vivier’s


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Ex. 7.2c: T2 from Tao (reh. 7, reduction)

7

Accentuato

picc fl f ob corA vla mf legato vln mf legato, senza sordino

etc.

piece is articulated by a cyclical return of the sustained chord in the Chinese gong and rin (metal gong used in Buddhist chants). With each repetition of T1, the entry pitch gradually descends in register and the pitch content of the complementary melody becomes increasingly dissonant through chromatic saturation. It is as if the structure of registral descent and increased dissonance signifies the metaphorical descent into the earthly realm. As shown under Ex. 7.2c, the viola introduces the second stately theme (T2), elaborated by the oboe, English horn, and viola with prominent use of the double-dotted rhythm.12 As his sketch indicates, this is the point at which Andriessen adopts the monorhythmic texture inspired by Vivier; in his highly personalized idiom, Vivier devised a texture where the instruments that accompany the voice supply a harmonic spectrum of timbres above and below the vocal melody in rhythmic unison – a technique which Andriessen attributes to Vivier’s Buchara (1981) and Zipangu (1980). Here the melody in the violin is similarly cast in the middle of the harmonic spectrum; piccolos and flute parallel the violin’s melody in the upper register in seconds and fourths, while the oboe, English horn, and viola elaborate on the rhythm with a double-dotted upper drone on A. After the initial phrase, T2 coalesces into a single rhythmic texture: cast in an irregular series of changing meter, the instruments “chirp away” in an angular, homorhythmic texture that calls to mind Messiaen’s birdsong, as shown by the second system under Ex. 7.2c. In certain respects, the doubledotted rhythm and parallel transpositions of the upper trichord make the “birdsongs” sound even more rigid and stylized than Messiaen’s. Andriessen envisioned this section as a transition between “heaven” and “earth”: the bustling rhythm and homorhythmic texture counteract the ethereal character of the opening. The opening texture then returns, with the complementary melody transposed to begin down a step on B. The female chorus enters with the text

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Ex. 7.2d: pianto motive (T3) in the solo piano (reduction, reh. 13+6 )

from Lao-Tzu, giving equal durational emphasis to the enunciation of the Chinese text (reh. 9). Emerging from the “celestial” music of the opening, the declamatory style of chanting by the female chorus exudes an other-worldly aura. In the subsequent vocal entries, the chorus adopts the double-dotted rhythm of T2 at the point where they recite the parallel phrases from LaoTzu’s text that describe the companions of life and death to be thirteen (or one-third). The vocal harmonies, drawn from the complementary melody that hovers above them, create a harmonious blend. If T1 and T2 allude to the celestial music of heaven mediated by Messiaenesque birdsong, the entrance of the piano solo (T3) ushers in the domain of earthly music. Placed at the “reverse” Golden Section in the formal plan, a descending sequence of thirteen chords from the twentytwo-chord sequence used in “The Last Day” symbolizes the “servants” of death. As shown in Ex. 7.2d, the chord progression is reduced to a three-voice texture in which each voice makes a chromatic descent with an appoggiatura, undoubtedly a topical reference to the pianto motive whose origin Raymond Monelle traces to sixteenth-century madrigals composed by Luca Marenzio (2000: 67–68).13 Andriessen makes this connection explicit through the expressive indication “as if crying” that accompanies the initial entry. Confined primarily to the chordal descent, the solo piano becomes the agent for an expression of unbridled grief. The female choir enters in dialogue with the piano with the question, “How is it then?” In its subsequent repetitions, the solo piano elaborates on the pianto motive by constantly varying its rhythmic subdivision in its iconic representation of a human cry. When the woodwinds and strings join the piano at


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Ex. 7.2e: Appropriation of the “death” motive in Bizet’s Carmen (reh. 24)

reh.16, their gestures merge the characteristics of the piano theme with the stately, dotted rhythm of T2. Andriessen comments: “the orchestra imitates the piano part in a sort of a grin which is, at the same time, a cry for help” (2002a: 289; 2002b: 295). As the piano makes its final descent into the lowest register, the woodwinds and strings join forces in mimicking the cascading descent of the pianto motive at reh. 16. It signifies a powerful moment in which the musical signifiers of heaven and earth are brought together in union at the Golden Section of the movement. This passage segues into the climactic plateau in which the previously stated themes are merged and the chorus once again poses the rhetorical question (“fu ge?”) against the cascading pianto motive in the orchestra and the solo piano. As shown under Ex. 7.2e, the female chorus here adopts the descending minor third, F-D, echoed by all instruments, a gesture Andriessen alludes to as the “death” motive in Bizet’s Carmen. Fortified by the bell plates and chimes, the motive is sounded three times in answer to the rhetorical question posed by Lao-Tzu’s text. Following this dramatic passage, the complementary melody of T1 appears for the last time as the chorus sings the final text in response: “because there is no room for death in him.” The music recaptures the serenity of the opening chords as if to make a swift journey back to the celestial realm. The vocal recitation of Takamura’s poem by the pianist at the conclusion of the movement is other-worldly: the pianist kneels down to recite the text and innocently plucks a sequence of notes on the koto. The melody is cast in a simple minor mode on E, imbued with expressions of tranquility

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and resignation. Released from the prior role of expressing human grief, the pianist enters a state of abnegation. Rather than tapping into the koto’s capacity as a virtuosic instrument, Andriessen makes minimal use of this instrument by having the pianist echo the melodic contour of the vocal recitation in free rhythm.14 He comments specifically on the fact that “the music does not respond to the text at this point” (2002a: 288; 2002b: 290). After the Amsterdam première of the Trilogy in February 1998, most Dutch critics responded to this movement as an “exotic” respite from the severity of the outer movements: Oswin Schneeweisz refers to it as “an intriguing little island of calm and silence between two hard outer movements, the least typical of Andriessen’s style,” while Aad van der Ven imagines “the thin, overtone-based harmonies, in combination with enchanting bells, take us to an isolated cloister on an Asiatic mountain slope.”15 The cross-cultural intermingling of East Asian philosophy and poetry should not, however, lead one to regard this movement as “exotic” in the superficial sense. In fact, Andriessen deliberately avoids mimicking stereotypical sounds associated with a specific Asian aesthetic principle or musical practice.16 The evocative form of expression instead transforms its model (e.g., shô in gagaku, complementary rhythm) by extending the timbral resources of Western instruments and adopting a cyclical developmental procedure characteristic of gamelan music. Its cumulative effects are, nonetheless, profound in the same vein as Messiaen’s Sept Haikäi (1962), Vivier’s Lonely Child, or Chen Qigang’s Poème Lyrique (1990).17 “Dancing on the Bones.” As a diabolic scherzo modeled on Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, the final movement of the Trilogy provides comic relief from the expressive severity of the preceding two movements. In The Art of Stealing Time, Andriessen discusses the special meaning Danse macabre has held for him throughout his life and explains how he modeled the structure of this finale based on the proportions and thematic organization of Saint-Saëns’s scherzo (2002a: 292–93; 2002b: 295–96). “Dancing on the Bones” retells a familiar narrative in homage to SaintSaëns. The locus classicus of the grotesque in this movement is the graveyard scene – skeletons rise from their graves at the stroke of midnight and return when a cock crows. Unlike the romantic view of the devil as a terrifying and sarcastic figure, the devil assumes “the gay ambivalent figure expressing the unofficial point of view” in medieval mysteries (Bakhtin 1973: 41). The carnivalesque spirit of laughter accompanies both Saint-Saëns’s and Andriessen’s respective depictions of the devil. What makes “Dancing on the Bones” unique is the non-literal form of parody Andriessen adopts in relation to its model, while capitalizing on his own creative expression of the grotesque. In general, he avoids a literal


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Fig. 7.3a: formal comparison (based on Andriessen’s sketch)

Andriessen’s “Dancing on the Bones” section Introd. (mm.1-115) Reh. A Reh. C Reh. 17 (Reh. D+9) Reh. 20 Reh. 23 Reh. G Reh. H Reh. 36

Reh. 37 Reh. 45 Reh. 36

motivic group “church bell” (syn/hrn/hrp) primary (P) / secondary (S) motives P motive (bcl/cbcl/syn/vc/db) Fugal development Dies irae motive (hrn/tpt/tbn) (allusion to Rosa) S motive (glsp) Transition; develop. of the P motive (vla/db) development of the S motive (vln/vla) recapitulation (P/S motives, tutti) “tolling” bells (chim) children’s choir (B M) climax (tutti) coda (fl/ob/cl/glsp/vib/syn/hrp)

Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre section Introd. (mm.164) Reh. A

thematic group Solo vln (harmonics) 1st /2nd themes (Gm)

Reh. C Reh. D

Fugal development Dies irae motive (AM)

Reh. E Reh. G

2nd theme (EM) Development: stretto entries of 2nd theme Development and quasirecapitulation of 1st theme (V/Gm) Recapitulation (Gm) (1st /2nd themes) Closing theme “the cock crows” (solo vln)

Reh. H Reh. K+8 Reh. L Coda

1st theme (Gm)

quotation of thematic material, except for the “bells” in the introduction and occasional references to the rhythmic profile of the first theme of Danse macabre. In stark contrast to Saint-Saëns’s use of scordatura tuning of the violin to depict the devil in Danse macabre, the low woodwinds, glockenspiel, xylophone and strings are featured collectively in Andriessen’s parodic reworking of the devil’s dance. The ensuing analysis focuses on: 1) a formal comparison of “Dancing on the Bones” with Danse macabre; 2) treatment of motives and themes; 3) intertextual references; and 4) the signification of the macabre or grotesque. The formal structure of “Dancing on the Bones,” shown under Fig. 7.3a, closely parallels that of Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, down to the correspondences in rehearsal letters where the themes and developmental strategies are introduced, as well as formal alignment of passages in which the xylophone is prominently featured. Saint-Saëns’s themes roughly correlate with the two types of motives Andriessen introduces (2002a: 294; 2002b: 296). The proportional length of “Dancing on the Bones” has multiplied that of Saint-Saëns’s piece by the ratio of 1.7.

