Pijper's Third Symphony turns up occasionally, but it's the only work of his I can recall hearing. Of the others, there are two whose names are new to me: Dissevelt and Raaljmakers. I guess the name we hear most is Andriessen, not just Louis, but also his father Hendrik, who seems to crop up on TTN about once a month. Wasn't there another son, too, also a composer, who died young?

Let me put in my cheers for Vermeulen - great symphonist, early pieces strange mix of Mahler and Nielsen, some quite novel structures too, and an imaginative and distinctive soundworld.

Louis Andriessen is, as has been stated, quite widely celebrated, although that was not always the case (I remember a rare BBC broadcast in the late '80s of, I think, On Jimmy Yancey, when the R3 announcer said with the sort of disgust usually reserved for scraping something nasty off your shoe "that... was by Louis Andriessen"...

Otto Ketting is worth investigating.

Was Bernard van Dieren genuinely Dutch, then? My association of that name is with Delius and Peter Warlock.

Simeon ten Holt has a near namesake, of course, who is also well worth exploring!!!

My impression is that living Dutch composers don't do too badly on the whole in terms of publicity (not only Andriessen but also Richard Rijnvos, Diderijk Wagenaar, Michel van der Aa, Ton de Leeuw, Theo Loevendie, Jacob ter Veldhuis, Robin de Raaff ...).

But the composers in autoharp's Msg 1 are all earlier C20th figures who are indeed rarely heard now, except on Concertgebouw archive box sets etc. And as I write this it occurs to me that even quite recently deceased Dutch composers such as Peter Schat have faded very quickly from view.

Are the Dutch particularly good at putting forward their living composers, and forgetting them when they die? Or is this a horrible generalisation?


Some other 'oldies', btw: Cornelis Dopper, Alphons Diepenbrock ...

A bit like the British (with certain exceptions!) - while you have a University teaching post you are played; as soon as you retire, that's it!

Mischa Mengelberg is another Dutch figure whose music might be worth exploring; the only piece I know is a humorous number called Dressoir, written for De Volharding - does anyone know anything else by him?

I have a fair bit of time for Vermeulen.

Of course one thing that's rather lovely is that list of composers' names in the Grote Zaal of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Looking along the illustrious ranks... Mahler... Bruckner... Zweers. 

pim_derks. Thank you for attracting my attention to that composer. I did not hear Diepenbrock's name before. I usually have to hear the name run by me many times before I adopt and memorise the composer. I listened to Electra's music on listen again and it is beautiful. He has his own voice.
I am looking forward to hear some other Dutch composers. If you see music of other Dutch composers being played on radio 3 can you please post it on the board?

UB, I could not find Adnriessen, but I will try again.

Going back to the top: Dick Raaijmakers - yes, for me probably top of the list of living Dutch composers, though he hasn't written anything for a while, being fairly poorly these days. Plug: in 2005 I made an English translation (published by the Orpheus Institute in Ghent) of his book "Cahier M", which purports to be "a brief morphology of electric sound" but is actually a wide-ranging and delightfully idiosyncratic look at the work and ideas of Mondriaan, Goeyvaerts, Boulez and plenty of others (but principally Raaijmakers). I'd recommend it to anyone interested in 20th and 21st century music, and particularly to anyone interested in the music which hasn't been written yet.

Raaijmakers and Dissevelt were colleagues at the Philips electronic music studio at a time when that corporation thought it could make a commercial killing by popularising the then-new technology of electronic music. The story is told in words and sounds on this excellent boxed set of CDs...

http://www.bastamusic.com/productDetails.aspx?IDProduct=39&ArtistName=Tom+Dissevelt%2C+Kid+Baltan%2C+Henk+Badings+and+Dick+Raaijmakers

... which was compiled by the estimable Kees Tazelaar (b 1962), electronic music composer par excellence.