Oeuvre platform brings Louis Andriessen into the future

Platform to connect archives and collections

Louis Andriessen composed for small and large ensembles, for concert halls and theater, in collaboration with, among others, Robert Wilson, Beppie Blankert, Bianca van Dillen, Peter Greenaway, and Hal Hartley. His rich oeuvre is connected to various disciplines within the performing arts. Developing a platform for Louis Andriessen serves as an important case for DEN and Podiumkunst.net. This project will connect digital materials from performing arts archives and make them accessible to different user groups. Moreover, this process provides knowledge, tools, and insights to unlock archives of other composers and ensembles. This knowledge and materials can then be made available to musicians, students, and other creators.

Which collections are we talking about?

Boosey & Hawkes, a leading publisher of classical music, holds the rights to publish the sheet music for most of Louis Andriessen's compositions. The original manuscripts were transferred in 2007 to the Paul Sacher Foundation (opens in new tab) in Basel. This international institute for 20th and 21st-century music also houses the archives of Stravinsky and Bartók. Jacqueline Oskamp, who is currently working on a biography of Andriessen—and has already published several books on music archives and the history of music in the Netherlands—wrote an article (opens in new tab) about her visit to this institute.

In the Netherlands, there are, of course, also important collections related to his works. For instance, sheet music can be found at Stichting Omroep Muziek (SOM), interviews and concert recordings on radio and TV at the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision. At the Dutch National Opera & Ballet and the Holland Festival, several works and operas by Andriessen premiered.

Collaboration within a project team

DEN and Podiumkunst.net are closely involved in the initiative to keep Andriessen's work alive. They participate in the project team with the goal of developing a sustainable platform where, over time, more and more important resources can be brought together and accessed. The project team is also exploring presentation formats to engage different communities and present materials thematically, along storylines and timelines. Such a platform can thus become a lasting source of inspiration for new performances, reuse, reinterpretation, and new discoveries in or of Louis Andriessen's work.

Due to Andriessen's significant role as a composer and teacher and his contribution to the emergence of the internationally acclaimed Dutch ensemble culture, collaboration is also taking place with the digital platform New Music NOW (opens in new tab) and its initiator Nieuw Geneco. Nieuw Geneco (opens in new tab) is the New Society of Dutch Composers, a professional association recognized by Buma/Stemra, which now represents more than 330 composers in the Netherlands.

Approach of the process

Marjon van Schendel, as domain coordinator Music of Podiumkunst.net, and Jan-Jaap Kassies of SOM, are working on an inventory of resources and the development of a music metadata model. This allows them to uniformly describe various archival materials related to musical works and productions and establish connections between different collections.

Work has begun on compiling the complete list of Andriessen's works (the portfolio). This was easy to find: Andriessen wrote all his works by hand in a large ledger from the 1950s. Additionally, sources such as the Theater Encyclopedia and Stichting Omroep Muziek were important. To consult the portfolio, titles and years of all compositions are also needed, as well as the names and roles of those involved in the performances and recordings. This information forms relevant metadata, such as title, premiere dates, commissioners, performers, and artistic team.

For this process, Mirjam Zegers (former personal assistant of Louis Andriessen and coordinator of Curatorial Practices in Music at ArtEZ Conservatory in Zwolle) used the I in Archive model as a basis to elaborate not only the portfolio but also Andriessen's 'signature and lineage.'

Role of DEN in the process

DEN and Podiumkunst.net see this project around Louis Andriessen as a relevant pilot that contributes to a more generic approach for the performing arts. How can you access collections in one place and consult them for, for example, musicological research? How do you offer enticing opportunities to inspire and challenge new generations of musicians? Through a mix of thematically curating content and interactive arrangements, Andriessen's significance for Dutch music will also become clear to a younger audience.

DEN advises on this process and organizes, for example, an initial design sprint to create the setup for such a platform. The long-term goal is a future-proof, international initiative to which more collections, communities of musicians, and students connect over time. Together, they gather, share, and unlock new collections and individual materials, including performance history, recordings, and anecdotes.