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Ex. 7.3b: primary motive (reduction, reh. A)

Like Saint-Saëns’s piece, “Dancing on the Bones” begins with an ostinato on D in harp and synthesizer that represents the “church bells”. A slow, ascending melody is introduced in the strings and flutes as if a skeleton rises from the grave. Instead of the harmonics (on scordatura tuning) that usher in the solo violin, a “grunting” semiquaver motive appears in the low registers of clarinet and bassoon – a gesture that calls to mind the “barnyard animal” motive introduced in “Hadewijch” from De Materie (chapter 4). The slow melody returns, alternating in succession with the semiquaver motive. Glissandi that swoop upward and downward in the strings close the introduction, comical gestures that allude to the rise of the dead. The primary motive in “Dancing on the Bones” lacks a discernible melodic identity. As shown under Ex. 7.3b, its initial appearance is characterized by a four-to-six-note gesture in the low register of strings and woodwinds that enter in imitation; the structural interval of perfect fourth between B and F in the lower part is superimposed by the tritone G and C in the upper part. Built on the raised fourth scale degree in relation to the bass note, it can be construed as homage to the “de-tuned” violin solo of Saint-Saëns’s devil. Contrary to Saint-Saëns’s classical treatment of themes, Andriessen’s motive undergoes continual metamorphosis. Soon afterward, the motive is transformed into an ostinato pattern in the bass to support a melody that unfolds in the harp and oboes, as shown in Ex. 7.3c. The mode of the melody based on B Aeolian (supported by the E7 chord in the trumpet and horn) openly clashes with the tritone F-B in the trombone and E in the bass to give it a menacing character. The bass E descends to C, a minor third below, and the same pattern continues with the sequence transposed to begin on E at reh. B. The fluid treatment of this motive gives rise to a full-fledged development of the diabolical dance. In the transitional passage within the exposition, intertextual references abound. One prominent gesture from the opera Rosa that appears is Esmeralda’s lament (sung to her mother in scene 7), characterized by a Phrygian ascent C-D-F-G-A-C; the same melodic contour appears in the woodwinds at ten bars prior to reh. 13. A more familiar reference, an appropriation


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Ex. 7.3c: development of the primary motive (reduction, reh. 9+4 )

Ex. 7.3d: secondary motive (reh. 21)

of the Dies irae melody (reh. 17), appears as a transitional motive prior to introducing the second theme. Contrary to the diabolical characterization of the primary motive, the staccato articulation of the Dies irae motive in the major mode in the brass renders a certain light-heartedness to this passage. To spice up the harmonization, the trombones accompany the motive with tritone D-A over the sustained A in the bass. At a more hidden level, the melodic contour presents an intertextual reference to a prominent motive used in Rosa when it oscillates between a descending second and third. This passage is followed by an abridged recapitulation of the introduction that segues directly into the secondary motive. The harp introduces a waltzlike accompaniment, while the secondary motive appears in the highest register of the woodwinds, doubled by the glockenspiel (with instruction to play with hard sticks), adding a shrill, metallic attack to the timbral mix. The xylophone joins forces in the second phrase, as shown in Ex. 7.3d, to complete the macabre waltz. The extended diatonic sevenths are spiced up

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Ex. 7.3e: recapitulation (reh. K+3 )

K

molto chiaro, legato picc fl *gtr *vln

mf

ff

ob cl vla

lrg cym mf chimes

hrn tpt pno hrp

ff

syn bgtr vlc db ff

mf * = octave lower

by an added dissonance, e.g., D-D over the bass G in the first bar and G-G over E in the second. The developmental section between reh. 23 and 36 demonstrates the ease with which Andriessen intuitively composes connective materials: e.g. the introductory material returns briefly, followed by further elaboration of the two themes through fugal imitation, compression, and metric contraction from 3/4 to 2/4 (reh. 30+4 ). Many of the gestures that appear in the transitional section, e.g. the lingering melodies in the high woodwinds, arpeggiation in the harp, etc. foreshadow the instrumental gestures in Writing to Vermeer. When the literal quotation of the first theme (C-E-C-D-E) from Saint-Saëns’s model appears as a development of the primary motive at reh. G, Andriessen keeps its identity concealed by casting it in the lowest register of the strings and woodwinds. Doubled at the fifth, the motive quickly becomes an oscillating figure with syncopated accents that cut across the meter. Andriessen identifies Saint-Saëns’s “trump card” in Danse macabre as the simultaneous return of the first and second themes. In a manner less obvious to the ear, he presents a “recapitulation” at reh. K that condenses the rhythmic characteristics of the primary and secondary motives into a fivebar passage, as shown in Ex. 7.3e; the melodic contour quickly ascends and


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Ex. 7.3f: vocal entry (reh. 37)

descends within each bar, paralleled by a dynamic contour that crescendos to ff and diminuendos. This climactic passage is followed by the “bell” motive struck by the glockenspiel, followed by a final waltz that intensifies the sense of grotesque; the waltz is based on a harmonic complex built on C7 and F7 , an extension of the dominant-tonic complex that featured in Anachronie I and De Tijd.18 The chord embodies the grotesque in combining elements of frivolity with the sinister and horrifying. The celebratory fanfare that closes this movement is strongly ironic. As the children enter to sing Andriessen’s poem about what happens to the body when it dies, the music suddenly shifts in texture and key. As shown in Ex. 7.3f, the texture is reduced to a simple folk-like tune in B major, initially doubled by pianos, guitars, and trumpets. The close of the vocal melody emphasizes the major third, D-B, as opposed to the minor third associated with the funeral “bell.” The spirit of the poem and its accompanying music is blissful and comical, commenting specifically on how bodily functions stop when one dies. In a rather clichéd manner, the melody modulates a semitone higher to B major as the celebratory waltz continues. The primary motive with the ostinato figure returns at reh. 41 to lend a greater sense of urgency to the singing. The music comes to a halt when the rhetorical question is posed: “Why? [why does the body stop moving?]” After a long pause followed by a stomping instrumental interlude, the children continue to sing: “Because no impulses come from the brain”. At this moment, a sense of grotesque is conveyed by the strategic way in which Andriessen embeds tritones in the harmonic construction of his macabre dance. The accompaniment based on a waltz alternates between a half-diminished seventh on G and dominant seventh on C – chords whose roots are a tritone apart. Stylistically, the passage alludes to Ravel’s La valse in both a comical and exaggerated manner. ∗∗∗ “This dance of death refuses to dissolve itself into a ceremonial, ritual procession. There is not the slightest whiff of incense” (Whittall 2001: 9). Whittall’s

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remark in comparing the sober ending of the Trilogy to Stravinsky’s Les Noces or Requiem Canticles is noteworthy. Neither does the use of “bells” in the Trilogy provide an ironic and critical commentary on war as it does at the close of Britten’s War Requiem (1961), nor assume a profound and cathartic role as it does at the close of Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles (1965).19 Instead, bells become absorbed within Andriessen’s allegorical commentary on death informed by the carnivalesque spirit in which the meaning of everything is relativized. As in De Materie, Andriessen juxtaposes different texts with musical signifiers that contain historical and symbolic references to a common theme in taking the music outside a monological interpretive context. In the case of the Trilogy, I argue that it is the expressive oppositions that provide structural and semantic links between the disparate movements in the absence of a single narrative framework. The rapid alternation between contrasting musical gestures enhances the expressive opposition between doom and desire for salvation in “The Last Day.” The cyclical recurrence of themes alternates between expressive states of celestial indifference and earthly desire in “Tao.” Even the diabolical scherzo modeled after Saint-Saëns depends on the expressive opposition that wavers between the realms of the grotesque and ludicrous. Contradictory responses evoked through Andriessen’s rhetorical strategies thus humanize, pace Kramer, the otherwise impersonal agency we attribute to musical gestures. In spite of its assembly of heterogeneous elements, Andriessen embeds intratextual links that provide long-range cohesion to the three movements. Besides the obvious signifiers that recur, such as the “bell” motive, the disparate textual sources “speak” to one another as intertexts: e.g. the rhetorical question “he gu?” posed by the Lao-Tzu text in “Tao” is echoed by a similar question in Andriessen’s poem, “Death. What is that?” which appears at the close of “Dancing on the Bones.” Moreover, the folksongs that appear in the outer movements are closely related with respect to the related keys of D major and B major. According to Andriessen’s account, the fact that all three movements close on the note F, however, is purely coincidental. Along with the carnival spirit, the Renaissance Weltanschauung of the grotesque – with its emphasis on folk humor and materiality of the body – figures prominently in Andriessen’s musical setting of the outer movements of the Trilogy. And in this respect, his adaptation of the grotesque differs altogether from the frivolity and lightheartedness one attributes to SaintSaëns’s Danse macabre. By stripping his themes of clearly discernible melodic identity, Andriessen emphasizes the vulgar: instead of the lilting melody in the violin, one hears “grunting” semiquaver motion in the low register of the woodwinds. Yet these gestures are not parodic in the sense of being


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coded with satirical or ironic meaning and, therefore, differ in nuance and stylistic expression from the grotesque realism of early twentieth-century Russian art forms. For example, Meyerhold’s production of Gogol’s The Government Inspector (1926) and Shostakovich’s The Nose (1927–28) are characterized by a brand of expressionism that combines social satire with elements of chaos. Sheinberg characterizes such works as giving expression to “an unresolvable ironic utterance, a hybrid that combines the ludicrous with the horrifying” (2002: 207). In Andriessen’s Trilogy, the contradiction inheres not within a given musical gesture, but in between gestures. And this is precisely the narratographic formula that gives musical expression to the metaphor of death. One may construe the three movements of the Trilogy as separate pieces of vanitas that make up a triptych to explore the unknown depths of the human soul in confrontation with death. Just as a seventeenth-century Dutch painter drew a still life consisting of an assortment of strange objects that symbolize the vanity of worldly things and the brevity of life, Andriessen juxtaposes texts and musical gestures that are in themselves unrelated to one another, but acquire specific meaning in the context of their juxtaposition. Andriessen employs irony to acknowledge contradiction as an integral part of reality in accordance with Bakhtin’s notion of reality as “unfinalizable.” Contrary to infinite irony, in which meanings are constantly negated and rejected, the grotesque results from an additive process in which all meanings are accepted and accumulated (Sheinberg 2002: 207– 09). Curiously enough, Andriessen’s aesthetic trajectory for the Trilogy is best summed up in his and Schoenberger’s description of Stravinsky: in characterizing Stravinsky’s musical humor, they refer to him as “an ironic buffocomposer” who can treat the subject of death not as a tragedy, but as “merely the confirmation of the insoluble absurdity of a world in which things are always contradicting each other” (Andriessen and Schönberger 1989: 220).

Beyond the Trilogy : exploration into madness and hell Often, in casual conversation, Andriessen confesses now that he is interested in writing “beautiful” music in the vein of Ravel and Chausson. Such a declaration has both backward and forward-looking implications. On the one hand, works written since 2002 demonstrate a stylistic orientation marked by lyricism and mixed modality that harks back to Nocturnen (chapter 2). His language, on the other hand, synthetically weds his pan-diatonic idiom with new textural approaches such as the homorhythmic texture based on an “overtone” series inspired by Vivier. Parodic strategies give way to abstract

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musical expressions and a new form of simplicity as reflected in the serene, contemplative work called De Tuin van Eros (“Garden of Eros”, 2002), composed for the Arditti String Quartet. Andriessen nonetheless has continued to pursue themes with darker nuances. Collaboration with the American experimental filmmaker Hal Hartley led him to write music for The New Math(s) (2002) and a theatrical production, Inanna. Captivated by the folk-like quality of Cristina Zavalloni’s voice, Andriessen composed a series of dramatic works featuring her as soloist, beginning with the music for Passeggiata in tram in America e ritorno (1999) with text based on the surreal poetry of Dino Campana (1885–1932). Zavalloni’s breathy, non-classical style of singing (reminiscent of Cathy Berberian) was exactly the style and timbre he sought. In La Passione, a “double concerto” for voice and violin based on Campana’s Canti Orfici (1914), Zavalloni was featured along with Monica Germino, the violinist of the Ensemble Elektra. The work was commissioned in 2002 by the London Sinfonietta, the BBC, and the South Bank Centre. In an interview, Andriessen traces the essential aspect of Canti Orfici to mental and spiritual suffering: “The Orphic Songs describe the fall of the poet as a person. Yet there are moments of visionary clarity when he asks ‘Why do I suffer?’ So my own work is in many ways about Campana’s own Passion.”20 The five texts that Andriessen set to music portray the delusional world of the poet who turns natural images and familiar objects into signs of love, suffering, and death. Although the music does not allude to Bach’s Passions in any concrete way, the violin frequently assumes an obbligato function in relation to the solo voice as in a Baroque aria. La Passione begins with a fanfare for horns and trumpets; Stravinsky’s Agon (1957) provided an important reference for Andriessen in this regard. However, the reference to Stravinsky’s celebratory fanfare in Agon is more symbolic than it is literal; the fanfare that begins La Passione, unlike Stravinsky’s light-hearted neo-classical texture, establishes the unstable psychological realm of the ensuing songs through presenting aimlessly unwinding triplets in the trumpets and horns and avoiding any kind of steady tonal grounding. The unstable and volatile images in Campana’s poetry are captured by skittish gestures in the instruments, which frequently present a dissonant backdrop to the meandering modality of the voice and violin. For instance, in the first song, “una canzona si rompe” (“a canzona that breaks off”), the vocal melody in D Aeolian mode is doubled at the octave by the solo violin and accompanied by a parallel succession of second-inversion major triads in the woodwinds and glockenspiel, as shown in Ex. 7.4a. Against the gentle, lullaby-like melody, the oboes, horns, trombone, and cembalo articulate


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Ex. 7.4a: “Una canzona si rompe” from La Passione (reduction, reh. 5)

frenetic accompanying figures in sextuplets against the triplet motion in the bass. The composite harmony, much like Andriessen’s attempt to combine the tonic and dominant chord to form a dissonant harmonic complex in Nocturnen, results from superimposing triad and seventh chords with one or two overlapping tones. For example, the first chord on the downbeat comprises a concatenation of A major with B major seventh over the E bass. The chord on the second beat concatenates an E minor triad with an A major seventh, root motion a tritone apart. The succession of chords produces a haunting, unsettling sensation around the vocal melody, anchored to the descending minor third, F-D. In a dreamlike fashion, the same haunting melody comes back at the beginning of the third song, “una forma nera cornutta” (“a black-shaped cuckoo”), following a lengthy violin solo, on the text: “I listen. Against the wind’s speech the fountains have fallen silent.” The violin assumes a more active role by casting a diabolical shadow on the vocal melody in the fourth movement, “O Satana” (“Oh, Satan”), as shown in Ex. 7.4b. The ascending sequence of sixths is complemented by falling minor thirds that close the opening phrase. The frolicking rhythm in the fifth song, “Sul treno in corsa” (“. . . on the speeding train”), presents an onomatopoetic reference to a speeding train

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Ex. 7.4b: “O Satana” from La Passione (reduction, mm. 473–82)

that spins out of control – a metaphor for the poet’s loss of control over his life. The music builds up in rhythmic momentum and intensity before collapsing in tutti at reh. 45. The song closes with the poet’s reflection: “era la morte?” (“was this death?”). Finally, just as a melancholy theme in the oboe forms a refrain throughout “Der Abschied” in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (1909), the concluding song Il Russo (“The Russian”) begins with a haunting duet in the oboes that cyclically returns, to which melodic counterpoints in bass/contrabass clarinets and flutes are added one layer at a time. The voice enters in stuttering, speech-like rhythm, accompanied by thin, veiled sounds in the violin. The song fuses the contradictory states of sadness and ecstasy to depict a condemned Russian inmate. In Inanna, Andriessen “pulls out all the stops” to demonstrate his skills as a theater composer. As in his work with the theater group Baal in the 1970s, he required each actor to possess a wide range of diction as well as a robust singing voice. Notwithstanding the rather small ensemble of four saxophones (featuring the quartet Python), contrabass clarinet, and the electric violin performed by Germino, the music communicates a wide array of expression that ranges from the raw and gritty sound of the contrabass clarinet to the sensual, mystical resonance of the electric violin. According to a three-thousand-year-old Sumerian myth, Inanna is a goddess of love, fertility, and war, whose power has been stripped away as she


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Ex. 7.5: Inanna’s aria (Act I, mm. 54–60)

lives the life of a mortal, married to an uncaring husband on earth. In a particular version of the myth called “Inanna descends into the underworld”, she travels to the realm of the dead and claims its rule. Her sister Ereshkigal, who rules the underworld, then sentences her to death. With Inanna’s death, however, nature dies and nothing grows anymore. Through the intervention of her father Enki, the god of wisdom and water, she may be reborn only if another person takes her place. She chooses her beloved consort Dumuzzi, who from then on rules the underworld every half year with his sister, Geshtinanna (Lindemans 2004). The dialectical character of Inanna attracted Andriessen’s attention: “she has a good and bad side and it makes her an intriguing person in a way that I cannot summarize well, but I love her because of it” (Andriessen 2003). Andriessen imagined employing an orchestra that conjures up the sound of a cathedral organ in Babylon from 3000 BC. The instrumental texture, on the whole, presents a stylistic extension of Tao in the way Andriessen adopts homophonic rhythm in combination with the harmonic spectrum inspired by Vivier; electric violin and soprano saxophone hover above the voice, while the remaining instruments reiterate the same rhythm below it, as shown in Ex. 7.5. Parallel fifths are combined with a minor ninth in the construction of the harmonic spectrum. The double-dotted rhythm renders stately and solemn characteristics to Inanna’s style of enunciation, echoed by bass saxophone and contrabass clarinet that mirror her vocal contour in inversion. As a goddess, she is made to express herself by singing exclusively in Sumerian.

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As in Rosa, each scene is cast within a closed form, featuring a song sung by one or two of the main characters in alternation with a chorus. The supporting characters are assigned distinctive types of singing to accentuate their personalities. The vulgar and grotesque characteristic of Inanna’s father Enki is brought out in a clumsy waltz depicting his drunken state, while the innocence of Geshtinanna, the sister of Dumuzzi who looks out for Inanna, is emphasized through her monodic, chant-like melody anchored to a simple, unwavering mode. In contrast, Ereshkigal, Inanna’s sister from the underworld, is assigned a jazzy, cabaret style of singing to convey her evil personality. Andriessen frequently interjects exaggerated figures in the accompanying instruments to caricature these stereotypes. The librettist Hal Hartley captures the complexity of Inanna’s character – her strength as well as vulnerability – against the transparent and onedimensional supporting characters in his libretto. In spite of her innocent and helpless demeanor, she possesses the power to inflict punishment upon those who are unkind to her. The dramatic irony lies in how she sends her husband Dumuzzi to the underworld to reclaim her own life. Hartley’s directorial style mirrors his approach to film: “Like Godard before him, Hartley has been described as a woman’s director. Strong, complex, female characterizations juxtaposed against possibly dangerous and adrift males are central to all of his narratives” (Hartley 2004). He adds a postmodern touch to the libretto by depicting Dumuzzi as a greedy capitalist who sits at the computer and schemes how he can take over the world, Ereshkigal as a corrupt and middle-aged corporate executive, and the eunuch-envoys who take Inanna to the underworld as lawyers. Although delighted by Andriessen’s music and Hartley’s libretto, some critics found Paul Koek’s stage production too static and bare. Wilfred Takken, writing for Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant, was especially critical of the passive portrayal of Inanna who “stands with a vague smile most of the time” (Takken 2003). Following Inanna, Andriessen composed a vocal and instrumental setting of selected texts from Dante’s Inferno, entitled Racconto dall’Inferno (“Story from hell”) (2004); it comprises the third part of an opera based on Dante’s The Divine Comedy, which is scheduled for a première in 2007. The instrumentation is identical to La Passione (with the addition of a cimbalom) and features Zavollini as the singing actress who tells the story of Dante and Virgil’s encounter with the devil Malacoda in Cantos 21 and 22. In this scene, which depicts souls laboring in boiling tar, Virgil obtains safe conduct to pass the bridge across the sixth bolgia with an escort of ten devils. The piece begins and ends with a slow, chromatically descending harmonic progression that serves as a musical metaphor for descending the spiral staircase of hell. In between, Andriessen provides a whimsical commentary on the


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gruesome narrative of hell. The mistuned cimbalom and staggered use of dotted rhythm allude to Malacoda’s evil deeds. The utopian idea of crossing a bridge safely is communicated by a diatonic motive played by horn, piano, and cimbalom (C-F, C-G), strongly reminiscent of the opening motive of Mausoleum. Following the instrumental interlude that builds to a climax, the singer introduces the ten devils in a stylized and mocking tone of voice, each announcement accompanied by a chordal outburst. Her announcement of musical instruments played by the devils is set to a grotesque march with double-dotted rhythms, accompanied by parallel triads with added dissonances. Through such gestures, Andriessen presents a farcical and strangely uplifting commentary on hell, as if to draw on the power of carnivalesque laughter to transform the idea of death and punishment into an allegory for the living.

