Contemporary
Composer in the Spotlight
Calendar:
• 9 January 2010, De Doelen, Rotterdam: festival day ‘Licht op De Leeuw’ (Light on De Leeuw), with music by de Leeuw, Takemitsu and Ravel and the official presentation of the 2-CD set containing de Leeuw’s complete piano works performed by René Eckhardt.
• 7 February 2010, Museum De Buitenplaats, Eelde: piano works by de Leeuw performed by René Eckhardt.
• 5 March 2010, Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, Utrecht: De Leeuw’s Cloudy Forms in a programme featuring music by Diepenbrock, JacobTV and Schubert.
• 13 March 2010, Zeeuwse Concertzaal, Middelburg: piano works by de Leeuw performed by René Eckhardt.
Ton de Leeuw (1926-1996)
A short biography of Ton de Leeuw
A short biography of Ton de Leeuw:
Ton de Leeuw was born in Rotterdam on 16 November 1926.
He studied with Henk Badings (composition), Olivier Messiaen (analysis), Thomas de Hartmann (orchestration) and Jaap Kunst (ethnomusicology).
He worked as music director at the Nederlandse Radio Unie (Dutch Radio Union, 1954-1959); he taught composition, he was head of the electronic studio and from the mid-1970s he was artistic director at the Conservatory of Amsterdam (1959-1986); he taught musicology at the University of Amsterdam (1963-1984).
In 1961, commissioned by the Dutch government, he went to India to study the country’s music.
Between 1958 and 1976 he gave several hundreds of radio lectures on contemporary and non-Western music.
He died in Paris on 31 May 1996.
A selection of his compositions:
Treurmuziek in memoriam Willem Pijper (Funeral Music in memoriam Willem Pijper, 1948), for orchestra
Drie Afrikaanse etudes (Three African Studies, 1954), for piano
Job (1956), radiophonic oratorio
Mouvements rétrogrades (1957), for orchestra
String Quartet No. 1 (1958)
Symphonies of Winds (1963), for wind orchestra
De Droom (The Dream, 1963), opera
Haiku II (1968), for soprano and ensemble
Gending (1975), for gamelan ensemble
Mountains (1977), for bass clarinet and tape
Car nos vignes sont en fleur (1981), for choir
Chimères (1984), for vocal sextet
Résonances (1985), for orchestra
Les adieux (1988), for piano
Antigone (1991), music drama
Three Shakespeare songs (1994-1995), for mezzo-soprano and ensemble
Publications:
Besides a great many of articles on contemporary music and the East-West relationship in music, de Leeuw published the book Muziek van de twintigste eeuw (Music of the Twentieth Century, 1964), which is still considered an important study and has been translated into German, Swedish and English.
A selection of awards:
Prix Italia for Job, 1956
Prix des Jeunesses Musicales for String Quartet No. 1, 1958
Matthijs Vermeulenprijs for Car nos vignes sont en fleur, 1982
Johan Wagenaar Prijs for his complete oeuvre, 1983
Matthijs Vermeulenprijs (posthumous) for Three Shakespeare songs, 1997
