Klaas de Vries (composer)
After winning this prize de Vries studied with the Croatian composer Milko Kelemen in Stuttgart, Germany.
De Vries won the Matthijs Vermeulen Award twice: in 1984 for his work discantus (1982) and in 1998 for his opera A King, Riding and the Interludium for string orchestra (1996).
Among his many students at this school, today also known as the Rotterdam School, are Thorkell Atlason, Antonio Pinho Vargas, António Chagas Rosa, Oscar van Dillen, Andreas Kunstein, Sergio Luque, César de Oliveira, Juan Felipe Waller, Philemon Mukarno, Astrid Kruisselbrink, Florian Magnus Maier, Felipe Perez Santiago, Joey Roukens, Edward Top, Jian-Hua Zhuang, Evrim Demirel, Gerda Geertens and Rob Zuidam.
Since the 1980s de Vries has also been active, together with the composer Peter-Jan Wagemans, in the organization of the Unanswered Question foundation.
[2] From his studies with Otto Ketting De Vries developed a fascination for Stravinsky, Bartók and Berg.
Nevertheless, de Vries continued to use an anti-romantic approach to musical writing, shared with The Hague school (Oskamp 11-29).
In his work bewegingen (English: movements) (1979) he experimented with the usage of fluent transitions and continuity (Oskamp 124).
To be able to give meaning to his written notes, De Vries turned for instance to the symbolism of Baroque techniques, such as the falling motive to illustrate the idea of death.
De Vries also turned his attention towards the re-usage of music of the past (Wenekes 30), as exemplified by his Organum (1971), in which he re-introduced Perotinus' style in a modern setting.
De Vries' sonata (1987) for piano solo marks a turning-point which led to an even more important role of extra-musical influences (Schneeweisz 12).
In his works Borges creates a large variety of mysterious repeats form a constantly recurring theme.
It is with this that de Vries tries to play by introducing repetition and variations on musical elements, bringing him close to the philosophy of the Argentine author (Klis 390).
A further source of inspiration is the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa, whose poems de Vries uses regularly.
The title of the opera is an allusion to Finnegans Wake by the Irish novelist James Joyce (NPSpodium, Wind).
The idea of multiple identities, to be found in the book, is the largest source of inspiration for de Vries.
The result is a harmonic language which sounds chromatic and dissonant, but still gives a feeling of movement (Zuidam 40).
Also the work as a whole is built as a modern passion: solo arias are being varied with instrumental and ensemble parts.
The work was performed by the joined forces of ASKO and Schönberg Ensemble, conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw.
