Luister / listen to MP3 / 00:57:27
Composers Gallery, a series of portraits of Dutch composers of the twentieth century by the Transcription Service of Radio Nederland. Today John van der Steen talks with Kees van Baaren, director of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, nestor of the Dutch serial composers.
00′19″ Van Baaren talks about his father’s music shop and how he played tunes on a mouth organ when he was three years of age. His first musical interest was brought about by the light German opera music that was played in his father’s shop.
03′50″ Later on Van Baaren’s interest in music was determined by serial music, like this fragment from van Baarens’ Wind Quintet’
05′00″ John van der Steen reads a short biography of Kees van Baaren
05′23″ Van Baaren talks about the conviction of his parents and their friends that he should become a musician, when they heard him playing musical instruments at a young age, how he tried to become a soloist, but never was good enough and how he decided to become a composer.
Van Baaren studied in Berlin but came back to the Netherlands because he wanted to study with Willem Pijper.
10′46″ Extract of the ‘Trio for flute, clarinet and bassoon’, played by members of the Danzi Quintet
12′45″ Van Baaren talks about his studying with Willem Pijper, who taught him to discover his own talent and to follow his own destination
15′40″ Van Baaren plays part of the ‘Piano Sonatine’ that he wrote as an ‘In memoriam for Willem Pijper’, in which he included a phonogram, that forms the letters of Pijper’s name in notes
18′39″ The conversation continues with the exploration of Van Baaren’s taste in other art forms, such as painting (Van Baaren likes Picasso, Constant and Corneille), literature (Salinger, Uwe Johnson, Jospeh Roth, Thomas Mann), and poetry (T.S. Elliot, Ezra Pound, Cummings)
23′09″ Part of a recording of ‘The Hollow Man’, a poem by T.S. Elliot put to music by Van Baaren
25′25″ Conversation about the relation between poetry and music and about the function of music
27′30″ Van Baaren talks about the appreciation of contemporary music in general and serial music in particular. Van Baaren explains his method of writing music, in which the performers have a lot of freedom in the way they choose to play the music.
35′30″ Van Baaren talks about jazz music, contemporary jazz musicians and composers and he compares Thelonious Monk to Mischa Mengelberg.
38′21″ Extract of Van Baaren’s ‘String Quartet Sovraposizioni I’, completed in 1962, played here by the Netherlands String Quartet
40′12″ Van Baaren gives a survey of the development in the Dutch contemporary music from the 1920’s to 1965
47′09″ Van Baarens talks about ‘Variations for Orchestra’, his choice of work to be played on the programme today
48′19″ ‘Variations for Orchestra’, played by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink
57′27″
LW …. the Dutch world broadcasting system
‘Composers Gallery’, (’Componistenportret;), gemaakt door de Transcriptie Dienst van Radio Nederland. Vandaag praat John van der Steen met Kees van Baaren, directeur van het Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag, nestor van de Nederlandse seriële componisten.
composers, Dutch music, contemporary music, serial music, Kees van Baren, experimental music, Willem Pijper, jazz music, Willem Mengelberg, componisten, Nederlandse muziek, eigentijdse muziek, seriële muziek, experimentele muziek, jazz,
