Lex van Delden
Encyclopedia
Early life and education
Born Alexander Zwaap in AmsterdamAmsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
(the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
) as the only child of Wolf Zwaap, a school-teacher, and his wife Sara Olivier, Lex van Delden took piano-lessons from an early age - first from Martha Zwaga and later from the celebrated pianist, Cor de Groot
Cor de Groot
Cor de Groot was a renowned Dutch pianist and composer.He was born in Amsterdam. He studied piano with Egbert Veen and Ulferts Schults, and composition and conducting under Sem Dresden. In 1932 he graduated with highest honours, playing a piano concerto written by himself...
. He started composing at the age of eleven, when he set poems by Guido Gezelle
Guido Gezelle
Guido Pieter Theodorus Josephus Gezelle was an influential Flemish language writer and poet and a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium.- Life :...
to music since a long illness prevented him from playing the piano. He remained self-taught as a composer. Despite his artistic promise and interests (by the age of fourteen, for instance, he was accompanying the famous German Expressionist dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
r/choreographer
Choreography
Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...
, Gertrud Leistikow, and he also moved in the circle of one of Holland's foremost composers of the time, Sem Dresden
Sem Dresden
Samuel Dresden was born in Amsterdam, April 20, 1881, and died at The Hague, July 30, 1957). He was a Dutch conductor, composer and teacher.-Life:...
) he enrolled at the University of Amsterdam in 1938 to study medicine.
Still a student, he made his début as a composer in 1940 with the song cycle L'amour (1939; for soprano, flute, clarinet and string trio), written at the request of the young composer/conductor Nico Richter, who was in charge of the students' orchestra.
World War II
However, in 1940 the Germans invaded the Netherlands and in 1942, being a Jew, he was forced to interrupt his studies (Wouters and Samama 2001)—irrevocably, as it turned out, because his hopes of becoming a neuro-surgeon were dashed during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
due to an exploding carbide lamp, which virtually blinded him in his left eye while in hiding.
Presently he joined the underground students' resistance movement and after the war was commended for his bravery by both the President of the United States of America and the Supreme Command of the Allied Forces. In 1953 the name he had assumed since the Liberation in 1945 (Lex van Delden—a derivation from the name he used in the resistance) was officially approved.
By the time the war was over, Van Delden had lost nearly his entire family in the Holocaust. He almost immediately found his way into Dutch cultural life, partially through contacts he had made as a member of the resistance movement—initially as the resident composer/musical director of the first post-war Dutch ballet group, Op Vrije Voeten (On Liberated Feet), which later evolved into the Scapino Ballet Company, and from 1947 as the music editor of the daily, originally underground, newspaper Het Parool
Het Parool
Het Parool is an Amsterdam-based daily newspaper. It was founded as a resistance paper during World War II by Frans Van Heuven Goedhart and Jaap Nunes Vaz...
(until 1982).
Musical career
The first of his works to attract wide attention was RubáiyátRubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám , a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer...
(nine quatrains by Omar Khayyám
Omar Khayyám
Omar Khayyám was aPersian polymath: philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and theology....
in Edward FitzGerald
Edward Fitzgerald
Edward Fitzgerald may refer to:* Lord Edward FitzGerald , Irish revolutionary*Edward Fitzgerald , Irish* Edward FitzGerald, 7th Duke of Leinster * Edward Fitzgerald...
's English translation, 1948; for chorus with soprano and tenor solos, 2 pianos and percussion), awarded the prestigious Music Prize of the City of Amsterdam in 1948. This unexpected success was soon to be confirmed by two First Prizes, awarded by the Northern California Harpists' Association, in 1953 for his Harp Concerto (1951/52), and in 1956 for Impromptu for harp solo (1955) (Wouters and Samama 2001).
Van Delden was also committed to the musical community, borne out by his readiness to hold several administrative posts, including the presidency of the Society of Dutch Composers (GeNeCo) and the chairmanship of the Dutch Performing Right Organisation (Buma/Stemra). He also sat on the Board of the International Society for Contemporary Music
International Society for Contemporary Music
The International Society for Contemporary Music is a music organization that promotes contemporary classical music.ISCM was established in 1922, in Salzburg. Its core activity is the World Music Days Festival, held every year at a different location. The festival includes cutting edge productions...
(I.S.C.M.) and was a member of the Dutch Committee of the International Music Council (Unesco
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
).
Throughout the fifties and sixties Lex van Delden became one of the most widely heard Dutch composers of his generation, and a large number of his pieces were commissioned (by the Dutch government, the City of Amsterdam, Dutch radio and others) and enjoyed acclaimed performances by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra under such renowned conductors as George Szell
George Szell
George Szell , originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer...
, Charles Münch
Charles Münch
Charles Munch was an Alsatian symphonic conductor and violinist. Noted for his mastery of the French orchestral repertoire, he is best known as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.-Biography:...
, Eduard van Beinum
Eduard van Beinum
Eduard van Beinum was a Dutch conductor.-Biography:Beinum was born in Arnhem, Netherlands, where he received his first violin and piano lessons at an early age. He joined the Arnhem Orchestra as a violinist in 1918. His grandfather was conductor of a military band...
, Eugen Jochum
Eugen Jochum
Eugen Jochum was an eminent German conductor.Born in Babenhausen, near Augsburg, Germany, Jochum studied the piano and organ in Augsburg until 1922. He then studied conducting in Munich...
, Willem van Otterloo
Willem van Otterloo
Jan Willem van Otterloo was a Dutch conductor, cellist and composer.-Biography:Van Otterloo was born in Winterswijk, Gelderland, in the Netherlands, the son of William Frederik van Otterloo, a railway inspector, and his wife Anna Catharina Enderlé...
and Bernard Haitink
Bernard Haitink
Bernard Johan Herman Haitink, CH, KBE is a Dutch conductor and violinist.- Early life :Haitink was born in Amsterdam, the son of Willem Haitink and Anna Haitink. He studied music at the conservatoire in Amsterdam...
, and by numerous other prominent ensembles and soloists. He was made a Knight of the royal Order of Oranje-Nassau (1972), and received the Freedom of the City of Amsterdam (1982), where he died on 1 July 1988.
Themes
Many of Van Delden's compositions form an expression of his deeply felt social concern, such as the orchestral work In Memoriam (1953), which was written in the aftermath of the great flood disaster of 1953 in the NetherlandsNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
and England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, the oratorio The Bird of Freedom (1955), which is an emotional cry against slavery, the radiophonic oratorio Icarus (1962), which questions the usefulness of space travel, or Canto della guerra (after Erasmus, 1967; for chorus and orchestra), which is a strong condemnation of war.
A few of his works have biblical themes, notably Judith (1950; a dance score for flute, clarinet, piano and string trio) and Adonijah's Death (1986; for male chorus and symphonic wind band).
Lex van Delden strongly believed in the continuing validity of tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
in the broadest sense of the term and preferred to obey his own spontaneous creative impulses, fashioning his ideas into a uniquely personal idiom, rather than following the various musical trends of the day. He loved working closely with performers, too, utilising to the full the peculiarities and possibilities specific to the instruments as well as meeting the wishes and demands of the players. If he felt at all consciously influenced by any predecessors, it was perhaps by such old Dutch Masters as Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was a Dutch composer, organist, and pedagogue whose work straddled the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. He was among the first major keyboard composers of Europe, and his work as a teacher helped establish the north German organ...
, whose solid constructivism
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
certainly contributed to his own highly developed grasp of form.
Musical legacy
The composer Matthijs VermeulenMatthijs Vermeulen
Matthijs Vermeulen , was a Dutch composer and music journalist.- Early life :...
once described his orchestral palette as ochreous, granular and bronze-like, applied in manifold minutely varied gradations, almost as if improvised, un-premeditated, extempore. Another fellow-composer, Jan Mul
Jan Mul
Jan Mul was a Dutch composer, mainly of church music. He studied with Sem Dresden at the Amsterdam Conservatory, and orchestrated the latter's opera Francois Villon after his death....
, pointed out that Van Delden's music bears witness of an idealistic will to live, no doubt a poignant consequence of his traumatic wartime experiences. In all his works clarity reigns—profoundly dramatic episodes alternate with intensely lyrical passages, sometimes unmistakably evocative of the ecstatic cantorial chant in the synagogue, yet the aim is never to overwhelm the listener, but instead to try to reach out and achieve an unforced communication with the audience.
Most of his pre-war and wartime works, some thirty in total, were destroyed by the bombing of Nijmegen in 1944, and the bulk of his approximately 125 surviving compositions was written after the war, extending over all spheres of music except opera and church music, i.a. (in addition to the pieces already mentioned): Piccolo Concerto, for 12 wind instruments, timpani, percussion and piano, orchestral works such as Musica Sinfonica, Bafadis, and Trittico, 8 symphonies (No. 1: The River—May 1940, for soprano, chorus and orchestra, No. 2: Sinfonia giocosa, No. 3: Facets, No. 7: Sinfonia concertante, for 11 wind instruments); concertos for flute, harp, percussion, piano, trumpet, violin, 2 oboes, 2 soprano-saxophones, 3 trombones (Piccola musica concertata), 2 string orchestras, electronic organ and for violin, viola and double-bass; 3 oratorios (inter al., Anthropolis) and many other choral pieces (inter al. Partita piccola, for chorus a cappella, and Animal Suite, for male chorus and wind band); chamber music, including works for piano solo and for violin and piano, 3 String Quartets, a String Quintet, a String Sextet, 2 Piano Trios, a saxophone quartet (Tomba), a brass quintet, 2 sextets (inter al., Sestetto per Gemelli), a nonet and several works for harp (solo or in various combinations: i.a. Catena di miniature, for flute and harp, and Musica notturna a cinque, for 4 violoncellos and harp); songs (inter al., Three Sonnets by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
and The Good Death); music for ballet (inter al., Time and Tide) and for the theatre (inter al., Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
and Lucifer
Lucifer
Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
).