Louis Andriessen
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Louis Andriessen (6 June 1939 – 1 July 2021) was a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition.
His opera La Commedia, based on Dante's Divine Comedy, is particularly renowned; it won the 2011 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and was selected in 2019 by critics at The Guardian as the 7th most outstanding work of the 21st century thus far.
Although his music was initially dominated by neoclassicism and Boulezesque serialism, his style gradually shifted to a synthesis of American minimalism, jazz and the manner of Stravinsky. Until 2018 he was composition lecturer at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.
Style and notable works
Andriessen's early works show experimentation with various contemporary trends: post war serialism (Series, 1958), pastiche (Anachronie I, 1966–67), and tape (Il Duce, 1973). His reaction to what he perceived as the conservatism of much of the Dutch contemporary music scene quickly moved him to form a radically alternative musical aesthetic of his own. Since the early 1970s he has refused to write for conventional symphony orchestras and has instead opted to write for his own idiosyncratic instrumental combinations, which often retain some traditional orchestral instruments alongside electric guitars, electric basses, and congas.
Andriessen's mature music combines the influences of jazz, American minimalism, Igor Stravinsky and Claude Vivier. His harmonic writing eschews the consonant modality of much minimalism, preferring post-war European dissonance, often crystallised into large blocks of sound. Large scale pieces such as De Staat ['Republic'] (1972–76), for example, are influenced by the energy of the big-band music of Count Basie and Stan Kenton and the repetitive procedures of Steve Reich, both combined with bright, clashing dissonances. Andriessen's music thus departs from post war European serialism and its offshoots. He has also played a role in providing alternatives to traditional performance practice techniques, often specifying forceful, rhythmic articulations, and amplified, non-vibrato, singing.
Other notable works include Workers Union (1975), a melodically indeterminate piece "for any loud sounding group of instruments"; Mausoleum (1979) for 2 baritones and large ensemble; De Tijd ['Time'] (1979–81) for female singers and ensemble; De Snelheid ['Velocity'] (1982–83), for 3 amplified ensembles; De Materie ['Matter'] (1984–88), a large four-part work for voices and ensemble; collaborations with filmmaker and librettist Peter Greenaway on the film M is for Man, Music, Mozart and the operas Rosa: A Horse Drama (1994) and Writing to Vermeer (1998); and La Passione (2000–02) for female voice, violin and ensemble.