Notes 1. Interview with Andriessen on 24 Oct. 2004. 2. Kramer defines narratography as governing two broad areas of representation: the temporal disposition of events within and between narratives on the one hand, and the sources of narrative information on the other. Furthermore, he describes the most important characteristic of narratography to be its capacity to reinforce or contradict elements of narrativity. 3. Lucebert is the pseudonym of the Dutch experimental poet and artist L. J. Swaanswijk (1924–94). This poem is taken from the collection called Van de Roerloze Woelgeest (1993). 4. From the CD liner notes to: Louis Andriessen, Trilogie van de Laatste Dag (Donemus CV 79, 1999). 5. Skaz (folk-style narration) is a stylized form of double-voiced discourse defined by an orientation toward spoken language. 6. “Originally I saw unison as a political matter and I ascribed a Marxist interpretation to it. Now that I see failed unison more as something philosophical, I’d soon think of Nietzsche.” 7. Andriessen sets up this “self-transposing” canon so that after traversing twelve chords, the process begins again a whole-step higher and can “transpose” itself indefinitely in this manner. 8. With respect to his general approach toward counterpoint, Andriessen comments: “I think in steps, I could almost say digitally, not in a continuum of sound. So, when we have an accelerando or a diminuendo, I think stepwise. This has to do with an orientation towards the objective tempi of the Renaissance or Baroque. . . .” (Andriessen 2002a: 279; Andriessen 2002b: 281). 9. This technique of presenting short staccato articulations in woodwinds and brass to accentuate attacks traces back to De Tijd and Part I of De Materie.

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10. Takamura was profoundly influenced by Rodin in his study of sculpture, and attempted to capture Western aesthetics in his Japanese poems in the formative years. His later poems are known for the poignant depiction of his wife’s slow descent into madness. ˆ Takemitsu during 11. Andriessen recalls hearing the gagaku ensemble through Toru his visit to Japan in 1970. 12. Andriessen notes that T2 is inspired by the hichiriki (double-reed instrument) used in gagaku. 13. Although the pianto motive is commonly associated with Dido’s lament in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Monelle traces its expressive connotation to Marenzio’s madrigal (1585). 14. Koto, a thirteen-string zither with movable bridges, has undergone enormous development in the course of the twentieth century. Since its tuning system can be changed by adjusting the bridges, it has become very popular to arrange Western art music compositions for koto ensemble, the most famous of which is an arrangement of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. 15. See Schneeweisz 1998; Van der Ven 1998. 16. In an interview with Frits van der Waa, Andriessen remarks: “The fact that I make use of Chinese and Japanese literature and philosophy is not the result of a desire for oriental trinkets, but because the piece is written as a sort of solo concerto for the pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama, and also because I’ve always wanted to do something with the Tao Te Ching” (Van der Waa 1997: 13). 17. Under the classification that I introduce of music that merges Western and East Asian cultural elements, “Tao” belongs to the category of transference: the music draws on aesthetic principles without explicit references to Asian musical tradition (Everett and Lau 2004: 16). 18. Based on correspondence with Andriessen from 24 November 2004. 19. For the account of “bells” in the Requiem Canticles, see Straus 2001: 244. 20. “Andriessen Passion,” Quarternotes (November 2002).

8 Epilogue

On June 1, 2005, the Holland Festival – now in its fifty-eighth year – opened with music featuring Rob Zuidam’s Fanfare, Andriessen’s De Tijd and Racconto dell’Inferno, and Toˆ ru Takemitsu’s In Autumn Garden in the Concertgebouw’s main hall. The evening featuring three hours of contemporary music began with the audience saluting Queen Beatrix, whose unfailing presence at such events serves as a testament to the Netherlands’ longstanding commitment to the arts. Almost eighty years since Willem Pijper bemoaned the country’s lack of interest in “homegrown” music (chapter 1), contemporary music in Amsterdam seems to be flourishing more than ever: a new concert hall was built overlooking the harbor IJ in the center of the city, new operas are being commissioned every year, and public broadcasting includes frequent interviews with living composers and retrospective documentaries on composers and novelists who took part in the legendary “protest” activities circa 1969. Indeed, the current landscape of new music in the Netherlands encompasses a remarkably diverse range of musical styles. Michel van der Aa represents the new generation of the Hague school, with the complex tapestry of fragmentary sounds he explores in multimedia works such as the Here trilogy (2000–03). Then there is the fluid, heterophonic sound world of Zuidam, whose new opera Rage d’Amours, featured in the Holland Festival, was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2003. In a more popular vein, the minimalist and experimental work of Jacob ter Veldhuis, quirky improvisational and conceptual music by Guus Janssen, and postmodern theater and happenings by Merlijn Twaalfhoven come to mind. The American transplant David Dramm’s fusion of pop and new music with a philosophical bent shows yet another genre that has flourished on Dutch soil.1 “Is there a collective ‘sound’ to Dutch music”? Jacqueline Oskamp asks in Radicaal gewoon (“radically ordinary”), a book that takes a retrospective look at the diverse musical orientations that have emerged in the postwar Netherlands (2003). In conducting interviews with eleven representative composers, she grapples with the apparent paradox of what exactly makes Dutch composers “radical” on the one hand and “ordinary” on the other? While tracing the roots of “radical” aesthetics to the hard and aggressive music by The Hague School composers in the 1970s, Oskamp calls attention

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to the impact of media and globalization in recent years that has steered younger composers’ interests toward multimedia theater and opera, in which they have explored a postmodern mix of styles, digital technology, and “accessible” sounds (2003: 45–47). In spite of the exterior diversification that has taken place, she observes discernible traits in recent works that bear the collective stamp of Dutch “sound”: a fusion of folk music, American jazz, minimalism, improvisation, absurdism, with an undercurrent of Calvinistic rigor in the sharpness and directness of expression (2003: 50). Undoubtedly, along with Reinbert de Leeuw, Misha Mengelberg, and others who laid the foundation for new growth, Andriessen is seen as a living monument from the yesteryears of the protest movement. While the image of the enfant terrible persists in the collective memory, Andriessen is a traditional composer who begins each day – still to this day – by practicing the music of J. S. Bach at the piano. Yet his compositional orientation has undergone radical changes over the course of the preceding five decades – so much so that those who continue to identify Andriessen as the “hardedged” minimalist of the 1970s are baffled by the subdued lyricism of Writing to Vermeer. So where does Andriessen belong in the current landscape of new music? How will Andriessen’s music be remembered? In what follows, the key issues addressed in the introduction will be revisited: respectively, Andriessen’s unique ways of re-contextualizing historical models as musical commentary and the politics of reception.

Music as commentary: parody and beyond In upholding the Stravinskian equation – that is, by using music to comment on other music, Andriessen has incorporated and transformed historical models to create his own inimitable forms of musical commentary. And like the later works of Ives, the models are not restricted to quotations, but extend to gesture, form, and procedure and the references carry a wide range of signification (Burkholder 1996: 36). Often, the borrowed references appear not for their own sake, but offer metonymic links that evoke an underlying concept, place or time. Metonymic use of signifiers works by means of substitution: a depicted object stands in place of a non-depicted object or concept – for instance, Washington standing for the US government. In musical terms, one may hear the sounds of boogie-woogie and big band music in De Stijl, yet such gestures do not simply refer to jazz, but rather evoke a place (Paris) and time (roaring twenties). The contiguity of such gestures and other references (the pervasive use of the B-A-C-H motive, which is stylistically unrelated to jazz) shapes the spiritual and material portrait of Mondrian as an artist. Even in an early work such as On Jimmy

