New frontiers for Louis Andriessen in Birmingham
Mar 12 2010 By Christopher Morley
Christopher Morley talks to composer Louis Andriessen about his love of vocal harmonies and his forthcoming city residency.
The leading Dutch composer Louis Andriessen is in residence next week at Birmingham Conservatoire, and there is an exciting programme of events planned around his work for what is this year’s Frontiers+ festival at the Birmingham City University Music Faculty.
Performances of student compositions will run alongside concerts featuring works by Andriessen himself, and the programmes will also include hearings of works by such composers as Stravinsky, Steve Reich, Steve Martland and the Conservatoire’s head of composition, Joe Cutler.
Among the various workshops scattered among the programme of events is one where Birmingham Contemporary Music Group will rehearse works by Conservatoire student composers, with subsequent discussion with Andriessen.
Louis Andriessen has a particularly eclectic listening background, especially in the areas of vocal music.
“I love the choral writing of Johann Sebastian Bach,” he says. “As well as close harmony jazz groups and pop groups like the Supremes.
“A very important stimulus was the appearance of vocal arrangements of Quincy Jones’ big band music, done by a group which, in the 60s, was still called Les Doubles Six – now the Swingle Singers.
“It was me who introduced those records to Luciano Berio in the early 60s.”
It was from those introductions that Berio was inspired to compose his Sinfonia for singers/speakers and orchestra, a work which still whirls around the world even today.
Andriessen is a deeply thoughtful, politically committed composer. Nevertheless I began my interview with him by reminding him of a blogspot I had seen in which he was harangued by interminable questions from a self-regarding interviewer, to which Andriessen responded courteously.
“Media are like all other products of mankind,” he tells me. “In all situations we have to deal with good people and bad people: intelligent and ironic, or stupid and right wing.
“But I must confess that television specifically suffers from the bad disease of imposing self-censorship. All my artist colleagues can tell you about the remarks of TV people while they are preparing a programme: ‘No no, that is too difficult for the people’.
“I think it’s criminal to underestimate people.”
Some of Andriessen’s compositions, string quartets for example, use existing formats in novel ways, exploiting timbres and textures which are not part of the traditional layout of these works.
