Planctus super 'Jusques à quand' (Ps. 13) | Willem Wander van Nieuwkerk

2015d

Clarinet and string quartet

5'19

For the Bennewitz Quartet and Harry-Imre Dijkstra. Part of a projected Super Suite (working title), seven dance pieces over liturgical hymns.

This ‘planctus’, or mourning song, is based on a three bar bass ostinato, chromatically descending over nearly an octave – an extreme case of a ‘lamento bass’. The bass derives from the repeated motive b flat – a – c – b (German: h), the notorious ‘Bach motive’. Far from being Bach-like, my harmonic resolution of the bass has strong jazz characteristics, almost Ellingtonian. The melodic germ for the piece is taken from the first lines of King David’s lament in the 13th Psalm, on the melody given to it in in the Geneva Psalter – “Jusques à quand, ô Dieu des cieux, jusques à quand, loin de tes yeux, me laisses-tu dans ces alarmes?”. Over the obstinately lamenting bass, this melodic line receives a quasi-improvisatory, klezmer-like and blues-like treatment.

Super Suite: V – Planctus super ‘Jusques à guand’ (Ps. 13)

About me

Musical beauty and simplicity are my aim. My guiding principle is the classical European tradition. Folk music, church music and Early Music are the sources to which I return to seek new melodic beauty. I value musical craftsmanship and intuition highly. Musicians are my first audience. It is their virtuosic interplay, comic or dramatic, but always emotionally charged, that is the musical theater my music presents to the listener. The sounds I cherish most are those that through the musician’s hearts, breath and hands bear the mark of their personal interpretation.
Chamber music is, therefore, central to me – I have written for the Bennewitz Quartet and Harry-Imre Dijkstra, the Skampa Quartet, Rosanne Philippens, the Bartók Trio, the Utrecht String Quartet and many others.
My chamber music for recorders has a special place in my work and is played in large numbers by amateurs. The CD Kadanza is a fruit of decades of collaboration with the best professionals who were often also the best teachers.
For me, choral music is also a species of chamber music. It should challenge and offer musical satisfaction to those many amateur singers – that I am one of.

My music features individual performers – to convey a thought, an emotion, and a story to the audience in a virtuoso and intense fashion.

In rehearsal and performance, the performers and I learn a lot from each other. Sometimes their improvisations are included in the musical story. Scores will always be adapted to their needs.

The interplay between performer and composer is absolutely essential in newly written music. As is the interplay between sponsor and composer.

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Besides composing, I lecture in New Music at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, with a focus on chamber music and music aesthetics. Some of the writing and thinking that I do there can be found in the ‘text’ section.