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Yancey, boogie-woogie serves a metonymic function in the way it evokes the celebratory reference to jazz in the fast, upbeat section and connects it with the slow, mournful dirge that follows. And this is precisely why the significance of Andriessen’s “concept” works extends far beyond a simple description of influences, be it minimalism, jazz, or Stravinsky. Rather than striving toward an abstract form of expression (as reflected by the aesthetic aims of the high-modernist composers), Andriessen has aligned himself stylistically with the modernist orientations of Stravinsky and Ives in his embrace of historical models. This is exemplified also by his interest in exploring paradoxes and attempts to “defamiliarize” references through radical means of decontextualization. The four imitative strategies that Martha Hyde offers with respect to how Stravinsky and other twentieth-century composers assimilate historical models from the past are particularly germane to Andriessen’s techniques for transforming references (Hyde 1996; 2003). Collage pieces from the 1960s exemplify the eclectic type of imitation in which various styles are juxtaposed without foregrounding one over another (Hyde 2003: 102). The “concept” works such as Il Principe or De Staat from the 1970s exemplify, in comparison, the dialectical type of imitation based on the process of critically examining the truth of an opinion through debate or dialogue (122); by placing one historical model or reference in direct conflict with another, Andriessen explores duality and contradiction as subjects in their own right. In the 1980s, however, he moves more toward a heuristic type of imitation in which comparison is achieved through a deeper engagement with one historical source or model (114); in De Materie, for instance, an existing form such as the toccata is transformed into a new formal and expressive device, e.g., a signifier for revolution. Among many gestures that constitute Andriessen’s signature style, I call special attention to his extension of the chorale and hocket as compositional devices. He transformed the chorale into textures that embody a wide range of expressions, evidenced by the “sound continua” in Contra Tempus, a tranquil and homophonic instrumental interlude in Mausoleum, and the slow unfolding of the harmonic progression that accompanies the choral recitation of St. Augustine’s text in De Tijd. In a similar vein, since adopting hocket as a principal textural device in an antiphonal setting (Hoketus; Mausoleum), Andriessen developed it in multiple parts (The Symphony for Open Strings (1978)) and in the contexts of polyrhythmic cycles (De Tijd; De Snelheid). In the contexts of his large-scale instrumental pieces, hockets began to acquire broader metaphorical significance. Part IV of De Materie is characterized by a slow oscillation of hocketing chords that serves as an onomatopoeic portrayal of human breathing; as the character of Marie Curie grieves the death of her husband Pierre, the hocketing chords intensify in rhythmic

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and dynamic momentum to convey the state of human grief. A decade later, Andriessen deployed hockets in the vocal parts in combination with polyrhythmic cycles in the instrumental groups to comment on Lucebert’s expressionistic poem about the catastrophe of war. No longer grounded in rhythmic processes that ensure structural continuity, the material substance of hocket is elevated into an expressive end on its own. Through invoking specific strategies for incorporating music from the past, Andriessen simultaneously retains his connection to musical traditions from the past and marks his difference from within. During the 1960s and 1970s, many avant-garde composers adopted parodic strategies as a way of formulating a social critique. In this respect, Andriessen shares a similar ideological vantage point in embracing parodic techniques with composers such as Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, and György Ligeti. In dramatic works like Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy (1967), Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969), and Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre (1974), parodic strategies are used in part to supplant the purity of a modernist aesthetics, while channeling the avant-garde’s power of provocation toward formulating a social commentary or critique. Although their strategies for injecting an “ironic edge” into their music are specific to each context, they purport to establish a dialogue with music from the past to communicate a particular ideology as well as to inscribe historical continuity with tradition (Everett 2004).

Politics of reception Musical genres and categories, such as minimalism and modernism, are telling not because they necessarily explain how a given piece works, but because of their power of persuasion: invocation of such terms in program notes and reviews affects the ways in which people respond to music. The reception of Andriessen’s music varies according to the specific cultural systems and values that define what constitutes “new” music. Broadly speaking, new or contemporary Dutch music is inclusive of genres that range from pop, folk, jazz, and improvisation, to classical music. This is not to indicate that boundaries do not exist between these genres – Dutch people quibble over what is authentic “jazz” or “folk” all the time. Yet contemporary music seems to offer a neutral ground for composers to experiment freely with different genres and stylistic idioms. And this explains why there are so many ensembles that specialize in different repertories under the rubric of new or contemporary music. Through the “democratic” initiative undertaken by Andriessen and his colleagues, new music has attained an air of inclusivity in this sense, even if not all Dutch composers necessarily subscribe to this attitude or orientation.2

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And for this reason, Andriessen’s oeuvre is remarkably diverse: “lighter” music for television, theaters, and social occasions intermingles with more serious concert pieces.3 As an outsider to Dutch culture, I remark on the important quotidian function of music, as many social occasions seem to call for music and songs that are sung collectively. For that matter, Dutch composers take the act of composing seriously, but not everything they compose has to be serious in nature. Andriessen himself has written countless small pieces for social occasions, intended as homage to friends and family.4 Such pieces are intended to be nothing more than a display of wit, humor, and tribute. This air of capriciousness frequently transfers onto pieces he has written for concert performance – for instance, in Shopping List of a Poisoner (2000/02) written for the Elektra Ensemble, four performers simply recite a sequence of words that describe ingredients that go into making poison as a theatrical performance, complete with choreography and the amplified scratching of a pen in the background. To dismiss this piece as insubstantial and “unbecoming” a composer of Andriessen’s stature is to deny a quintessentially Dutch way of thinking about music. Yet outside the Netherlands, Andriessen’s music is mainly associated with fusion or postminimalism, performed by “alternative” new music ensembles which specialize in music that crosses over rock, pop, and experimental new music. In an article called “A Hip Audience Packs the Hall to Hear Hip Works,” Anthony Tommasini describes how “the hip eclecticism” of Andriessen’s music, performed by Ensemble Sospeso in October 2000, attracted “an enthusiastic and strikingly young audience” to the Miller Theater at Columbia University (2000). Accessibility seems to be the key factor that makes his music permeate cultural and demographic boundaries. In a review of a recent performance of Hoketus by the British group Icebreaker at the Lincoln Center Festival, Bernard Holland describes the repertory that combines Nancarrow, Zappa, and Andriessen as “the playbook of rock and the machine” (2005). Andriessen’s image as a “hard-edged” minimalist seems to be perpetuated in programs that celebrate the crossing of vernacular and concert music traditions within a particular niche. In France and Canada, the negative reception of Andriessen seems to emanate from a much narrower definition of what constitutes contemporary music. The boundaries between vernacular and concert music are fixed and less permeable, and contemporary music falls in the latter category. After De Materie was performed in Québec in 1999, a critic responded: “Louis Andriessen is lost in a cul-de-sac whose vacuity will satisfy only the adoring teenagers who dream of another Woodstock” and his music is “nothing but a paper painted richly with ornaments” with little substance (Tousignant 1999). The dismissal is acutely felt in the general lack of inclusion of music by Dutch composers in the performances of contemporary music in France. In

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Nouvelle Musique, edited by Stéphane Lelong, Andriessen is given an entry among American minimalists John Adams, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich, as a composer of “new music” who steered away from atonal orthodoxy, the dominant strand of contemporary music instituted by Boulez in France, in the interest of pursuing influences of non-Western and vernacular musical traditions (1996: 11). Lelong laments the fact that the music of these composers has yet to be welcomed in France (1996: 9). Such comments point to the seemingly irreconcilable cultural divide that exists between these neighboring countries as well as an increasing differentiation in audiences based on a niche market. From the perspective of reception, Andriessen’s initiative to bring about democratic changes in the production of new music is implicated in the postmodern ideas of “social power” and the idea of music as “social communication” (Lochhead 2002: 8). At the end of chapter 4, I argue that Andriessen’s music is postmodern in the specific sense of reworking music from the past with the purpose of critique, never simply to evoke nostalgia. In this sense, Hutcheon’s insistence on irony as an operational device in postmodern artwork is particularly informative – that is, her claim that “postmodernism is fundamentally contradictory, resolutely historical, and inescapably political” (1988: 4). Andriessen’s musical gestures are, in other words, signifiers with concrete references and intentionality, not the “floating” signifiers that are often brought up in connection with postmodern art. Using music as an object of contemplation that resists fetishism, Andriessen inscribes its use-value over its exchange or monetary value. This is how he transforms references to vernacular or “lowbrow” music into a powerful agent of philosophical inquiry. Although Andriessen is no longer overtly political, his non-standard instrumentation and choice of subject matter have simultaneously defined and limited the marketability of his music in the global arena of contemporary music. For instance, the opera Rosa could not be produced in the United States due to its portrayal of nudity and violence whereas Writing to Vermeer, depicting the domestic serenity of women in the seventeenth century, was produced at the Lincoln Center in New York City (2000) to an enthusiastic audience. 5 Andriessen’s uncompromising language also separates him from the tonal and formulaic orientation of American postminimalists such as Philip Glass and John Adams. As a case in point, a comparison of De Snelheid with Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986) – a piece Adams composed shortly after commissioning De Snelheid from Andriessen – makes the difference in orientation clear. While both pieces use woodblocks to maintain a constant pulse and establish tempo changes, cross-rhythms, and

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superimposition of fast and slow-moving layers, the consonant harmonic orientation and the absence of hockets in Adams’s piece provide a kind of accessibility and fluidity that is altogether missing in De Snelheid. The relentless hockets, dissonant harmonic clusters, and angularity of rhythm give De Snelheid a “hard edge” that defies ease of listening. Unlike Adams’s piece, which provides harmonic closure in D major (with the Neapolitan-tinged succession of E-A-D), De Snelheid ends with a symmetrical hexachord (A-D-G-G-C-D) that defies any tonal sense of closure. Its purpose is clearly to provoke, not to appease the listeners’ tonally-saturated ears. Peter Schat, after his falling-out with the Nutcrackers in the 1980s, criticized Andriessen’s music as part of a fashionable trend that “will fall through the ‘time’ sieve” and will be forgotten in history (1999: 41). I couldn’t disagree more. Notwithstanding political and cultural differences that have affected the reception of Andriessen’s music in the global market, the key to the longevity of his “political” music lies in its adaptability to new social contexts and situations, and most of all, the empowering effect it has on performers by allowing them to renew and redefine its use value by expressing their identity in sound. In addition to the two new installations of Workers Union presented during the Andriessen festival in London (chapter 5), young performers continue to adapt it for their own use. The Yesaroun duo in New York City – comprising virtuoso percussionist Samuel Soloman and saxophonist Eric Hewitt – proudly displays an audio excerpt of their highly individualized interpretation of Workers Union on their website.6 Their version conveys the restlessness of young urban dwellers – as if they set out to explore a certain pained ambivalence about the culture they inhabit – and sounds entirely different from the cold and machine-like interpretation of Koleva’s solo percussion version and the slick, virtuosic performance by the BOAC All Stars. That this rhythmic piece, with the simple instruction to be played by “any loud-sounding instruments,” has elicited such a wide range of interpretation goes to show that the power of Andriessen’s music lies in its capacity to engage musicians and listeners alike – be it through the performative act of expressing one’s identity in musical sound or the reflective act of meditating on its significance at large.

