At the end of the nineteenth century, Western music gradually began to come apart at the seams. Composers used more and more dissonances so that the familiar tonality hardly fitted into its shell. From a constant desire for even more expression, the orchestra was expanded with ever-newer instruments. This led to monster productions such as Gustav Mahler's 'Symfonie der Tausend', with more than a thousand performers.
As a counterpoint, composers sought inspiration in the austerity of early church music; others bid farewell to both tonality and symphony orchestra. The AVROTROS Friday Concert zooms in on this with a varied concert on 19 January. British conductor Marcus Creed leads the Great Broadcasting Choir through religious pieces by Bruckner, Tchaikovsky and Penderecki. They also sing two Mahler arrangements by Clytus Gottwald, including the adagietto from his Fifth Symphony. Last but not least, together with the RFO brass ensemble, they will perform Transparency By Ton de Leeuw.
Modern duck in romantic bite
Extraordinary, as the work of this progressive Dutch composer will be not often performed anymore. Ton de Leeuw (1926-1996) was considered one of the most important, if not the most important composer in our country during his lifetime. He also wrote the authoritative book Music of the twentieth century, in which he analyses modern compositional styles clearly and concisely.
At the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, he trained numerous imitators, without making them his clones. He himself studied with Henk Badings and Olivier Messiaen, among others. Contrary to popular belief, it was not the Frenchman but the Dutchman Jaap Kunst who had a decisive influence on his development. This ethnomusicologist was a great connoisseur of Javanese gamelan music; De Leeuw got to know him in the early 1950s. Kunst awakened in him a lifelong fascination for Eastern music and philosophy.
Music of 'being' versus music of 'becoming'
Starting in 1961, De Leeuw made many trips to Asian countries, where he studied classical music traditions. What struck him in this was the absence of the 'I' so important to Romantic composers. The concept of an aesthetic aimed at 'the most individual expression of the most individual emotion' was alien to the Asian. While Western music rushes from climax to climax en route to an inevitable keynote, Eastern music creates space for contemplation.
Ton de Leeuw aptly distinguished between music of 'becoming' and music of 'being'. Against a hierarchically structured development aimed at a final goal, the Asian places music that is essentially always the same. Only it changes colour each time, like a kaleidoscope. Soon De Leeuw started incorporating Eastern compositional techniques into his own pieces. His music has great spatiality and is often meditative in nature.
Arabic mysticism
This also applies to Transparency which he composed in 1986 for 18-voice choir, three trumpets and three trombones. The piece has four movements, each based on texts translated into French by medieval Arab mystics. They describe the various stages of consciousness they go through on their way to divine unity. The title is taken from the second poem.
Transparency opens with a dissonant brass chord, after which female voices pianissimo a unison chant at a slow pace. Gradually there is more interaction between horns, female and male voices and the rhythm becomes livelier. The second movement begins hushed, with gracefully intertwining lines. Fierce brass eruptions break the tranquillity, which soon returns, however. Striking is the piercing overtone singing that enhances the ritual atmosphere.
For heaven's sake
The third movement also has a ritualistic character with its repeated, undulating vocal lines. The horns support the singers with sustained harmonies in varying formations. The alternation of prelude and post-song is somewhat reminiscent of Gregorian chant from the Catholic Church. Again, the music has a static character, broken only occasionally by spirited outbursts from the brass.
In the fourth movement, the female voices seem to sail to heaven on the text 'Celui qui a l'attribut de l'éternité.' (He who bears the attribute of eternity.) A trumpet climbs with them to a high final note, which surprisingly resembles a redemptive keynote. With this, De Leeuw turns out to be slightly less of an odd duck in this romantic concerto than expected. - He could not completely renounce his western origins.
More info and tickets here. Conservatorium van Amsterdam students €10 on presentation of student card
The concert will be broadcast live on Radio 4
On 6-12-2017 I played the one-act play on the Concertzender Antigone by Ton de Leeuw, conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw
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