The Hague School: Three Composers Who Changed Dutch Music

Anyone who wants to understand why Dutch music developed such a distinctive voice after 1970 cannot ignore The Hague. Around the Royal Conservatoire, the Hague School emerged, with composers who turned against the established musical world, with its red velvet seats and complacent orchestras. They wrote defiant music, often with a strong rhythmic drive, inspired by Stravinsky and American minimal music.

The Hague School attracted attention worldwide. Young composers from all over the world came to The Hague to study at the conservatoire, among them Calliope Tsoupaki, who travelled all the way from Greece. She is now one of the most prominent composers in the Netherlands. As guest curator of this concert, she has chosen three favourite works by composers who inspired her in The Hague. The New European Ensemble performs at the Paleiskerk with twelve string players and a pianist.

Louis Andriessen based his Symphony for Open Strings (1978) on a rock-solid premise: twelve string players use only their open strings. Normally, string players determine the pitch with their fingers on the strings; in this piece, they play with the bow alone, and each string sounds exactly as it is tuned. Each instrument has four strings, and therefore just four notes. The result is an open, resonant sound you rarely hear. Because Andriessen had each instrument tuned differently, and because no single player can produce a melody alone, the music constantly travels through the ensemble: four consecutive notes require four different musicians. You can see and hear the melody leap from one music stand to another. This relay technique is called hocket, and it flourished in the fourteenth century, the age of the medieval Ars Nova, the festival’s theme.

Diderik Wagenaar was inspired by Stravinsky as well as by his jazz heroes, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. In Cat Music (1994), he portrays two cats in three pieces for two violins. In Playing, a playful melody keeps changing colour as the violinists barely touch the strings. You hear harmonics: glassy, flute-like tones. In Hunting, the two violins chase each other through a stream of notes that never comes to rest. And in Purring, the two voices merge into a single contented, purring melody.

Gilius van Bergeijk is the pioneer of Dutch electronic music. With The Elements (De Elementen), for piano and electronics, he composed a captivating listening journey: in a work of luminous clarity, he evokes earth, water, fire and air with piano and with sounds he recorded outdoors. He lets the wind rustle and the water flow, yet the stylised nature he conjures in sound is nowhere untouched.