“Every way to get good notes is appropriate,” said composer Louis Andriessen. New biography sketches his life, love, and difficult sides

Once there was a talented after -other person in a music family that grew into the largest composer in the Netherlands. “There was once …” writer and music publicist Jacqueline Oskamp mentions the opening chapter of Love is greather narrative and very readable biography of Louis Andriessen (1939-2021), and with that she sets the tone. The tendency to fabulate is ingrained with the Andriessens and their orally transmitted family chronicle of supercooled one -liners and anecdotalism is a grateful, often witty counterpoint for the biographer.

Father Hendrik would become a journalist, but as the youngest servant on a newspaper editor, he was so delved into a score during the night shift that he missed the fall of the Titanic. Oops. He became a successful composer, music director and pedagogue, including the first teacher of his composing sons Jurriaan (1925-1996) and Louis.

Louis Andriessen was a figurehead of Dutch music for sixty years, during an unprecedented flowering period that roughly coincided with his career. Of The state (1976) He also established his name internationally, Magnum Opus Matter (1989) The world passed and since the turn of the century, his large premieres often took place in the US or another abroad. From everywhere, composers-in-SPE came to study and his influence reaches far over the national borders.

The best source is the private archive to which Andriessen gave biographer Oskamp access

Biographer Oskamp previously wrote some well-received books about twentieth-century music in the Netherlands, such as A pretty noise and Under current (About electronic music). The image of Dutch music life remains in this biography somewhat generally, but all the more lively, she sketches the development and privacy of Andriessen, always in relation to his work. “Every way to get good notes – except people killing – is appropriate,” she quotes him. For an Insidersblik on Andriessens composing process, the interested reader can go to the small-but-fine-fine Chain & Stompen From his good friend and fellow composer Elmer Schönberger.

Private archive

Oskamp spoke andriessen himself several times, interviewed countless intimates and acquaintances and received full cooperation from Andriessen’s widow, violinist Monica Germino. But the nicest source is the private archive for which Andriessen gave her access, with diary entries, correspondences and notes about his work. Oskamp displays a sharp eye for speaking details; For example, Andriessen writes about the “empathic ailments” on which he suffers after the death of his first wife: guitarist, artist and therapist Jeanette Yanikian (1935-2008): “I am bothered by my knee, all things that Jeanette had. A surprising form of mourning.”

Zoom in

Oskamp is not afraid to name Andriessens inglook (or the evil ‘cultural Catholic’ anti -Semitism of the family). Andriessen usually made a tidy impression, he was charming and jovial and an easy talker, with a large social network and a left-anarchist look. But he could also be very compelling. He avoided conflicts, so that the anger flooded. Oskamp signals a big urge to proof and hanging for confirmation, the pressure to be ‘a good Andriessen’, in a Bach-Verenden family where music is completely self-evident at the highest level. Andriessen continued to hook on the approval of father Hendrik and brother Jurriaan, who had little to do with the music of the youngest brother.

The remarkable title Love is great refers to the song Magna Res Est Amor That father Hendrik Andriessen composed on a text from Thomas a Kempis’ About the imitation of Christ. The Andriessens likes to sang it with family burgles, if only to deflect their emotions. Louis quoted the song extensively in one of his most striking late works, Mysteries For the 125-year-old Concertgebouw Orchestra. Mysteries meant his return to the Symphony Orchestra, forty years after he had renounced it (although he still calls the KCO in a diary notation shortly before the premiere ‘the enemy’).

The father, the family, the difficult relationship with the Symphony Orchestra: they are important aspects in Andriessen’s life. Love himself also played a major role for him. Oskamp describes a meaningful conversation De Wereld Draait Doorwhere Andriessen was a guest with his monodrama Anaïs Nin About the writer of the same name, known for her candid diaries and countless affairs. Matthijs van Nieuwkerk asks if Nin was sex addict. Medegast Heleen van Royen thinks she was addicted to the game. No, Andriessen says decisively: “She was addicted to love.”

Mistresses

In the previous four hundred pages, the reader has already seen many dozens, if not hundreds of mistresses come by, with whom he sometimes maintained intensive contact. “If Andriessen can identify with someone, it is with Anaïs: she too has an insatiable hunger for attention and confirmation. With no matter how many men she goes to bed, they cannot remove her loneliness, fear and uncertainty,” Oskamp notes.

Jeanette was his first and sharpest critic, who woke up Andriessens’s activist and radical side and set high demands for him

Andriessen liked to talk about his father and brother, about heroes such as Stravinsky and Ravel, but it was less visible to the outside world how crucial his first wife Jeanette Yanikian was for his formation. They were life partners since he was twenty and she four years older. They had an open relationship, survived crises, became alienated from each other, but above all Jeanette was his first and sharpest critic, who woke up Andriessens’s activist and radical side and set high demands on him. Without Jeanette none The statesays Oskamp. Without her approval, a score did not leave the house. Andriessen recognized that influence, in a self -conscious note he made when Jeanette turned out to be seriously ill: “I would not have become such a good composer without her.”

The cocktail of affairs, illness and workload leads in September 2007 to a bizarre coincidence that reads as the premise of a Woody Allen-Film: “His wife is incurably ill, he is in love with a married woman, and may have a child with his mistress.” Two weeks later Jeanette moves to a nursing home; Two days later, Andriessen receives a referral letter for the psychiatrist; His son is born the next day. Andriessen is 68. Any doubts about his paternity can immediately get off the table: “The baby has the round head of the Andriessens.”

Characteristic of Andriessens Werklust and discipline, also in the event of setbacks: a month later the score of the big music theater work is La Commedia ready. According to many people it is his best opera, and he is the first Dutchman to get the prestigious American Grawemeyer Award for it.

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