Louis Andriessen

Biography

Louis Joseph Andriessen (Dutch: [luˈʋi ˈɑndrisə(n)]; 6 June 1939 – 1 July 2021) was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although his music was initially dominated by neoclassicism and serialism, his style gradually shifted to a synthesis of American minimalism, big band jazz and the expressionism of Igor Stravinsky.
Born in Utrecht into a musical family, Andriessen studied composition under his father Hendrik Andriessen as well as Kees van Baaren and Luciano Berio. Andriessen taught at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague from 1974 to 2012, influencing notable composers. His opera La Commedia, based on Dante's Divine Comedy, won the 2011 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and was selected in 2019 by critics at The Guardian as one of the most outstanding compositions of the 21st century.

Life and career

Andriessen was born in Utrecht on 6 June 1939 to a musical family, the son of the composer Hendrik Andriessen and Johanna Justina Anschütz (1898–1975). His father was professor of composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and later its director. His siblings were composers Jurriaan Andriessen (1925–1996) and Caecilia Andriessen (1931–2019), and he is the nephew of Willem Andriessen (1887–1964).
Andriessen originally studied with his father and Kees van Baaren at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, graduating in 1961 with a first prize, before embarking upon two years of study under Luciano Berio in Milan and Berlin. His father introduced him to the works of Francis Poulenc and Erik Satie, which he came to love. From 1961–65, Andriessen wrote for the daily De Volkskrant, and for De Gids magazine from 1966–69. Andriessen lived in Amsterdam starting in 1965.
In 1969, Andriessen was part of a group of protesters at a concert of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. They disrupted the concert with nutcrackers and bicycle horns, handing out leaflets on the dismal representation of Dutch new music in the orchestra's programming. The next year, he and the other "Nutcrackers" were given one-week prison sentences, but their protest sparked social reform in the Dutch music scene.
Andriessen became internationally recognised as a composer with his 1976 work De Staat, which included texts from Plato's Republic. He was one of the founders of the Hague School, an avant-garde and minimalist movement from the second half of the 20th century. In later decades, he accepted commissions from major orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. Andriessen was the focus of festivals in Tanglewood (1994), London (1994; 2002), Tokyo (2000), Brisbane (2001) and New York (2004). In 2008, he was elected an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music. He held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall during the 2009–10 season.

Ensembles

In 1969, Andriessen co-founded the Studio voor Elektro-Instrumentale Muziek (STEIM) in Amsterdam. In opposition to the classical orchestra, a structure seen as "hierarchical", he also helped found the instrumental groups Orkest de Volharding and Hoketus, both of which performed compositions of the same names, formed by classical, jazz and pop musicians. He later became closely involved with the Schonberg and Asko ensembles and inspired the formation of the British ensemble Icebreaker.

Teaching

Andriessen joined the faculty of the Royal Conservatory in 1974. He taught instrumentation from 1974 to 1978 and taught composition there from 1978 to 2012, where he influenced notable students including Michel van der Aa, Richard Ayres and Steve Martland. Yale University invited him in 1987 to lecture on theory and composition, and he was also a guest lecturer at the University at Buffalo (1989) and Princeton University (1996). The arts faculty of the University of Leiden appointed him professor in 2004. One of his students was Raminta Šerkšnytė, a Lithuanian pianist and composer.

Personal life

Andriessen was married to guitarist Jeanette Yanikian (1935–2008). They were a couple for over 40 years, and were married in 1996. La Commedia is dedicated to Yanikian. He was married in 2012 a second time to violinist Monica Germino, for whom he wrote several works. In December 2020, she announced that Andriessen was suffering from dementia. He died on 1 July 2021 in Weesp at age 82.
Andriessen had one son, Lodewijk Torenbos-Andriessen, with dancer and theatre director Betsy Torenbos.

Style and notable works

Andriessen began in the style of an intentionally dry neoclassicism, but then turned into a strict serialist. His 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. From the early 1970s on he refused to write for conventional symphony orchestras and 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 repeatedly used his music for political confessions and messages, but he also referred to painting and philosophy. His range of inspiration was wide, including the music of Charles Ives in Anachronie I, the art of Piet Mondrian in De Stijl, the visions of Beguine mystic Hadewijch in Hadewijch, and shipbuilding and atomic theory in De Materie Part I.
Andriessen's later style is a unique blend of American sounds and European forms. His mature music combines the influences of jazz, American minimalism, and the music of Igor Stravinsky and Claude Vivier, containing minimalist-influenced polyrhythms, lyrical melodic fragments, and predominantly consonant harmonies disrupted by concentrated dissonance. Andriessen's music thus departs from post-war European serialism and its offshoots. By the 21st century he was widely regarded as Europe's most important minimalist composer.
His notable works include Workers Union (1975), a melodically indeterminate piece "for any loud sounding group of instruments" whose score specifies rhythm and contour but not exact pitch; Mausoleum (1979) for two baritones and large ensemble; De Tijd (Time, 1979–81) for female singers and ensemble; De Snelheid (Velocity, 1982–83), for three 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. His 2008 opera La Commedia, based on Dante's Divine Comedy, won the 2011 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and was selected by critics at The Guardian as one of the most outstanding classical compositions of the 21st century in 2019.

Awards and honours

1959 Gaudeamus International Composers Award
1977 Matthijs Vermeulen Award for De Staat
1977 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris
1992 Matthijs Vermeulen Award for M. is for Man, Music and Mozart; Facing Death, Dances, Hout en Lacrimosa
1993 Edison Award
2010 Honorary doctorate from the Birmingham City University
2011 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for the multimedia opera La Commedia (2004–2008).
2016 Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music
2019 Honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam