updated 2 July 2021
© Marco Borggreve

Louis Andriessen

Dutch composer born 6 June 1939 in Utrecht.

Born in Utrecht (the Netherlands) in 1939, Louis Andriessen began composing with his father, the composer Hendrik Andriessen. He went on to study with Kees van Baren at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, where he graduated with highest honors in composition, and then pursued his studies with Luciano Berio in Milan and Berlin. Upon his return to the Netherlands, he rapidly made a name for himself as a major figure in the national music scene, both for his compositions and for his performances of his own work and that of other composers. Known for his political activism, he teaches at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and in the course of his career has been a driving force in a movement of profound renewal in Dutch music.

Andriessen experimented with serialism early in his career, but then shifted away from the avant-garde composition of the 1950s as he embraced jazz. One hears the influence of Charlie Parker in Facing Death (1990), and the work of Stravinsky - another strong influence for him - along with the rhythmic work of American minimalists. These threads combine in Andriessen’s consonant or polytonal harmony. Andriessen’s post-modernism also encompasses opera, and he has written two operatic works with the film director Peter Greenaway, Rosa, a Horse Drama and Writing to Vermeer (1999).

Among his early notable compositions are Series for two pianos (1958), Nocturnen for soprano and chamber orchestra (1959), Introspezione for orchestra (1963), Registers for piano (1963), Anachronie I - a work for orchestra dedicated to Charles Ives (1967), and Spektakel for ensemble with jazz musicians (1970). He also co-authored the opera Reconstructie (1969).

He became interested in social issues in the 1970s, and wrote many politically engaged works, including Volkslied (1971), based on the Dutch national anthem and the Internationale, and Workers Union (1975).

In 1972, he composed De Volharding (Perseverance), then launched a wind ensemble with the same name, for which he wrote numerous pieces. Similarly, in 1977, his Hoketus inspired an ensemble of the same name, in which Andriessen played piano. From 1973-1976, he wrote De Staat (Republic), a large-scale piece that won the Matthijs Vermeulen Award in 1977, as well as first prize in the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers.

Andriessen composed many pieces for large ensemble, often divided into three groups, as in De Snelheid (1982-1983), or in the four movements of the opera De Materie, directed by Robert Wilson (1984-1988), and again for his more recent De Opening (2005), performed by the Asko, Schönberg, and De Volharding ensembles.

He also composed a significant body of vocal work, sometimes inspired by significant encounters, such as with the singer Cristina Zavalloni or the poetry of Dino Campana (1885-1932) — Passeggiata in tram in America e ritorno (1998), La Passione (2002). Among other pieces, Inanna and Racconto dall’ inferno (2004) were composed for Zavalloni, as were the roles of Dante in La Commedia, a film opera written in collaboration with Hal Hartley (2003) and the role of Anaïs in Anaïs Nin (2010). He also collaborated with Hartley on The New Math(s) (2000) La Commedia. [La Commedia] was premiered by the Netherlands Opera at the Holland Festival in 2008, and Andriessen received the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for it in 2011.

His more recent work includes Life, written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars with film by Marijke van Warmerdam (2009); La Girò, composed for violinist Monica Germino (2012); Rosa’s Horses, which premiered in May 2013, arranged by Clark Rundell based on the Opera Rosa; Mysteriën for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (2013) and Tapdance Concerto for the percussionist Colin Currie (2013-2014).


© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2013

De montages, de rythmes et de répétitions : le minimalisme incarné de Louis Andriessen

By Johan Girard

Montage, rhythms, and repetition: The “minimalism” of Louis Andriessen

One of the main problems with the so-called avant-garde music is the absence of memory. I would like to, again, compose while taking memory into account. — Louis Andriessen

To classify Louis Andriessen as a minimalist composer would be an unjust simplification, if not an outright error. Firstly, the rhythmic energy and the timbral power in his compositions is more readily qualified as maximalist. Secondly, to begin to comprehend Andriessen’s work, one must delve into his multifarious influences: from Johann Sebastian Bach and Guillaume de Machaut (for contrapuntal techniques and complex organization of time), to jazz (for harmonic writing, swing, and vocal textures), pop music (for electronic instruments and binary rhythms), and above all Igor Stravinsky.1 Andriessen shared the latter’s desire for a modern style of composition that would be based in the possibilities offered in the musical material itself, and he was equally wary of using this material to display excessive sentimentality. Both composers’ writings are based in montage: references and echoes are woven together, reflecting the historicity of the musical material. Andriessen borrows both material and form to create semiotic play. Intertwined references suggest time and space — a time and space upon which the present time of the piece depends. Thus, the influences from boogie-woogie in De Stijl (1985) evoke Piet Mondrian’s interest in that musical style. Anytime Andriessen appropriated genres or parts of other works, he did so in a way that the borrowed material was incorporated with continuity and without scathing postmodern irony.

Andriessen’s resonance with the American “repetitive” composers, notably Steve Reich,2 is a connection that is nevertheless worthy of establishing as it immediately strikes the ear. However, while Reich composed with “purism” and semiotic denial — an approach that can be summed up by paraphrasing from Frank Stella, “What you hear is what you hear” — Andriessen anchored music with historical and political significance. In his works of the 1970s, in particular, he developed an “aestheticization of politics” (to use Walter Benjamin’s concept) in which musical aggression, even violence, and the hammered repetition of fortissimo chords reflect the brutality of social and political relations, from the Vietnam War to the conditions of workers. Also, while Reich considered that his work took shape within the post-war US context of “Chuck Berry and a million hamburgers sold”3 and thus retained the abstract form of the repetitive process, Andriessen tried to convert a political vision into sound. He did concede that this exercise was a precarious one. If Plato, in the Republic, was correct in stating that musical modes had the power to alter the organization of the city-state, then music could be the vector of radical social change. With De Staat (1976), Andriessen played precisely on the kind of music Plato prohibited.

Influences, borrowed material, montage

Andriessen was born into a family of composers4 and nurtured in a Francophile musical and literary culture. In the mid-1950s, he became interested in the jazz of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Dizzy Gillespie, as well as in European serialism. His first published work, Series for two pianos (1958), influenced by the piece Structures I by Pierre Boulez (1958), figures among the first serial works published in the Netherlands. But as early as 1959, Andriessen would move away from serialism. His Nocturnes for soprano and chamber orchestra, composed that year, echoes the early twentieth-century French school. In Cage’s wake, he produced two graphic scores in 1961, Ittrospezione I and Paintings, as well as some works in 1963 built around textures and heterophony, such as Ittrospezione III. In August of the same year, he attended the Darmstadt seminar and took particular interest in the works of Luciano Berio and his theatricalized music. For two years, he studied with Berio in Milan and Berlin. While his first pieces borrowed from Darmstadt’s modernist tendencies, including serialism and aleatoric music, Andriessen would rapidly lose faith in the myth of autonomy of the work and the possibility (or even the necessity) of composing from a tabula rasa. Influenced by Charles Ives and, of course, Stravinsky, he would conclude that composers cannot ignore the historical significance of music’s components and that borrowing and allusion cannot be avoided. In his book The Apollonian Clockwork, he wrote:

Stravinsky’s influence can be seen rather in a specific attitude towards musical material. This attitude can be best described as the (historical) realization that music is about other music and is not primarily suited to express personal emotions; that new music implies the existence of other music; that music is only music.5

Two major aesthetic anchors result from Stravinsky’s influence on Andriessen’s work: first, he took artistic license to quote other musical works and, second, he saw an ontological uniqueness in music tautologically expressed, and by correlation, he valued form over the expression of feelings, which became secondary.

But when it came to expression, Andriessen was less formalist than Stravinsky who, it is well known, considered music as “essentially powerless to express anything at all.”6 Although Andriessen did not deny musical sentiment, he considered it an aesthetic attribute of the music, rather than the expression of a psychological state of the composer, as in Romanticism. For Andriessen, music’s purpose is passion and yet “It does not express passion but is a photo of passion.”7 He made musical sentiment a subject; it would be represented rather than experienced.8 He thus made a breakthrough in modern music, as sentiment had otherwise remained outside the scope of serialism, aleatoric music, and the impersonal processes of the American minimalists.

Emotions in fact take center stage in Andriessen’s works — love in De Tijd (1980-1981), death in Inanna (2003) and Racconto dall’ inferno (2004) — but in a radically different way than in nineteenth-century Romanticism. He tackled the problem of expressing an emotion or feeling through a piece without expressing oneself (as a psychological being) in the piece. In other words, the idea is that, rather than translating an emotional state into music, the material itself offers the possibility of expressing sentiment. This approach would even be fundamentally beneficial for listeners in that they could “discover their own emotions”9 through the piece.

The Rite of Spring, for Andriessen, was “the most important and revolutionary work for two centuries to come.”10 He would quote excerpts from the Rite in his operas Rosa, a Horse Drama (also called Rosa: The Death of a Composer, 1994) and Writing to Vermeer (1998). As Paul Grimstad notes, there are numerous common points between Andriessen and Stravinsky:

Both are pianistic composers who treat the orchestra like a piano — or, relatedly, like a big percussion instrument. Both find original and precise timbral expressions of intervallic relationships, which show up as a certain “bite” in their orchestrations. Both use rhythm as a structuring element in ways typically associated with melody. Both are open-minded to the point of eclecticism in their approach to musical form and style.11

Stravinsky’s influence is also audible in Andriessen’s use of montage. In The Apollonian Clockwork, Andriessen distinguishes montage from collage.12 The latter, a heterogeneous collection of objects in confrontation, relies on external ordering, should it be disordered, like the additive or mechanical systems evoked by Boris de Schloezer.13 Montage, on the contrary, finds its coherence and consistency within itself, resembling in this way an organic system. Guided by an internal law such as harmonic continuity, montage nevertheless invites external semiotic play. In this regard, collage would require confrontation, with sutured lines between assembled elements, whereas montage would involve a game of duality: between identification, or the quest for a referent, and poetry, or how the fragments from other works or genres are integrated into the present work. As early as his Anachronie I (1966) dedicated to Ives, Andriessen juxtaposed allusions and quotations. Playing on the musical culture of the listener, the work quotes J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, parodies Michel Legrand’s film music, takes up popular Italian tunes, and includes excerpts from works by Andriessen’s father and brother. With these quotations, Andriessen foiled the expectations confronting the tonal and atonal, erudite and popular.

Beyond musical borrowings, Andriessen transfers visual or architectural structures into the organization of pitches, timbres, and durations. The second part of De Materie, “Hadewijch,” is built off the blueprint of the Reims Cathedral: fifteen “pillar” chords reflect, in the space of the score, the geographical arrangement of the edifice’s pillars. Similarly, the time proportions of De Stijl are based on the dimensions and colors used by Mondrian in his Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow, with five instrumental layers echoing the five colors in the painting.

Minimalism

Taking a cue from the Philip Glass Ensemble and Steve Reich and Musicians, Andriessen created his own ensembles: the Orkest De Volharding (“Perseverance Orchestra”) in 1972, then Hoketus, which existed from 1975 to 1986. With these groups, his aim was to guard against the misunderstandings and misinterpretations he felt would inevitably occur if independent groups performed his works. In 1972, he composed an eponymous piece for the Orkest De Volharding. Built of modules, the piece offers its interpreters the option to choose different paths, much like Pierre Boulez’s Éclat (1964-1965) and Terry Riley’s In C (1964). De Volharding is based on a drone played by an electric piano, on which several motifs are deployed successively by adding or removing notes. The modules can be repeated from six to two hundred times. This formal freedom leaves room for indeterminacy.

