Donemus Webshop — Drieman, Gerard

Gerard Drieman grew up in an initially well-placed Amsterdam middle class family. He learned to play the piano at an early age and would have liked to attend the local conservatory. However, severe asthma prevented him from doing so. Becoming a pianist or – as he especially wanted – a conductor, was physically impossible for him. At any moment, completely unexpectedly, he could have had an asthma attack. Instead, he took a job buying and selling classical gramophone records in a musical shop in the Van Baerlestraat, Amsterdam, and later became an accountant.
At a young age, Drieman composed two symphonies for large orchestra and a chamber symphony. In the late 1930s he met Hans Erich Apostel, a student of Schoenberg and Berg. In the following years, he corresponded with Apostel about composition. The broadly atonal style of Drieman's later works is therefore undeniably related to the Second Viennese School.
During the Second World War German occupation, Drieman feared being arrested and deprived of his vital asthma medicine. He stayed indoors as much as possible and composed alongside his work. Due to lack of response, he stopped composing in the early fifties. His compositions were never performed publicly during his lifetime. In later years, Drieman studied psychology at the University of Amsterdam, graduating cum laude in 1965.
The manuscript of Drieman’s Sonatine for Piano (1950) is kept in the archive of Hans Erich Apostel in the Musiksammlung of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. Ronald Brautigam characterized this sonatina as 'extremely modern'. The other manuscripts are kept in the Netherlands Music Institute in The Hague.