The Dutch composer Louis Andriessen has died, aged 82. In tribute, we republish this profile of his life and musical voice from our Contemporary Composer series, written by Andy Hamilton in 2017. 

‘I am not a political composer,’ the leading Dutch composer Louis Andriessen has said. ‘I am just a composer who sometimes writes on political things.’ He has also denied links to Marxism. When asked about his music in a 2002 interview, he said: ‘Well, it doesn’t sound Marxist. There’s no such thing as a Marxist chord! But I did think there should be equality of information between the parts. I didn’t want some leading and others just supporting.’ Maybe the successful composer has mellowed since then, but his music retains its political edge, however he chooses to label it.

Andriessen was born in Utrecht in 1939, son of composer Hendrik Andriessen. He studied composition at The Hague’s Royal Conservatory, and then in Milan and Berlin with Italian master Berio. After youthful works informed by neoclassicism and post-war serialism, he developed a more political, theatrical idiom, influenced by jazz, Stravinsky and, later, American minimalism. A love of French music – Poulenc, Satie in particular – came from his father, whom (according to one of his students) he would report as saying, ‘Those Germans – they dig very deep, but they never find anything.’

Andriessen was a youthful iconoclast. In 1969, with fellow avant-gardists – including conductor and composer Reinbert de Leeuw and improvising pianist Misha Mengelberg – he disrupted a concert by Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra with a protest which demanded more contemporary music. This outrage formed a rupture in post-war Dutch musical life. Although it didn’t change the programming policy of the Concertgebouw, it paved the way for the contemporary music groups for which the Netherlands became renowned. Andriessen’s iconoclasm underlies one of the most notable features of his style, found almost from the outset – his rejection of the classical sustaining line of string instruments, in favour of the rhythmic power of brass, winds, percussion and electric instruments. The composer renounced the orchestra as an oppressive hierarchical structure, setting up Orkest de Volharding and Hoketus – his own ensembles of classical, jazz and pop musicians – to perform compositions of the same name.

Andriessen is, then, a classical composer but with a very unclassical style. Critics described his early compositions as ‘minimalist’, but Andriessen had a love/hate relationship with American minimalist pioneers Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Philip Glass and their classic work of the 1960s, acknowledging their influence, but denying that he was following in their footsteps. Arguably, De volharding (‘Perseverence’, 1972) and Hoketus (1976) are his only truly minimalist compositions, involving process – slow, gradual changes creating a linear development – and not just repetition.

The compelling interpretation of Hoketus found on the Bang on a Can All-Stars album ‘Gigantic Dancing Human Machine’ (5/03) highlights that this, like much of Andriessen’s output from the 1970s and ’80s, is loud, muscular, in-your-face music that takes no prisoners. The composer coined the term ‘maximalism’ to describe its visceral, emotional rawnesss – a soundscape once described as ‘a European heavy metal answer to American minimalism’, more rooted in rock than in classical music.

With De staat (‘The Republic’, 1972-76), this vociferous early style is somewhat tamed. Even so, the results – featuring Andriessen’s characteristic sonorities of brass, keyboards and bass guitars – may be too stentorian and hard-edged for some tastes. De staat remains Andriessen’s best-known composition, but this is music to admire rather than to love. It draws on Plato’s The Republic, in which the Greek philosopher advocates the banning of certain musical modes because of their allegedly damaging political and social effects (‘If only it were true that musical innovation represented a danger to the State!’ Andriessen later expressed, somewhat ruefully).

‘Maximalism’ continued with the 1980s project De materie (‘Matter’, 1984-88), a genre-defying mix of theatre, narration, singing, instrumental music and philosophy. In its third movement, ‘De stijl’ (‘The Style’), named after the Dutch abstract art movement of the 1920s, Andriessen musically imagines Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue, at one point including a honky-tonk interlude as a tribute to the artist’s love of boogie-woogie. It has also been suggested that the music’s funky chaconne line is indebted to jazz-rock supergroup Weather Report. But although this kaleidoscopic, bombastic maximalism is enjoyable live (‘De stijl’ was performed at the Total Immersion festival of Andriessen’s music at the Barbican, London, in 2016), a little goes a long way.

That Barbican festival made me more aware than ever of the depth of Andriessen’s output, which is far more varied than the label ‘maximalism’ suggests. That’s not to say that he’s a chameleon, however (it could be argued that he’s as stylistically consistent as his role model Stravinsky) – although a slower (though not necessarily more gentle) style was apparent from the 1980s with works such as De tijd (‘Time’, 1980-81), which are philosophical rather than political in inspiration. Indeed, since the 1980s, Andriessen’s style has become less hard-edged, less hardcore, and he’s written more singable melodies.

That’s partly because he’s written more operas, of course – albeit for performers who are not conventional opera singers. Sadly, few vocalists are up to the job, but those who are – Cristina Zavalloni, for example, Andriessen’s ‘Cathy Berberian’, who performed the 2016 UK premiere (as well as the world premiere in Amsterdam, 2008) of La commedia (2004-08) – can produce thrilling results. A collaboration with independent film director Hal Hartley, and inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy, La commedia features jazzy dialogues reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto or Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs, demonstrating Andriessen’s lasting affection for the punchy power of brass, winds, percussion and electric guitar.

The composer’s move towards greater accessibility has continued, and in recent decades his music has even included strings – although he has insisted that they must never sound like a conventional orchestral string section. In Mysteriën (2013) – inspired by the 15th-century Dutch author Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, and Andriessen’s first large-scale orchestral work for 50 years – a relatively familiar orchestral timbre is created by a reduced string section, plus three harps (one detuned to produce microtones). The overall effect is haunting and unforgettable – a brooding lamentation on human existence.

Gramophone's most recent review of a Louis Andriessen recording was just in April, of The Only One performed by soprano Nora Fischer with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra / Esa-Pekka Salonen, available from Nonesuch, in which Pwyll ap Siôn began by describing him as 'A powerful creative force around which so many younger composers gravitated, his recognisable style admired for its ability to shape and twist time and space like no other'.

You can listen to that recording above.