Although Andriessen took inspiration from the compositional processes of American repetitive composers, he sought to go beyond them by injecting repetition with a political message. Whereas in response to audiences’ reticence to attend performances in traditional concert venues the American minimalists in the early 1970s readily frequented New York lofts and art galleries, the Orkest De Volharding played in factories, schools, and political gatherings.

In his instrumentation, Andriessen borrowed saxophone and drums from jazz; electric keyboards, electric guitar, and bass from rock; and the instruments used in traditional orchestras, amplified to rival the former in sound volume. Drums and electric bass guitar, in particular, occupy an important place in his work, providing a vigorous rhythmic base inspired by be-bop (Facing Death, 1990), boogie-woogie (On Jimmy Yancey, 1983), big bands (De Stijl), and Afro-American funk. Andriessen used the synthesizer as an instrument in its own right, rather than as a mere tool for electronic manipulation. When he used voice, he privileged “straight” voices inspired by jazz or even pop, avoiding vibrato and operatic vocal styles. Pulling away from the symphonic orchestra, he sought out a new orchestral form that he called a “terrifying twenty-first century orchestra.”14 Summarizing Andriessen’s aesthetic, John Adams said: “Andriessen took two quintessentially American languages, be-bop and minimalism, filtered them through the refracting rhythmic techniques of Stravinsky and produced a genuinely original sound.”15 Whenever Andriessen borrowed from commercial music, he would create a “spiritualized” version, to critique capitalist modes of production and consumption.

In the Dutch counterculture of the mid-1960s, and notably the Provo anarchist movement involving political-artistic pacificism, Andriessen endeavored, like other members of the Hague School, to renew orchestral music and compositional methods by making them politically combative. He adopted a minimalist style and gravitated toward unisons, influenced by Diderik Wagenaar’s Kaleidofonen I (1969). This influence can be heard notably in Melodie (1972-1974) for recorder and piano, De Staat, and Volkslied (1971), in which notes from the Dutch national anthem are progressively transformed into those of The Internationale. The compositional act and the ways the works would be interpreted were, for Andriessen, inextricable from their sociopolitical context, even if music’s abstractedness might mute its message for many listeners. As he said, “there is no such thing as a fascist dominant seventh.”16 Social metaphors can nonetheless be represented in music. In the very structure of Workers Union (1975) there is an attempt by dissident workers to escape from the rhythm imposed by the work-machine, by trying to establish their own motifs and tempi, before joining (or being joined by) the rhythm of the piece. This work, “is to be dissonant and chromatic: hard to play and rough to listen to, as hard and rough as physical labor is for workers,”17 writes the music historian Maja Trochimczyk. In this respect, the repetition in Andriessen’s work must be understood to reflect a society whose system of production is based on repetitive and alienating work.18

If Riley’s music inspired Andriessen’s compositions for the Orkest De Volharding, it can also be considered a source for the birth of the Hoketus ensemble. The ensemble came into being through Andriessen’s minimalism class at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, in which the practical work for the course consisted in performing Riley’s In C. The eponymous work Hoketus (1976), born out of these sessions, uses a reductionist approach and borrows the hocket technique used in fourteenth-century Ars nova music. The piece bears the echo of American minimalism as heavy chords are played in repeated rhythmic patterns, but it is also chromatic, in contrast to the normally tonal or modal minimalist writing. Hoketus can be heard as a duel between two identical instrument groups comprised of pan flutes, electric pianos, pianos, bass guitars, and congas, each placed at the extremities of the stage. The groups alternate chords that are almost identical. According to Andriessen’s instructions, individual measures or groups of measures can be repeated as many times as the performers wish. The piece’s repetition is vigorously asserted, and its chromaticism is quite different from the brilliant tonal harmony of Reich and Philip Glass from the same period. The hocket creates ambiguity between the whole — the unfolding of the work — and that of its parts — repeated in alternation by the two groups of players. Playing on indiscernibility, Hoketus draws attention to the subtle differences that become woven into the repetition.

Throughout Andriessen’s work, in fact, repetition creates unpredictable timbral and melodic effects. Like the “psychoacoustic byproducts” that emerge in Reich’s “gradual processes,”19 a shadow melody not played by any particular instrument emerges in the ballet Dubbelspoor (1984, 1994) and in the middle of De Tijd (1980-1981) for female choir and large orchestra. Pure minimalist techniques are not found in Andriessen’s music. He blends minimalism with other techniques20 — as in Orpheus (1977), an avowed homage to Reich and Glass, which applies minimalist processes to structures derived from jazz and rock and, in passing, quotes the title song from the television series Kojak.

Andriessen also put minimalist techniques to use in narrative and renewed forms of opera. The repetitive rigor of the pieces of the 1970s was followed by large-scale narrative works over the following three decades. Die Materie, Andriessen’s first opera, composed between 1985 and 1989 and directed by Robert Wilson in 1989 and, more recently, by Heiner Goebbels in 2014, was described by Goebbels as an “opera of ideas which leaves you time to think about mind and matter, about this dialectic.”21 It is modeled more on Bertolt Brecht and the experimental theater of the 1960s and 1970s than on the great operatic tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.22 Andriessen also helped create a new form of film opera through his collaborations with Peter Greenaway on M is for Man, Music, Mozart (1991), Rosa: The Death of a Composer, and Writing to Vermeer. These operas are characterized by their use of montage and their integration of both scholarly and popular music, as in the references to Hollywood film music in Rosa and Latin popular music in M is for Man, Music, Mozart. Influenced by surrealism, Andriessen and Greenaway sought to deconstruct the linearity of the narrative in favor of assemblage, juxtaposition, and distancing.

Some of the works from the 1980s explored the metaphysics of musical parameters: De Tijd, inspired by St. Augustine’s Confessions, is a musical reflection on different qualities of time. “Terrifying columns” of chords23 run across the vocal cantus firmus, before entering the “vertical time”24 of stasis. In De Snelheid (1982-1983), composed for the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the artistic directorship of John Adams, Andriessen explored velocity expressed in texture, using progressive rhythmic subdivisions to create the effects of acceleration.

****

Andriessen’s works have become an integral part of the repertoire performed by groups associated with the minimalist aesthetic and the American avant-garde. He composed specifically for some of them — for example, Facing Death (1990) for the Kronos Quartet, Zilver (1994) for the California EAR Unit, Hout (1991) for the LOOS Ensemble, and Life (2009) for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and set to four films by Marijke van Warmerdam.

With his final opera, La Commedia (2004-2008), inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and set to a film by Hal Hartley, Andriessen showed his full compositional palette, evoking Stravinsky, American minimalism, and jazz, proposing a journey that goes, in the words of Alex Ross, “from Gregorian chant to what might be called Satanic Broadway.”25

Translated from French by Jessica L. Hackett


1. Andriessen even co-authored an important book on Stravinsky: Louis ANDRIESSEN and Elmer SCHÖNBERGER (trans. Jeff HAMBURG), The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky, Amsterdam, Amsterdam Academic Archive, 2006. 
2. On this topic, see Johan GIRARD, Répétitions: L’esthétique musicale de Terry Riley, Steve Reich et Philip Glass, Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2010. 
3. Steve REICH, quoted by Robert K. SCHWARZ, Minimalists, London, Phaidon Press, 1996, pp. 56-57. 
4. His father, Hendrik, his brother Jurriaan, and his sister, Caecilia, were also composers. 
5. ANDRIESSEN and SCHÖNBERGER, The Apollonian Clockwork, p. 100. 
6. Igor STRAVINSKY, Chroniques de ma vie, Paris, Denoël, 1962, p. 63. 
7. Renske KONING and Kasper JANSEN, “Muziek gaat nergens over, muziek is alleen muziek,” NRC Handelsblad, 19 May 1981, pp. 13-15, quoted in Robert ADLINGTON, Louis Andriessen: De Staat, Aldershot and Burlington, Ashgate, 2004, p. 55. 
8. Andriessen invoked embedded scale and similitude more than embodiment. On the possibility of a formal similitude between musical forms and the “forms” of feelings, see Susan K. LANGER, Philosophy in a New Key, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1942. 
9. ANDRIESSEN, quoted by Maja TROCHIMCZYK, The Music of Louis Andriessen, London, Routledge, 2003, p. 137. 
10. ANDRIESSEN, quoted by ADLINGTON, Louis Andriessen, p. 48. 
11. Paul GRIMSTAD, “Notes on Louis Andriessen, Stravinsky and the Apollonian Clockwork,” 2015. 
12. See ANDRIESSEN and SCHÖNBERGER, The Apollonian Clockwork, “Chapter 3: On Montage Technique.” 
13. Boris de SCHLŒZER, Introduction à J.-S. Bach: Essai d’esthétique musicale, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009. 
14. ANDRIESSEN, quoted by GRIMSTAD, “Notes on Louis Andriessen, Stravinsky and the Apollonian Clockwork.” 
15. Quoted by Yayoi Uno EVERETT, The Music of Louis Andriessen, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 2. 
16. ANDRIESSEN, quoted by TROCHIMCZYK, The Music of Louis Andriessen, p. 50. 
17. Ibid., p. 98. 
18. To use an idea from Theodor Adorno, the repetition must be understood through its “sedimented” contents. 
19. See Steve REICH, “Music as a Gradual Process,” Writings on Music 1965-2000, New York, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 34-36. 
20. As quoted by TROCHIMCZYK, The Music of Louis Andriessen, p. 145. 
21. Filmed interview of Heiner GOEBBELS for the Ruhrtriennale 2014. 
22. Filmed interview of Louis ANDRIESSEN for the Ruhrtriennale 2014. 
23. ANDRIESSEN, quoted by EVERETT, The Music of Louis Andriessen, p. 102. 
24. See Jonathan D. KRAMER, The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies, New York and London, Schirmer Books, 1988. 
25. Alex ROSS, “Andriessen at Carnegie Hall,” The New Yorker, 3 May 2010. Article available on the blog The Rest Is Noise

© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2015

Discographie sélective

  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, « The Only One », Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen : direction, 1 CD Nonesuch, 2021, 075597917338.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Theatre Of The World, A Grotesque Stagework In 9 Scenes, Los Angeles Philharmonic, dans « Theatre Of The World », 2 CD Nonesuch, 2017, 7559-79361-8.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Melodie, dans « Ghost », 1 CD Bôłt, 2017, BR 1039.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, The Starting Plank, dans « Solos For Virtuosi », 1 CD Attacca, 2014, ATT 2014141.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, « La Commedia », 2 CD et 1 DVD Nonesuch, 2014, 7559-79590-0.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Anaïs Nin, Katrien Baerts, Hubert Claessens, James Dugan, Leopold Benedict, ensembles Asko/Schönberg, direction : Reinbert de Leeuw, 1 cd Attacca, 2011, 126.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, « Garden of Eros. Complete works for String Quartet », Facing Death ; …miserere…  ; Garden of Eros ; Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude in b minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier BWV 869 arranged for string quartet, Schoenberg Quartet : Janneke van der Meer, Wim de Jong : violons, Henk Guittart : alto, viola de Hoog : violoncelle, cd Attaca 29121.
  •  Rondo Barbaro ; Prospettive e Retrospettive ; Registers ; Trois Pièces ; Seven Pieces from “The Memory of Roses” ; Feli-citazione ; Base ; Trepidus ; Souvenirs d’enfance ; Image de Moreau ; Nuit d’été, Ralph van Raat : piano, 1 cd Attaca 2598-99.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Racconto dall’Inferno, dans« Vom himmel zur hölle », avec des pièces de Martin Smolka et Mauricio Kagel, Cristina Zavalloni, musikFabrik, direction : Reinbert de Leeuw, 1 cd Wergo, WDR, musikFabrik Edition, 2010, CD03.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, La Passione ; Bells from Harlem ; Letter from Cathy ; Passeggiata in tram in America e ritorno, Cristina Zavalloni, Monica Germino, Boston Modern Orchestra, direction : Gil Rose,1 cd BMOP/sound, 2009.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Workers Union, Yesaroun’ Duo, 1 cd GM Recordings, 2009.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, De Staat, Nederlands Blazers Ensemble, 1 cd NBE Live, 2008.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Writing to Vermeer, Susan Narucki, Susan Bickley, Barbara Hannigan, ensembles Asko et Schönberg, direction : Reinbert de Leeuw, 2 cds Nonesuch, 2006, 7559798872.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Hoketus, The California EAR Unit : Vicki Ray, Dorothy Stone, Amy Knoles, Erica Duke-Kirkpatrick, avec des œuvres d’Elliott Carter, Arthur Jarvinen, Michael Torke, Rand Steiger et Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1 cd New Albion, 2002.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, De Snelheid, Asko Ensemble, direction : Oliver Knussen, avec des œuvres de John Adams, 1 cd BBC Music Magazine, 2002, BBC MM222.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Rosa, Lyndon Terracini, Miranda Van Kralingen, Marie Angel, Christopher Gillett, Roger Smeets, Phyllis Blanford/Schoenberg Ensemble, Asko Ensemble, Reinbert de Leeuw, cd Nonesuch, 2000, 7559 79559-2.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, On Jimmy Yancey ; Dat Gebeurt In Vietnam, dans « Orkest de Volharding 1972-1992 » avec des œuvres de Misha Mengelberg, Amílcar Vasques Dias, Willem Van Manen, Klas Torstensson, Cees Van Zeeland et Guus Janssen, 1 cd NM Classics, 1999, 92021 Volharding 008.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Trepidus, Ivo Janssen : piano, avec des œuvres de Theo Loevendie, Ton de Leeuw, Martijn Padding, 1 cd Nm Classics, 1999, NM92028.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Zilver ; Disco ; Overture to Orpheus ; Worker’s Union, The California EAR Unit : Vicki Ray, Dorothy Stone, Amy Knoles, Erica Duke-Kirkpatrick, 1 cd New Albion, 1997.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, De Materie, Netherlands Chamber Choir, Schoenberg Ensemble, Asko Ensemble, cd Nonesuch, 1996, 7559 79367-2.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, « Nocturnen » : Nocturnen ; Ittrospezione III (Concept II) ; Anachronie I ; Contra Tempus ; Anachronie II, Williams et Netherlands Ballet Orchestra, 1 cd Donemus Records, 1996. 
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, De Tijd, Schönberg Ensemble, Percussion Group The Hague, Netherlands Chamber Choir, direction : Reinbert de Leeuw, 1 cd Elektra, Nonesuch Classique, 1995.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, De Stijl ; M is for Man, Music, Mozart, Astrid Seriese, Orkest De Volharding, 1 cd  Elektra Nonesuch, 1994.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, De Stijl ; Trepidus ; Dances, Kaalslag Orchestra, direction : Reinbert De Leeuw (1), Gerard Bouwhuis : piano (2), Claron McFadden : soprano, Radio Chamber Orchestra, direction : Gunther Schuller (3), 1 cd Attacca – Babel, 1993, 9375.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN,** «**The Memory Of Roses » : Joli Commentaire ; Canzone 3. Utinam ; Vergeet Mij Niet ; Le Voile Du Bonheur ; Wals ; Thanh Hoa ; Laat Toch Vrij Die Straat ; Toespraak, Door Martin Spanjaard ; Un Beau Baiser ; Ende ; La Voce ; Commentaar ; Menuet Voor Marianne ; Berceuse Voor Annie Van Os ; Y Despues ; Dubbelspoor ; Romance Voor Caecilia ; Lied ; …Not Being Sundered ; Chorale ; Deuxième Chorale ; The Memory Of Roses ; Improvisatie,  Werner Herbers, Frances-Marie Uitti : violoncelles, Koor Nieuwe Muziek, direction : Huub Kerstens, Ann LaBerge, Walter Van Hauwe : flûtes, Stanley Hoogland : clavecin, Caecilia Andriessen, Louis Andriessen, Margriet De Moor, Reinbert De Leeuw, Ronald Brautigam, Stanley Hoogland, Tomoko Mukaiyama, Werner Herbers : pianos, Claron McFadden : soprano, Toon De Leeuw : trombone, Vera Beths : violon, Astrid Serierse, Frances-Marie Uitti, Freek De Jonge, Greetje Bijma, Toon De Leeuw, Vera Beths : voix, 1 cd  VPRO Eigenwijs, 1993, EW 9304.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Mausoleum ;Hoketus, Asko Ensemble, Schönberg Ensemble, direction : Reinbert de Leeuw (1), Ensemble Hoketus (2), 1 cd Composers Voice, 1992, CV20.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Melodie ; Symfonie Voor Losse Snaren, Louis Andriessen : piano, Frans Brüggen (1), Caecilia Consort, direction : Ed Spanjaard, 1 cd  Attacca ‎– Babel, 1992, 9267-6.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, De Staat, Schonberg Ensemble, direction : Reinbert de Leeuw, 1 cd Nonesuch, 1991.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Études a la memoire de Claude Debussy ; Étude pour les timbres, dans « Fingerprints. Dutch Music for Piano », Ralph van Raat : piano, avec des œuvres de Theo Loevendie, Guus Janssen, Hans van Sweeden, Tristan Keuris, Jos Kunst et Peter van Onna, 1 cd NM Classics, MCCM92113.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Series, Cees van Zeeland et Gerard Bouwhuis : piano, avec des œuvres de Huib Emmer et Klas Torstensson, 1 cd NM Classics, NM92074.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Image de Moreau dans « Toccata! », Ivo Janssen : piano, avec des œuvres de Michiel Borstlap, Michiel Braam, Thijs Dercksen, Gijs van Dijk, Vanessa Lann, Alan Laurillard, Christina Viola Oorebeek, Leo Samama, Johann Sebastian Bach, 1 cd NM Classics NM98015.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, On Jimmy Yancey, dans « Dutch masters of the 20th Century », avec des œuvres de Hendrik Andriessen, Rudolf Escher, Peter Schat, Jan Rokus van Roosendael, Theo Loevendie, Ton de Leeuw, 1 cd NM Classics NM92093.

CD-rom

  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Passion: The Music of Louis Andriessen, audio, vidéo et textes, cd-rom Boosey & Hawkes, 2002.

Bibliographie

  • Robert ADLINGTON, Louis Andriessen. De Staat, Ashgate Publishing, coll. « Landmarks in music since 1950 », 2004.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, Elmer SCHÖNBERGER, The Apollonina Clockwork. On Stravinsky, Amsterdam Academic Archive, Amsterdam University Press, 2006.
  • Louis ANDRIESSEN, The art of stealing time, édité par Mirjam Zegers, traduit en anglais par Clare Yates, éd. Arc Music, 2002
  • Jonathan CROSS, The Stravinsky Legacy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  • Rose DODD, Writing to Louis Andriessen. Commentaries on life in music, Eindhoven, Lecturis, 2019.
  • Yayoi Uno EVERETT, The music of Louis Andriessen, Cambridge, coll. « Music of the Twentieth Century », 2006.
  • Agnes van der HORST, De Andriessens. Een Kleurrijke familie van musikanten en kunstenaars [De Andriessens. A colorful family of musicians and artists].
  • Sorana MĂNĂILESCU, « Time and religious feeling in Postmodernism: Louis Andriessen », Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov – Special Issue, Series VIII: Performing Arts, vol. 11 (60) n° 2, 2018.
  • Maja TROCHIMCZYK, The music of Louis Andriessen, éd. Routlege, New York, 2002.

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