Diderik Wagenaar

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Diderik Wagenaar is a sandy-haired Dutchman from Utrecht who has lived and worked all his adult life in The Hague. Born in 1946 to a musical family that includes among its number Johan (although not Bernard) Wagenaar, he began playing piano at the age of eight and by the time he was fourteen had set his sights on a musical vocation. As a teenager in the early 1960s he loved Renaissance music, Bach, Ravel, and Thelonious Monk; at the age of eighteen he began studying music theory with Jan van Dijk, Hein Kein and Rudolf Koumans and piano with Simon Admiraal at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. As a composer he is essentially self-taught.

It was during his student years in the mid-60s that Wagenaar began to develop as a composer. Although fascinated by the concerts given by Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna with the Hague Philharmonic, he admits to having "no real grip" at that time on the musical avant-garde, and began to look around for other starting-points for his own music. In addition to his fascination with jazz, an important encounter at that time was with the music of Charles Ives, which taught him the value of inclusivity. It also encouraged his tendency to attempt a synthesis between tonality and atonality, to connect previously disparate systems of musical thought. Today Wagenaar feels that the notion of a "music of inclusion" can be seen as an important aspect of the new Dutch music as a whole.

His music is closely linked with that of his friend Louis Andriessen and treats similar ideas in perhaps an even more rigorous manner. Though the ideas may be complex, they are always presented in a clear and straightforward manner. His other influences include Stravinsky, a key figure for the composers of the Hague school, but also importantly Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane.

His works include Praxis (1973) and Stadium (1981) for two pianos, La Volta (1989) for piano solo, Liederen (1976) for wind band, Tam Tam (1976) for the Hoketus ensemble, Metrum (1981-4, rev 1986) for large orchestra and obligato saxophone quartet, Festina Lente for brass ensemble, Tessitur (1990) for orchestra, Solenne (1992) for six percussionists, Cat Music (1994) for two violins, Trois poemes en prose (after Baudelaire, 1995) for soprano and orchestra and Galilei (1999) for orchestra and chorus. His latest commission is from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra for a cycle of songs.