Notes 1. For instance, Dramm’s The Hammerhead Arias (2001) is a music theater piece that features a saxophone quartet on the subject of the medieval philosopher Boëthius. 2. Konrad Boehmer claims Andriessen and his inner circle have catered for the new bourgeois audience, and the only composer who has remained “true” to the

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3. 4.

5. 6.

political initiatives of the 1970s is Misha Mengelberg. Interview with Boehmer on 18 October 2004. For instance, he composed music for a film called The Family in 1973. The CD entitled The Memory of Roses (1993) is filled with small pieces that Andriessen wrote to commemorate special occasions for friends and family members. Bernard Holland offers a positive review of the production of Writing to Vermeer in New York City. See Holland 2000. Based on information taken from the website at: http://yesaroun.com/bios.html, accessed on 20 February 2005.

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Discography Bang on a Can. Industry. 1995. Sony Classical SK 66483. Bang on a Can. The Gigantic Dancing Human Machine: The Bang on a Can Plays Louis Andriessen. 2003. Cantaloupe Music CA 21012. Cornelis de Bondt. Het Gebroken Oor. 1998. Amsterdam: Muziekgroep Nederland. Composer’s Voice CV 70/71. Dutch Composers: Pijper, Wagenaar, Dopper, Röntgen (Concertgebouw Series). 2001. Audiophile classics, APL 101.541. Louis Andriessen. Nocturnen / Ittrospezione III / Anachronie I / Contra Tempus / Anachronie II. 1996. Donemus CV54. Louis Andriessen. De Tijd. 1993. Nonesuch 79291–2. Louis Andriessen. De Materie. 1996. Nonesuch 79324–2. Louis Andriessen. M is for Man, Music, Mozart. 1994. Nonesuch 79342. Louis Andriessen. The Memory of Roses. 1993. VPRO EW 9304. Louis Andriessen. Trilogie van de Laatste Dag. 1999. Donemus CV 79. Louis Andriessen. De Volharding. Special release CD that accompanies Key Notes 1997/3 (Donemus). Louis Andriessen. Zilver (California E.A.R. Unit). 1997. New Albion Records B000000R4I. Orkest de Volharding 1972–1992. 1999. Trajekten, NM Classics 92021. Ralph van Raat. Louis Andriessen: Base. 2004. Attacca 2598/2599. Reconstructie. 1969. STEIM (Stichting studio voor elektro-instrumentale muziek) LP113612Y. Steve Martland. Patrol. 1994. BMG Classics-Catalyst 09026-62670-2. De Volharding/ Il Principe / De Staat. CD that accompanies Adlington 2004a.

Index

Aa, Michel van 185, 202, 239 Here trilogy 239 Acte van Verlatinghe 118 Adams, John 1–2, 94, 109, 144, 166, 167, 244 Short Ride in a Fast Machine 244 Adlington, Robert 3, 60, 85, 103 Adorno, Theodor 8, 63, 94–95 Akkeren, Arnold van 85 Aktie Tomaat 62, 93 aleatoric technique 187 Algemeen Handelsblad 22 American counterculture 59 Amsterdam Muzieklyceum 33 Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra 24 Amsterdam Theater School 69 anarchist ideology 61 Andriessen, Hendrik 19, 31, 138 “Il Pensiero” Quartet 31 Missa Cristus Rex 47 Pavane 135 Quintet for Winds 31 Andriessen, Jurriaan 21, 31–33, 47 “Berkshire” Symphony 31 Magnificat 195 Andriessen, Louis works Anachronie I 46, 140, 229 Anachronie II 49–50 Contra Tempus 29–30, 42, 50–56, 63, 141, 241 Il Duce 60, 79, 92 Facing Death 144, 154–57 Dat gebeurt in Vietnam 59, 69 Hoketus 1, 55, 68, 73–75, 92, 101, 111, 145, 151, 160, 241, 243 Hout 144, 154–60, 177 Inanna 209, 232, 234–36 Ittrospezione 7 Ittrospezione II 41–44, 56 Ittrospezione III 42, 49, 54, 141 De Materie 100–41, 153, 172, 177, 215, 226, 230, 241, 243 Mattheus Passie 92 Mausoleum 55, 88–91, 93–96, 101, 217, 237, 241 Melodie 86, 153

M is for Man, Music, and Mozart 172–73 The New Math(s) 232 Nine Symphonies of Beethoven 66 Nocturnen 34–40, 231 On Jimmy Yancey 7, 67, 154–56, 240 Orpheus 92 Passeggiata in tram in America e ritorno 232 La Passione 209, 232–34, 236 Il Principe 6, 60, 69–70, 77–79, 91, 92, 140, 241 Prospettive e Retrospettive 34 Racconto dell’inferno 209, 236–37, 239 Reconstructie 64–66 Registers 44 Rosa: A Horse Drama 6, 170–83, 207, 236, 244 Séries 34–36, 42 Shopping List of a Poisoner 243 De Snelheid 100, 109–14, 147, 154, 160, 213, 241, 244–45 Sonata for piano and flute 32 Souvenirs d’enfance 29, 46 De Staat 3, 6, 7, 55, 60, 69, 71–73, 80–88, 91, 92, 93–96, 148, 167, 217, 241 De Stijl 116, 129–35, 146, 162, 240 Symphony for Open Strings 153, 241 Symphonies of the Netherlands 72, 86 De Tijd 55, 100–01, 147, 154, 160, 229, 239, 241 Trepidus 114 Trilogy of the Last Day 207–31; “The Last Day” 209–17; “Tao” 6, 217; “Dancing on the Bones” 224–29 De Tuin van Eros 232 De Volharding 59, 67–73, 86, 92, 172, 173 Volkslied 59, 70 Workers Union 1, 59, 68, 70–71, 92–94, 166–67, 245 Writing to Vermeer 170–72, 183–203, 217, 228, 240, 244 Zilver 144, 154–63, 211

In d e x terms black hole 214 blue column chords 102–05, 160 “Buddha” chords 112 collective unison 70, 71–76, 80, 92, 101 dialectics 2, 5, 184–86 failed unison 210 irony 2–3, 244 leerstukken 114 “misguided” unison 82 Oong-kah chords 112, 215–17 self-transposing canon 212 shadow melody 104 sound continuum 50 writings Gestolen Tijd: Alle verhalen 2 “Komponeren voor De Maatregel” 69 The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky 2, 87, 101 Antirevolutionaire Partij (ARP) 61 anti-Vietnam war protests 59, 67 Arditti String Quartet 232 Arnold, Arthur 89–91 Ars Nova 108, 147 L’art pour l’art 13, 22 Asko Ensemble 23, 25 authenticity 94 Baal 92, 172, 177 Baaren, Kees van 18, 23, 29, 33–34 Muzikaal zelfportret 33 Musica per orchestra 45 Septet 33 Variazioni per orchestra 33 Babbitt, Milton 150 Vision and Prayer 151 Babylon 235 Bach, Johann Sebastian 1, 158, 212, 240 Prelude in E major (Book I) 100, 120 St. Matthew Passion 14 B-A-C-H motive 120–41, 240 Badings, Henk 19 Bakhtin, Mikhail 5 carnivalesque 208–09, 224, 230, 237 heteroglossia 5 skaz 210 unfinalizable 231 Bakunin, Michael 88–91, 217 Banes, Sally 150, 164 Bang on a Can (BOAC) 1, 150, 164–66 The Gigantic Dancing Human Machine 166

259 Industry 150 People’s Commissioning Fund 166 Summer Music Institute 1 Bang on a Can All Stars 160, 245 Barlaeus Gymnasium 85 Barthes, Roland codes ; proairetic 175; hermeneutic 175, 192; semic 175, 179, 189; symbolic 175; referential 175; S/Z 174; text 6, 101 ´ Béla Bartok, Bluebeard’s Castle 198 Battle Hymn of the Republic 65 BBC 172, 232 Beer, Roland de 139 Beethoven, Ludwig van “Eroica” Symphony 148 Beinum, Eduard van 15 Berberian, Cathy 232 Berg, Alban 16, 18 cyclical derivation 34–36 Lyric Suite 34–36 Wozzeck 17, 31 Violin Concerto 31, 140 Bergen, Peter van 146–47 Bergijk, Gilius van 145 Vietnamlied 67 Bergson, Henri duration 109 Berkeley student-teach-in 59 Berio, Luciano 40–41, 57, 59, 66, 150 Circles 40 Passaggio 40 Sinfonia 5, 47–48, 64, 65, 85 Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 19 Bernlef, J. 63, 153 Beweging voor de Verniuwing van de Muziekpraktijk (BEVEM) 61 Biel, Michael von 40 big-band music 119 Bilthoven 20 Binnerts, Paul 69 Birtwistle, Harrison 242 Punch and Judy 242 Bizet, Georges 208, 223 Carmen 6 block juxtaposition 215 Bloom, Harold 7 Boddecke, Saskia 174, 200 Boehmer, Konrad 63 Boerman, Jan 145 Bolnes, Catharina 183–203 Bond, James 29

260

In d e x Bondt, Cornelis de 145–48 Bint 75 De deuren gesloten 148 Het gebroken oor 148 De tragische handeling 147–49 boogie-woogie 1, 119, 130, 156, 241 Bosmans, Henriëtte 18 Boulanger, Nadia 17 Boulez, Pierre 22, 30, 40 Eclat 22 Structures Ia 42 Bouwhuis, Gerard 73, 146 Braddock, Rowena 201 Brahms, Johannes Waltz, op.39 no.2 6, 177, 198 Variations on a theme by Haydn 46 Brecht, Bertolt 3, 170, 171 “anti-model” 59, 77 Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny 176 epic theater 77 Lehrstücke 69, 96, 114, 200 Verfremdung 6, 92 Bresnick, Martin 9, 10, 151 Breuker, Willem 44, 49, 66 bricolage 171 British Council 166 Britten, Benjamin 202 War Requiem 230 Brooklyn Academy of Music 115 Brown, Earle 44 Available Forms I 22, 45 Folio 45 Brown, James 151 Bruegel, Pieter 208 The Blue Cloak 208 BUMA 18 Bumann, Urlich 139 Bunge, Sas 21 Burkholder, Charles cumulative setting 194 Busoni, Ferruccio 14 Cage, John 1, 8, 44, 46, 63, 150, 153, 189 chance operations 195 Six Melodies 186, 188 Sixteen Dances 186 California E.A.R. Unit 150, 151, 160, 164 California Institute for the Arts (Cal Arts) 1, 144, 150 Calvinist ethos 149 camera obscura 184 Campana, Dino 232 Canti Orfici 232

