The Low Countries. Jaargang 6

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‘Simply a question of notes’
Jan van Vlijmen: From Director / Composer to Composer

If what Jan van Vlijmen (1935-) said in mid-1997 is true, namely that the number of genuine devotees of classical music is no more than five hundred, then it must be seen as remarkable that his name is certainly known to more than that number. It is doubtful whether they are all music devotees, but it does have something to do with the fact that Van Vlijmen is better known as a director than a composer. But that will change; after a life filled with different responsibilities, which he admits were a means of escape from composing, he has put a definite end to this flight with the termination of his directorship of the Holland Festival. ‘The Holland Festival was my last job; I knew that when I started in 1991. Now I am going to work only with notes.’ These will be added to his oeuvre, which consists of some 33 compositions.

On 1 July 1997 Van Vlijmen said farewell. The average audiences for the 50th festival had been good (76% seat occupancy); he was able to present Queen Beatrix and patron Prince Claus with the first editions of two jubilee publications: the book A Dutch Miracle: Fifty Years of the Holland Festival (Een Nederlands Wonder, vijftig jaar Holland Festival), the boxed cd collection A Dutch Miracle, consisting of 6 cds with recordings of festival music productions. One of the cds includes a number of scenes from the then controversial opera Reconstruction (Reconstructie, 1969) based on the life of the guerrilla Che Guevara and composed, as it were in keeping with the times, by a collective consisting of Jan van Vlijmen, Louis Andriessen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Misha Mengelberg and Peter Schat. The librettists were the writers Hugo Claus and Harry Mulisch. Nothing of this kind would ever be seen again in the Netherlands. However, Van Vlijmen, together with Reinbert de Leeuw, did write the opera Axel, a remarkable persiflage of French and German mysticism at the turn of the century, after the play of the same name by Villiers de l'Isle Adam. And while on the subject of opera, his most recent theatrical production was Un malheureux vétu de noir (1990), written in the context of the Van Gogh commemorations in Amsterdam. It received mixed reviews in the Dutch press, there have been no repeat performances to date (but that is normal in the Netherlands) and, to its composer's great regret, it has gone unnoticed abroad. Van Vlijmen does not understand this: ‘I have noticed that this is an opera which touches

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people. People came to me crying. Stockhausen, who never listens to works by others but did come to my premiere, gave me the biggest compliment I have ever had in my life. After the performance he embraced me and said “ich habe zweimal geweint”. That's wonderful, isn't it? And as he said it, his eyes became red again. I was astonished.’

Van Vlijmen as director

From 1961 to 1965 Van Vlijmen was director of the Music School in Amersfoort (the piece he wrote during this time, Gruppi per venti strumenti e percussione, won several prizes). He taught music theory at the Utrecht Conservatorium until 1968. In 1967 he became deputy director of the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague under Kees van Baren, who had previously taught him composition. After Van Baren's death in 1970, Van Vlijmen succeeded him as director. He ran the academy until 1988, and under his leadership - with considerable support from the government - it became a very modern, well-equipped centre for music, with new courses such as musical recording and electronic music. After this he became manager of the Dutch Opera until 1987, was offered the directorship of the Conservatoire Supérieur National in Paris (which he declined because this would interfere with his composing), and finally became director of the Holland Festival.

On his appointment to this last position in 1991 he was confronted with a deficit of 4.5 million guilders (he had had to leave the opera following a conflict over artistic value in relation to funds made available by the government). Now experienced in such matters, he managed to eliminate the deficit. But, he says six years later: ‘Eliminating the debts has taken up too much of my attention. This meant that there were many things I couldn't do because the money wasn't there. My successor will have a much easier time.’ In his opinion, the highlights of his seven-year artistic leadership include Luigi Nono's Prometeo, Stockhausen's Dienstag aus Licht, Steve Reich's The Cave, Max Brand's Machinist Hopkins and Enescu's Oedipe. In 1997 he was unable to stage the five Biblical Pieces by Stravinsky, directed

Jan van Vlijmen (1935-) (Photo by Frans Schellekens).

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by Peter Sellars (who in 1998, with Maurizio Kagel, was awarded the prestigious Erasmus Prize, 300,000 guilders each). ‘The Dutch Opera are now prepared to be involved in this, but that will not be until 1999’, Van Vlijmen explains.

Van Vlijmen as composer

According to Leo Samama (Seventy Years of Dutch Music, 1915-1985; Zeventig jaar Nederlandse muziek, 1915-1985, 1986), until his collaboration with Reinbert de Leeuw in the opera Axel Jan van Vlijmen continued to write strictly serial compositions, namely music in which one or more elements are determined by a priori mathematical or arithmetical series. The opera Axel, and De Leeuw's symphonic poem Abschied (1973) appear in retrospect to have been important indications of the rising neo-romanticism in Dutch as well as international compositions. Van Vlijmen continued down this path with works such as the four Quaterni I-IV (awarded the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize) ‘in which strict serial techniques still play a role, while leaving room for euphonic, often recognisable melody and harmony, and finally for expressiveness and orchestral exuberance reminiscent of the early productions of Alban Berg and Anton Webern.’ When asked about his favourite composer, Van Vlijmen will reply: Alban Berg. ‘Until my dying day Berg will remain the composer of my life. The great beacon. But my first reference was Schönberg. Berg came later. Berg is much more complicated. Schönberg's formalist work led me to “modern music”.’ On leaving the Holland Festival, Van Vlijmen made the following remarkable comment about that modern music: ‘In composing a sort of stagnation has come about, a sort of regression to pre-World War Two days. Many composers are still behaving as if the modern post-war revolution never took place. I admit that serialism probably does not provide so much scope for development. It is more a marker of the end of a particular development than of a new beginning. But for me it is unthinkable not to draw conclusions from that development. There are composers who denounce serialism. I do not write serial music, but everything I have experienced from my early youth plays a role in what I write, and that includes serialism.’

The Rotterdam-born composer has his principles then, but these are far removed from his serial theories of the 1950s and 1960s. In Van Vlijmen, this stylistic development has resulted in a rich, saturated, and at the same time pure sound. According to Brandt, this can justifiably be called ‘empfindlich’ and in an extremely personal way can be seen as a synthesis of many traditions which have been totally exposed, and within which atonality, serialism and tonal thought have earned a new and inalienable place.

At the baptism of fire on 14 January 1995 of Inferno (1991-1993), a cantata based on texts from the first book of Dante's Divina Commedia, fans and critics alike were amazed by the fine, open sonority of this opus by Van Vlijmen, and above all by the fact that the music has (according to music journalist Maarten Brandt) ‘pleasurable, not to say almost heavenly beauty’. Who could now claim, as was regularly stated, that Jan van Vlijmen is an inaccessible composer? Inferno has now been released on cd, along with

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other pieces including Omaggio a Gesualdo (from 1972 and according to the composer himself, one of his best pieces). The music magazine Luister (June 1997) wrote of this: ‘This poignant work alone shows that it is completely wrong to include Van Vlijmen among the strictly post-war serialists.’ Now that he does not have a directorship, Van Vlijmen can no longer avoid composing. We shall be hearing a lot more from him.

jan rubinstein

Translated by Yvette Mead

With thanks to: Donemus, Amsterdam

Selective discography

David Pittman-Jennings, baritone; Guy de Mey, tenor; Stella Kleindienst, soprano; Wout Oosterkamp, bass-baritone / Schönberg Ensemble, male voice choir led by Krijn Koetsveld (conductor: Reinbert de Leeuw), Un malheureux vétu de noir (2 cds), cvcd 17 / 18 (recorded by brtn, Flanders Opera, Antwerp).

Peter van Munster, flute / Radio Filharmonisch Orkest (conductor: Bruno Maderna), Serenata II per flauto e quattro gruppi strumentali, cv 45 /46(recorded to mark the 50th international Gaudeamus music weeks).

Theo Bruins, piano / Residentieorkest (conductor: Ernest Bour), Sonata per pianoforte e tre gruppi strumentali - Vera Beths, violin / Radio Filharmonisch Orkest (conductor: Jac van Steen), Omaggio a Gesualdo per violini e sie gruppi strumentali - Nederlands Kamerkoor / Schönberg Ensemble / Asko Ensemble (conductor: Reinbert de Leeuw), Inferno, cantata per tre gruppi vocali e quattro gruppi strumentali, cv 59.

Schönberg Kwartet, Trimurti, Attaca Babel 9785.

Various soloists / Instrumentaal Ensemble conducted by the composers Jan van Vlijmen, Misha Mengelberg, Louis Andriessen, Reinbert de Leeuw and Peter Schat, Scenes from the opera Reconstruction, Globe glo 6904 (libretto: Hugo Claus and Harry Mulisch; to commemorate 50 years of the Holland Festival, part of a boxed set of 6 cds A Dutch Miracle).