Can composers write music that comes straight from the heart and still sounds modern?
For a large part of the 20th century, the mantra of modern art was “innovation”. Art had to reinvent itself thoroughly, otherwise it could not be considered art. But by around 1970, everything had been more or less thought up in music as well. A new generation of composers had had enough of Stockhausen, Cage and all the other avant-garde greats and started to focus on the past again.
Especially in Germany, New Romanticism became an important movement. At first hearing, this music is thoroughly modern, but after a little listening you hear something else. The expression, the composer’s own voice that not only plays with the notes but also puts his soul into them.
The German Wolfgang Rihm and the Dutchman Tristan Keuris fit into this category. But there are also composers who approach Romanticism differently. For them, it’s all a long time ago, that 19th century. But walking completely around it? That’s not possible either. Roderik de Man makes that dilemma the subject of his music.
1. Tristan Keuris – Clarinet Quintet
2. Peter-Jan Wagemans – String Quartet No. 2
3. Wolfgang Rihm – 4 Studies for a Clarinet Quintet
4. Joep Straesser – Concertino
5. Tristan Keuris – Canzone
6. Roderik de Man (photo) – Departures of the Romantic Agony
