Willem Jeths (1959) is one of the most successful Dutch composers. Through his enormous craftsmanship and drive, he manages to create his own sound world, which is surprising yet accessible. His work is regularly performed at home and abroad and has appeared on many CDs. In 2014, he received the Amsterdam Prize for the Arts and later that year he was appointed Composer of the Netherlands. On 26 March, his orchestral work Conductus for the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra premiered in the AVROTROS series Vredenburg Friday. I asked Jeths five questions.
What has the Amsterdam Prize meant to you?
A huge recognition, it was my first Dutch prize. I had already won two prizes at the Wiener Kompositionswettbewerb in 1996, for both my violin concerto Glenz as for my Piano Concerto. Both pieces were chosen by a jury with heavyweights like Wolfgang Rihm and Franco Donatoni. The Amsterdam Prize is an oeuvre prize, so it makes sense that I received it precisely now: at fifty-five, you start looking back a bit.
Not long after being awarded the Amsterdam Prize, you were appointed Composer of the Fatherland, a direct consequence?
This is completely unrelated, but it is a wonderful coincidence. I was nominated for the Amsterdam Prize, which was to be awarded on 28 August 2014. Until then, the winner was kept strictly secret. A week before the announcement, I was called by Jochem Valkenburg if I wanted to become Composer of the Fatherland, so he couldn't have known. If I hadn't won the Amsterdam Prize, I might as well have become Composer of the Year.
What does that actually mean, Composer of the Fatherland? Are you going to compose for the people, the court?
Primarily an ambassadorship for Dutch composers, the position was initiated by Buma Cultuur. There has long been a desire in the music world for better promotion of composing in our country. I would like to show the outside world that what is produced here is very worthwhile; despite all the cutbacks, we are still a vanguard country. Just take the large number of foreign composition students at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, where I teach. Those young people are only too happy to study with us, surely that is because of the still fertile music culture here.
A second leg is managing our cultural heritage, putting composers active up to seventy-five years ago on the map. That's where the limit lies, because after that, copyrights - collected by Buma - expire. A third task is music education. Evidently necessary, because a whole generation has now grown up that never had music lessons in primary school and probably not in secondary school either. Surely that is the audience for the future. Now the concert hall is full of older people, but what if they die out soon? If you are not confronted with classical music from childhood, you are not going to embrace it either when you seek deepening in later life. We are developing projects with Marco de Souza's Learning Orchestra.
An important element is also responding to events in society - that's where 'the people' come in. For instance, at the request of Podium Witteman, I composed a piece about Blue Monday - the phenomenon of making good resolutions at New Year's Eve, only to recognise three weeks later that you didn't keep them. That makes one depressed. I wrote a kind of habanera with a warm, southern glow, but also a touch of melancholy. For my inauguration, I composed Trepidus for sixteen interactive swings on the Neude in Utrecht: the harder you rocked, the more you could influence the music.
Before the opening of the exhibition The Late Rembrandt in the Rijksmuseum I wrote Chiaroscuro for recorder player Erik Bosgraaf, which he played for the painting The Oath of Claudius Civilis. And for Book Week, commissioned by the Dutch Public Broadcasting Corporation, I composed music to a recited story by Kaatje Kooij. But when Utrecht asked me to write a piece with majorettes and brass bands for the start of the Tour de France, I declined. Not that I turn my nose up at it, but something like that doesn't suit me, it's a bit too populist.
For the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra you wrote Conductus, which will premiere 26 March at The Friday at Vredenburg. How does that fit into your job as Composer of the Fatherland?
It fits in perfectly with that, as it is about the bombing of Rotterdam on 14 May 1940. I wrote it at the orchestra's request for the seventy-fifth commemoration, but was commissioned to do so early last year. By the way, it will not only be performed in TivoliVredenburg, but also in De Doelen and at the official commemoration on 14 May itself.
To be honest, I did think it was a heavy topic, but the bombing is still relevant and has a huge impact even seventy-five years on. The city was maimed, then rebuilt and totally changed. There are many people still alive who lived through that and also experienced the horrors. I wanted to make a play about that, the only question was how. I wanted to avoid bombastic gunfire and instead create a time image of Rotterdam anno 1940. [Tweet "Willem Jeths: 'I wanted to avoid bombastic gunfire at the commemoration of the R'dams bombardment'"]
That's how I ended up with the smartlap Ketelbinkie, about a little boy who goes on the Great Voyage, but at the farewell on the quay he does not dare to kiss his mother. On the way, he falls ill and on his deathbed, he asks the captain to make sure she gets his last pay. Heart-wrenching! I imagined someone coming home late at night, hearing that song on the radio and then falling asleep. He enters a dream state, in which all sorts of ominous omens can be heard, but also a lot of melancholy and serenity, like a lull before the storm.
The man is woken by a carillon, which plays the refrain of Ketelbinkie. Using faltering overtones, I call that chime to mind. Thirteen beats of a clock then follow, referring to the time of the bombing: 1.27pm. It lasted until 1.40pm and in that short time the entire city was destroyed. Beneath those thirteen beats lies a deep bass layer, which gradually swells. The tension gets stronger and stronger, but at one point the whole thing implodes, as in the painting The Scream by Munch: you see that open mouth, but hear nothing. This makes you feel it all the more strongly.
Whence the title Conductus?
A conductus is a processional or funeral march. I was inspired by a 12th-century conductus from the Notre Dame School, which in turn is based on a song by the troubadour Blondel de Nesle, Procurans odium. The text comes from the Carmina burana and appeals to me enormously, because he asks the question of whether you should continue to hate your enemy or rather let go of your hatred, in order to cherish each other (again) as lovers. I think the anger towards the German occupiers has subsided by now, but thought the image was too beautiful not to use.
Mind you, this is purely instrumental music, unlike in, say, my First Symphony is not sung. By the way, when I started composing, the melody of the conductus turned out to fit wonderfully with that of Ketelbinkie, a gift! The piece opens with the rarefied swish of a tuned glass of water, from which the conductus looms. From the cellos then bubbles the melody of Ketelbinkie up, after which the man sinks into sleep. The adagio that follows has beautiful harmonies and motifs, after which the music becomes increasingly threatening, until it finally implodes. Finally, there is that ethereal hissing of glass again, a symbol of the silence and fragility of the city.
Actions:
Donemus, the publisher of Willem Jeths' work is offering a week's worth of Conductus scores as free download
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