Wouter Snoei: his name has been a permanent fixture in the world of the “electronic muse” in the Netherlands, with his (technical) resourcefulness equaling his musical originality.

Snoei’s compositions cover a broad range, from strictly synthetic to the most divergent forms of live electronics. That alongside his advanced activities he has also played a leading role in dance music (in 1997, while still a student, he won the “Grote Prijs van Nederland” competition in the genre) marks him as a composer of the youngest generation, who no longer heed the ridiculous trench warfare between “serious” and “light” that spoiled twentieth-century musical thinking.

Drama
There are no compositional systems at work in Snoei’s music, no sacred formulas, no doctrines, except for one fundamental principle: drama. Not the drama of the classical theater or of Beethoven and Berlioz, say, but something entirely different: The sounds themselves are the dramatis personae, the subjects of the action. No longer “inserted” into pre-designed structural schemes, they generate the form themselves through interaction or dialogue. The dramatic process is clearly discernible in all of Snoei’s compositions; their action is strictly musical, not imposed on them through one or another system. The form is perceptibly carried forward by the sounds themselves and their figurations.

Konrad Boehmer