related works

Musica per organo : 1968/69 / Kees van Baaren

Genre: Chamber music
Subgenre: Organ
Scoring: org

Scena : for mixed choir and orchestra / Geert van Keulen

Genre: Vocal music
Subgenre: Mixed choir and orchestra
Scoring: GK4 3344 2sax 4331 5perc hp str

Mysteria : voor sopraan, bariton, gemengd koor, piano en orkest, 1977 / Otto Deden

Genre: Vocal music
Subgenre: Mixed choir and orchestra
Scoring: sopr bar GK4 2020 0320 timp 3perc pf str

Amor vincit : koorwerk in 2 gedeelten, voorjaar 1952 / Johannes Röntgen

Genre: Vocal music
Subgenre: Mixed choir and orchestra
Scoring: bar GK4 pf/org str

composition

The hollow men : voor gemengd koor en orkest / Kees van Baaren; tekst: T.S. Eliot

Author(s):
Eliot, T.S. (Text writer/Librettist)
Baaren, Kees van (Composer)
Contains:
Moderato
Lento
Adagio
Allegro molto
Tempo di marcia
Description:
Program note (English): Genuine poetry can communicate before it's understood.
It is very well possible to transform this statement by T.S. Eliot to: Genuine poetry can be set to music before it's understood.
The number of restrictions applying to the original needs no further extension. In the modified form the aphorism means that certain, purely poetic elements of a poem - consonance, rhythm and the affective weight of the word - on the basis that it is stipulated with purely musical elements of a composition and its common appeal to conscious groups which lie outside the range of the reason, in every way is a sufficient creative incentive for the composer. To 'understand' in the traditional sense of the word, means to transform the poem's contents to terms and by means of these terms, determine the poet's 'intentions', and therefore composition is by no means done in advance. (One does not take it in spite, when we, although this wanders from the point, notice that such understanding has no need to effect composing...)
We have rather broadly dwelled on a composer's conceivable attitude to the poetry with the sole aim of showing that which Eliot states regarding the poetic contact, preceding the understanding to yet a stronger degree in the combined poetic-musical contact.
The cultural and critical background of the poem's context is not of the essence as the consequences derived and developed when listening to the The Hollow Men.
The music consists of six parts: a short instrumental preludium and five poems composed separately from each other. The material motivation can be summarised in a range of six tones, which (with an exact repetition of three tones higher) form a series, containing all twelve tones of the chromatic scale. The working method shows, however no important points of similarity with Arnold Schönberg's 12-tone technique. - KEES VAN BAAREN