DIDERIK WAGENAAR

Diderik Wagenaar

Over the years, Diderik Wagenaar has carefully and with meticulousness built a body of works. Wagenaar composes slowly and often revises his work. He has never consciously worked toward a personal style. “He weighs and considers his notes for as long as it takes for them to reveal their internal ...
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Mentioned in the biography of

1953   Cornelis de Bondt
1985   Lucas Wiegerink
1990   Rozalie Hirs

Biography Diderik Wagenaar

Over the years, Diderik Wagenaar has carefully and with meticulousness built a body of works. Wagenaar composes slowly and often revises his work. He has never consciously worked toward a personal style. “He weighs and considers his notes for as long as it takes for them to reveal their internal logic”, says Desmond Haneveer about Wagenaar in 'Motief' (1999). Wagenaar strives for a synthesis of the clear, rhythmically forceful language of jazz and Stravinsky and the expressivity-oriented idiom of late Romantic music, the Second Viennese School and Scriabin. In the 1970s, he was part of The Hague School (Louis Andriessen, Gilius van Bergeijk, Cornelis de Bondt) and shared with them a preference for crystal-clear structures and music with an obvious pulse. In the 1980s, complexity and a multiplicity of layers returned to his work, for example in his magnum opus 'Metrum' (1981-1984; rev. 1986). Since the 1990s, his scores have been more open, give more room to lyricism and have a clearer structure.

1946

Diderik Wagenaar is born in Utrecht on May 10. He is a great-nephew of the composer Johan Wagenaar (1862-1941).

Johan Wagenaar

1964

Mostly self-taught as a composer, Wagenaar studies the piano with Simon Admiraal and music theory with Jan van Dijk, Hein Kien and Rudolf Koumans at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He later has lessons in music analysis with Kees van Baaren, which stimulate his interest in composition.

Jan van Dijk Kees van Baaren Rudolf Koumans

1971 - 1973

With Louis Andriessen and Gilius van Bergeijk, he forms the Digilou trio, which combines elements of improvisation and composition; his Praxis (1973) for two pianos and oboe comes from this union. In 1973, the trio ends its collaboration.

Gilius van Bergeijk Louis Andriessen

1978

Diderik Wagenaar composes 'Tam Tam' for the Hoketus ensemble, formed in 1976 by Louis Andriessen and students of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

Hoketus

1989

Wagenaar receives the Kees van Baaren Prize for his composition Metrum (1981-1984; rev. 1986).

1990

Diderik Wagenaar begins teaching music theory and analysis of 20th-century music at the Royal Conservatory. He later also teaches orchestration and composition there.

1995

The composer-musician John Godfrey, of the English Icebreaker ensemble, makes an arrangement of Wagenaar’s 'Metrum'.

1996

Wagenaar receives the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize for 'Trois poèmes en prose', for soprano and orchestra. “A special milestone in Wagenaar’s oeuvre”, the jury finds.

2000

Wagenaar's large-scale composition 'Galilei' (1999), for choir and orchestra, is premiered at the Haarlem Concertgebouw by the North Holland Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jurjen Hempel.

2001

Diderik Wagenaar is a central guest during the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York (Next Wave Festival in the Brooklyn Academy of Music). England’s Icebreaker ensemble performs his music.

2006

'Ricordanza', for orchestra, is premiered at a Saturday Matinee concert in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw by the Asko Ensemble led by Emilio Pomárico.

Photos Diderik Wagenaar

Audio/Video Diderik Wagenaar