Andriessen’s legacy expanded with website and studio
Recent months have seen the launch of a new Louis Andriessen website and a studio at the Royal Hague Conservatoire recreating his workspace. This autumn has brought multiple performances of his classic De Staat in the Netherlands.
The recently launched website, the Louis Andriessen Platform www.louisandriessen.com, collects information about the work, person and ideas of composer Louis Andriessen with the aim of connecting old friends and new followers. As the website notes: “Andriessen obstinately broke through boundaries between so-called high and low art and created a radical oeuvre that built on old and newer masters. In doing so, he created an oeuvre of extremes, of raw impact and sensual beauty, and left his mark on international musical life. Dozens of young composers went to The Hague to study with him at the Royal Conservatory. His great impact also spoke clearly from the impassioned In Memoriams that appeared in the international press upon his death in 2021.”
In recent years, a lot of hard work has gone into the musical and spiritual legacy of Louis Andriessen. His library and sound archive have been mapped and the first steps have been taken to record the oral history surrounding his work and performance practice. In early 2021 DEN (Knowledge institute for culture & digital transformation) put the Louis Andriessen Foundation in touch with Podiumkunst.net, a then-new partnership between a number of important performing arts archives. This led to the new platform around Louis Andriessen and other creators in new music.
The platform offers detailed information in Dutch and English on Andriessen’s output with audio snippets and an extensive performance history for each work. The website provides biographical information on the composer and a Timeline mapping out key moments in his life and career. The news section, entitled M is for Magazine, offers a selection of the latest developments in the Andriessen sphere, including the announcement of Jacqueline Oskamp’s biography of the composer, due for release in 2025.
> Visit www.louisandriessen.com
Last month saw the unveiling of the new Louis Andriessen Studio at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, bringing back to life his legendary studio at Keizersgracht 740 in Amsterdam. The Bechstein piano at which he composed, his worktable, the family’s historic cabinet, where generations of Andriessens stored their scores, along with his books, art, and iconic electric pencil sharpener, are all tangible reminders of his creative life.
Thanks to the many hands that helped archive and organise Andriessen’s extensive collection of books and materials, his workspace – relocated to where he taught in The Hague for over 40 years – can now inspire new generations of composers. Connected to the studio is the Louis Andriessen Chair for visiting composers in residence at the Royal Conservatoire, who can work with students on their compositions and projects. The Louis Andriessen Studio also offers them the space to focus on their own creative work, surrounded by Louis’ legacy.
The studio houses a complete collection of his printed scores, donated by Andriessen’s publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Donemus. Students can study a score in the studio and then cross the street to the Netherlands Music Institute, where Louis’ annotated books are stored and organized by composition. Books were essential to Louis’ creative process, as reflected in the extensive annotations, including sketches and notes.
> Visit the Royal Conservatoire website
The autumn has brought a series of performances of Andriessen’s classic De Staat in the Netherlands and at the Musica festival in Strasbourg. John Adams, who led the US premiere of the score in 1983, conducts the work with the Rotterdam Philharmonic at de Doelen on 11 October alongside his own Harmonielehre. In 2002 John Adams curated a Los Angeles tribute to Andriessen, a year after his death, charting the Dutch composer’s response to American minimalism.
Asko|Schönberg and Ensemble Klang are touring a programme this autumn featuring De Staat coupled with a new work by Oscar Bettison, On the slow weather of dreams, adopting the same scoring as Andriessen’s work but creating a very different and personal soundworld, as the composer would have advised when Bettison studied with him. Following performances last month at the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht, the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam and the Musica festival in Strasbourg, November brings further concerts with this pairing at November Music in 's-Hertogenbosch (13 November), at the Amare in The Hague (24 November) and at Sounds of Music in Groningen (25 November), all conducted by Clark Rundell.
> Visit the Rotterdam Philharmonic website
> Visit the Asko|Schönberg website
Next March brings two performance of Andriessen’s The City of Dis by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, under the baton of Bas Wiegers. The second performance is part of the NTR ZaterdagMatinee series and the programme celebrates the 750th anniversary of the city of Amsterdam. The City of Dis is the first tableau from the composer’s opera La Commedia, focusing on the Ship of Fools which journeys to a hellish city of water and fire crewed by the sinful and inept drawn from humanity.
> Visit the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra website
> Further information on Work: De Staat
Photo: Francesca Patella