Cardew, Cornelius Scratch Orchestra 76 Carl, Gene “Gray Matter” 145 Carré theater 23, 63 Inklusieve Konserten 23 Carter, Elliott 110, 150 String Quartet No.1 110 Casals, Pablo 14 Castro, Fidel 63 Charles Ives Society 63 Chausson, Ernest 31, 231 Chez Vees 164 chiaroscuro 199 Christelijk Historische Unie (CHU) 61 Claus, Hugo 64 Clayton, Buck 31 Cody, Joshua 200 Coenen, Alcedo 102, 125 Committee for Solidarity with Cuba 65 Cole, Nat King 31 Columbia University 150, 243 “concept” works 3, 60–61, 77–93, 100–09, 241 Concertgebouw Orchestra, The Royal 8, 13–25, 145 C-series 22, 93 Eigentijdse Muziek 23 Conservatory in The Hague 33, 73, 145 Copland, Aaron 31–32 Corigliano, John Ghost of Versailles 174 Cornelis, Evert 16 Count Basie 69 Cross, Jonathan 6, 173 Dante Alighieri Divine Comedy 102, 236 Inferno 236 Darmstadt aesthetics 3, 29–30 Davies, Peter Maxwell 152, 242 Antechrist 5 Eight Songs for a Mad King 242 Debussy, Claude 38, 40 Ibéria 17 Pelléas et Mélisande 17 Democraten ’66 (D’66) 62 Democratische-Socialisten ’70 (DS’ 70) 62 Department for Consumer Information and Arts (DVK) 19 Derrida, Jacques deconstruction 201–02 supplement 202 diabolus in musica 208 Diepenbrock, Alphons 14, 19 Dies irae 227

In d e x Dijksterhuis De mechanisering van het wereldbeeld 102 Dixie 65 Donemus (Documentatie Nederlandse Muziek) 20–21 Donker, Janny 115 Dopper, Cornelius 15, 25 Rembrandt Symphony 15 Zuiderzee Symphony 15 Dramm, David 153, 165, 239 Dresden, Sem 16 Dufay, Guillaume Nuper rosarum flores 125 Dukas, Paul The Sorcerer’s Apprentice 109 Duke University 1, 144 Dutch Calvinists 51 Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Culture 12 Dutch national hymn 71 Dutch Philharmonic Orchestra 25 Ebony Band 24 Eco, Umberto “open” form 86, 96, 120 Opera Aperta 95 Een juffrouw met haar meid 209–10 Eisler, Hanns 3, 67, 171, 173 agitated chant 76, 92 Die Massnahme 69 Solidariteitslied 69 Emmer, Huib 73, 145 Ensemble Elektra 167, 232, 243 Ensemble Gending 24 Ensemble Hoketus 23, 73, 145–46 Ensemble Novecento 24 Ensemble Sospeso 243 entartete Kunst 19 Escher, Maurits C. 212 Escher, Rudolph 16 “Est-ce-Mars” 189 Fauré, Gabriel 30 Feldman, Morton 44, 150, 153, 167, 189 Projections I 45 Fires of London 164 Flothuis, Marius 24 Floyd, Carlisle Susanna 174 Fluxus movement 63 Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst 21 Fontana, Lucio 185 Ford, Ron 165 forma formans 88

261 Foster, Hal 106–08 “oppositional postmodernism” 140 “postmodernism of resistance” 140 Foucault, Michel 163 heterotopia 163–68 Franck, César string quartet 47 French B-films 29 “funk” bass 130–35 gagaku shô 220 Gaudeamus Foundation 20 Genootschap van Nederlandse Componisten (GeNeCo) 21 Georgian chorales 90 Geraedts, Jaap 20, 21 Germino, Monica 232 Gesamtkunstwerk 100–02, 117 Gesualdo, Carlo 1, 6, 77 De Gids 40, 45 Gilse, Jan van 18, 31 Glass, Philip 1, 76, 94, 145, 166, 167, 244 Einstein on the Beach 102, 114–15, 171 Globokar, Vinko 150 Godard, Jean-Luc 236 Gogol, Nikolai The Government Inspector 231 Golden Section 123, 125–29, 192, 219, 222 Gordon, Michael 1, 150–52, 165 I Buried Paul 166 Industry 151 Gorlaeus Ideae Physicae 118 Goverts, Jan 19 Greenaway, Peter 170–201 The Baby of Mâcon 173 Greenwich Village 164 De Groene Amsterdammer 1 grotesque 208, 224–31 grotesque realism 231 Guevara, Che 63–64 Guus Jansen Septet 24, 239 Haagse School (The Hague School) 3, 56, 76, 144–49, 166 Hadewijch 160 Book of Visions 118 Haitink, Bernard 22, 24 Hals, Frans 170 Hamburg, Jeff 165 Happenings 62

262

In d e x Harsh, Edward 153–54 Hartley, Hal 232, 236 Hegel, Georg W. 77 Hemel, Oscar van 18 Henkemans, Hans 18 Henze, Hans Werner 57, 66 Nachtstücke und Arien 36 heterophony 41 Heuwekemeijer, Piet 22 Hewitt, Eric 245 Hindemith, Paul 32 Ludus Tonalis 33 Hiu, Pay-Uun 24, 25, 148, 153, 165 Hobbs, Stuart 149 Ho Chi Minh 63 Hoffman, E. T. A. 199 Holland, Bernard 243 Holland Festival 24, 64, 146 Hollandia ZT 146, 167 Holt, Simeon ten 149 L’Homme armé 121–23 Hornet clavinet 52 Huigens, Caecilanus 31 Hutcheon, Linda 5, 244 Hyde, Martha 7, 241 eclectic imitation 241 dialectical imitation 241 heuristic imitation 241 Icebreaker 243 “Ick voer al over Rhijn” 197 IJsbreker 24 D’Indy, Vincent Cours de Composition Musicale 17 Ingenhoven, Jan 14 Instant Composers Pool 23 International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) 18 intertextuality 5–6, 9, 10, 85, 173 irama 82 Issacharoff, Michael diegetic space 175–76 mimetic space 214 Ives Centennial Festival Conference 63 Ives, Charles 1–2, 29–30, 33, 46–49, 57, 63, 240 The Unanswered Question 78 Ives Ensemble 24 Jackson, Janet 1 Jameson, Frederick 203 Jansen, Guus 149 Javanese gamelan 82, 85 jazz 1–7, 31, 33, 42–44, 57, 63–76, 119–35, 146–66, 173–77, 240–41, 242

Johns, Jasper 46 Joyce, James 6 Finnegans Wake 48 Juilliard School 150 Kaalslag 129, 146 Kagel, Mauricio 40 Kartli-Kakhetia 90 Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP) 62, 91 Kenton, Stan 31, 69, 134 Kes, Willem 14 Ketting, Otto 20 Ketting, Piet 18 Keulen, Geert van 57 Keuris, Tristan 57, 149 Key Notes 21 Kierkegaard, Soren 199 King, Martin Luther 59 Klangfarbenmelodie 55 Klein, Michael 10 KLM airline 167 Klompé, Marga 64 Kloos, Willem 100, 139 klootjesvolk 62 Koek, Paul 73, 236 Koleva, Tatiana 166, 245 koral (chorale) 51 Korenhof, Paul 139 Kouneva, Penka 102 trans-historicism 101 Krakende Noten 25 Kramer, Jonathan 102–05, 202, 203 “moment” time 102 Kramer, Lawrence 230 narrativity 208 narratography 208 Kristeva, Julia 10 Kronos Quartet 154 Kultuurkamer 19 Landré, Guillaume 18 Lang, David 1, 150–52, 153 Anvil Chorus 151 Are You Experienced? 166 Lao-Tzu Tao Te Ching 217–18 Leeuw, Ton de 3, 20–22, 56, 149 Leeuw, Reinbert de 23, 34, 64, 240 Muzikale anarchie 63 Leids Dagblad 139 leitmotif 172 Lelong, Stéphane Nouvelle Musique 244 Lenin, Vladimir 63 Lennon, John 174

In d e x Lier, Bertus van 18 Ligeti, György 150, 242 Le Grand Macabre 242 Volumina 45 Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts 150, 243 Linden, Jeroen van der 173 London Sinfonietta 232 LOOS Ensemble 24, 146, 160, 164–65 Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra 144 Lucebert 242 Het laatste avondmaal 209–16 Lukács, György 4 Lully, Jean-Baptiste Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme 186, 188 Lutos l awski, Witold 150 Maas, Walter 20 Machaut, Guillaume de 1, 132 Messe de Nostre Dame 54 Machiavelli, Niccolo 6, 60, 69, 77–79 Maderna, Bruno 22–23 Mahler, Gustav 14, 216 Das Lied von der Erde 234 Second Symphony 48 Mak, Geert 60 Manifestie Nederlandse Toonkunst (Maneto) 18 Mao Tse-tung 63 Marenzio, Luca 222 Marissing, Lidy van 67 ˚ Bohuslav 32 Martinu, Martland, Steve 152, 153 Danceworks 152 Drill 166 Patrol 152 Principia 152 Marx, Karl 59–61, 63, 77, 147 demystification 4 ideology 62 use-value 4, 10, 244 MASS MOCA 1 Matthijs Vermeulen Prize 144 memento mori 207 Mengelberg, Misha 23, 34, 63, 64, 76, 146, 240 Bevrijdt het Zuiden 67 Hello Windyboys 63 Mengelberg, Willem 13–19, 25 Messiaen, Olivier 31, 54, 168, 221 Sept Haikäi 224 metonymy 240 Meyerhold, Vsevolod 3, 170–71 Midgette, Anne 183 Milhaud, Darius 173 La Création du Monde 67, 173

263 Mimicry 145 minimalism 7, 73, 241, 243 misreading 96 modernism 7–8 Mondrian, Piet 100, 118, 153, 240 Composition with red, yellow, and blue 129 Monelle, Raymond 222 Monk, Thelonious 154 montage 86, 96, 170–71, 187 Monteux, Pierre 16 Moreau, Annette 172 Morricone, Ennio 177 Once Upon a Time in the West 177 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Don Giovanni 65 Mozart Bicentennial 172 Mulisch, Harry 64 Musica Elettronica Viva 76 Mussolini, Benito 60, 79 Muziekcentrum Vredenburg 24 Nancarrow, Conlon 243 Nederlands Blazers Ensemble 23 Nederlandse Muziekdagen 21 Netherlands Chamber Orchestra 25 Netherlands Opera Foundation 64, 114 New Dutch Swing 62 New York Philharmonic 16, 144 Nietzsche, Friedrich 79 Nieuw Ensemble 23 Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant 236 Nixon, Richard 65 Noh drama 115 Noske, Frits 88 Notenkrakers (Nutcrackers) 4, 23, 24, 34, 60, 62, 93, 245 Nyman, Michael 145 Obrecht, Jacob 132 Ockeghem, Johannes 132 “1-2-3-4” chord 120–35 Orkest de Volharding 23, 66, 146, 167 Orkest van de Achtiende Eeuw 24 Oskamp, Jacqueline 239 Radicaal gewoon 239 Otten, Willem J. 92 Pacifistische-Socialistische Partij (PSP) 62 Paddison, Max 94–95 Parker, Charlie Ornithology 154–57 parody 5–7, 55, 171, 218, 224 Het Parool 139, 144 Partij van de Arbeit (PvdA) 62

264

In d e x passacaglia 131 pavane 119 Peloponnesian War 81 Philip Glass Ensemble 164 pianto motive 222 Picasso, Pablo 153 Pijper, Willem 17, 25, 31, 33, 135, 239 kiemceltechniek 17 Halewijn 17 Piano Concerto 17 Septet 17 Second Symphony 17 Plato 60, 80–84 Politeia (“Republic”) 81–82 Politiek-demonstratief experimenteel (PDE) 63 Politieke Partij Radikalen (PPR) 62 polyrhythmic cycles 106–08 Pope, Odean 146 postminimal 144–49, 243 postmodernism 7, 139–40, 144, 240, 244 Pousseur, Henri 40 Powell, Mel 150 Princeton University 1, 150 Prokofiev, Sergei Classical Symphony 5 Love for Three Oranges 174 Proust, Marcel 6 Provo 62, 93 Puccini, Giacomo Turandot 174 Purcell, Henry Dido and Aeneas 148 Qigang, Chen Poème Lyrique 224 Quantz, Johann J. 23 Queen Beatrix 239 Raaijmakers, Dick 145 Raat, Ralph van 44 Rachmaninov, Sergei 14 Rauschenberg, Robert 46 Ravel, Maurice 30, 231 Rehn, Tina 200 Reich, Steve 1, 8, 76, 94, 150, 244 Four Organs 151 It’s Gonna Rain 72 Reichenfeld, J. 22 Reichsmusikkammer 79 Rheims Cathedral 100, 125 Ricoeur, Paul chronological 174 configurational 174 Rietveld, Gerrit 118 Riffaterre, Michael 1

Rijksmuseum 62 Rijn, Rembrandt van 184 Riley, Terry 145 In C 67, 72 Rochberg, George ars combinatoria 139 Rosa, Juan Manuel de 174 Rosendael, Jan Rokus van 149 Rotterdam Conservatory 33 Routley, Nicholas 201 Rudel, Jeaufre Quan lo rius dela Fontana 125 Rupprecht, Philip 202 Ruyneman, Daniël 18 Rzewski, Frederic 152 Coming Together 85 sado-masochism 183 Saint Augustine 241 Confessions 102–09 Saint-Saëns, Camille 208 Danse macabre 208, 224–25 Samama, Leo 13 San Francisco Symphony Orchestra 144 Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral 125 Satie, Erik 49 musique d’ameublement 49 Sports et divertissements 49 Schaeffer, Pierre musique concrète 21 Schama, Simon 12 Schat, Peter 20, 23, 34, 64, 245 Labyrinth 47 On Escalation 63 Signalement 22 Thema 68 To You 68 Schillings, Max 14 Schlegel, Friedrich von 199 Schmuller, Alexander 15 Schneeweisz, Oswin 224 Schoenberg, Arnold 7, 16 Chamber Symphony op. 9 95 Five Pieces for Orchestra, op.16 16 Pelleas und Melisande 16 Verklärte Nacht 16 Schoenmaker, Mathieu Principles of Visual Mathematics 118 T-shaped cross 131–33 Schönberg Ensemble 23, 25 Schönberger, Elmer 2, 55–56, 153 Schuller, Gunther 144 Schwarz, K. Robert 8 Seriese, Astrid 172 Sessions, Roger 150

In d e x Shinohara, Makoto Memories 45 Shostakovich, Dmitri The Nose 231 Skryabin, Alexander Prometheus Symphony 16 Society for the Development of Modern Music 18 Soloman, Samuel 245 South Bank Centre 232 Spanish surrealism 200 Speculum Musicae 164 Stadpijpers 191 Stam, Henk 20 Star-spangled Banner, The 65 The State University of New York at Buffalo 144, 154 Stearns, Robert 115 Sternsche Conservatory 33 Steve Martland Band 152, 164–66 Stewart, Mark 1 Stichting Nederlandse Muziekbelangen 21 stijloosheid 45, 140 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 21, 30 Gruppen 40, 42 Kontra-punkte 22 Stimmung 103 Telemusik 45 Zyklus 45 Straus, Joseph 7 Strauss, Richard 14 Also sprach Zarathustra 79 Elektra 14 Stravinsky, Igor 1–7, 29–30, 38, 57, 95, 153, 241 Agon 232 L’Histoire du Soldat 76 Les Noces 76, 90, 230 Pulcinella 5 The Rake’s Progress 7 Requiem Canticles 230 The Rite of Spring 17, 123, 137, 177–80, 198 Symphony of Psalms 55 Symphonies of Wind Instruments 56, 87, 135 Tango 67 Sweelinck, Jan Pieterszoon 188 Fantasie 88 “Mein junges Leben hat ein End” 188 tableaux vivant 115, 170–71 Takamura, Kotaru 217–19 ˆ Takemitsu, Toru 150 In Autumn Garden 239

265 Takken, Wilfred 236 Tanglewood Festival 144 Tchaikovsky, Peter 14, 208 Symphony No.5 19 Symphony No.6 216 De Telegraaf 64 tempus imperfectum 105–08 tempus perfectum 105–08 tempus perfectum cum prolatione perfecta 78, 91 Termos, Paul 149 theatre of shadows 200 Thins, Maria 184 time notation (TN) 52 Tommasini, Anthony 243 Torstensson, Klas Sp˚ara 146 totalitarianism 77 Trochimczyk, Maja 3, 85, 102, 125–28 animalian sounds 128–29 Twaalfhoven, Merlijn 239 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers Prize 144 University of Amsterdam 62 US imperialism 64 Utrecht Music School and Conservatory 31 Utrechts Stedelijk Orkest 16 Van Agt 91 vanitas 207, 231 Varèse, Edgard Déserts 22 Ionisation 151 Vees, Jack 150, 153 A Refutation of Gravity 150 Velasquez, Diego 170 Veldhuis, Jacob ter 149, 239 Ven, Aad van der 224 verismo opera 173 Vermeer, Johannes 170, 171, 183 Vermeulen, Matthijs 13–16, 25 Second Symphony, “Prélude a` nouvelle journée” 15 verzuiling 62, 165 Vetter, Eddie 139 Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra 19 Vivier, Claude 219, 231, 235 Buchara 220 Lonely Child 220, 224 Zipangu 220 Vlijmen, Jan van 20, 34, 64, 114, 147 VOC (United East-Indian Company) ship 116 De Volkskrant 40, 139

266

In d e x VPRO radio 63 Vries, Klaas de 3, 149 Waa, Frits van der 7, 216 De slag van Andriessen 152–54 Waart, Edo de 64 Wagemans, Peter-Jan 56, 149 Wagenaar, Diderik 145–48 Liederen 148 Limiet 148 Metrum 148 Tam Tam 75, 145 Wagenaar, Johan 17, 19 Wagner, Richard 100 Tristan und Isolde 148 Webern, Anton 18, 174, 189 Concerto op.24 22 Wehrung, Brenden 19 Weill, Kurt 95, 176 Wentink, Victor 145 Whitehead, Kevin 62, 155 Whittall, Arnold 8, 200, 208, 229 Williams, Alastair 95 Wilson, Robert 100, 114–17, 201 Deafman Glance 114 Jungian approach 115 knee-play 115 landscape 115 Witsen, Nicholas Scheepbouw 118 Witteman, Wim 31

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 61 Tractatus 96 Wolfe, Julia 1, 150–51, 165 Lick 151 Wright, David 3, 76 Wullur, Sinta 149 Wuwei 218, 224 Xenakis, Iannis 146 Pithoprakta 42 Yale University 1, 144, 150, 151 Yanikian, Jeannette 36 Yankee Doodle 65 Yesaroun duo 245 Young, La Monte 63, 145 Young People for Vietnam demonstration 67 Zappa, Frank 65, 145, 243 The Black Page 145 Zavalloni, Cristina 232 Zeeland, Cees van 73, 146 Zengakuren 96 Ziporyn, Evan 160 Zorn, John 9 Forbidden Fruit 206 Zuidam, Rob Fanfare 239 Rage d’Amours 239 Zweers, Bernard 15

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