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drplaceboIt's Forgotten Masterpiece Friday!
It is a little striking that, despite being right in the heartland of European classical music, sandwiched between France and Germany, despite having a proud tradition in other art forms, and despite being home to world-class musical performers, the Netherlands has produced few composers with worldwide recognition. To a large extent, "recognition" may be the key word here: before 1900, composers who were recognized tended to be from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, France, and Russia, with only a handful of exceptions.
Daniel de Lange (1841-1918) is a case in point. He was well known as a pedagogue and as a musicologist. He founded the Amsterdam Conservatory in 1884, was largely responsible for reviving Dutch and Belgian Renaissance music that had gathered dust for centuries, and was one of the first Europeans to write extensively on Indonesian gamelan music. While he was not a prolific composer, some of his surviving works are arguably the first great Dutch masterpieces since the Renaissance.
De Lange was born in Rotterdam in a musical family: his father was a church organist, his brother Samuel was an internationally known piano virtuoso, and Daniel himself toured extensively as a cellist. In 1864, he moved to Paris, where he worked mainly as a piano and cello teacher. He was only in Paris for a short time, as he was forced to return to the Netherlands in 1870 at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Back in the Netherlands, he was a successful choral conductor, but found his time increasingly taken up by administrative work after he founded a whole string of music organizations: first a music school in Zaandam, then the Dutch Association of Music History in 1881, and finally the Amsterdam Conservatory. Late in his life, he became immersed in the Theosophy movement and relocated to the Theosophical Society's headquarters in San Diego, California, where he was put in charge of the Isis Conservatory of Music. Thus, his compositional output slowed down dramatically after 1870, and the majority of his compositions date from his few years in Paris. These include two symphonies, an opera, a Requiem, and a cello concerto, though his second symphony and his opera have been lost to posterity.
This is Daniel de Lange's first (and only surviving) symphony, composed around 1865 in Paris and dedicated to his friend Jules Massenet. It is uncertain whether the symphony was ever performed during the composer's lifetime; it was not recorded until 2006.
It is a little striking that, despite being right in the heartland of European classical music, sandwiched between France and Germany, despite having a proud tradition in other art forms, and despite being home to world-class musical performers, the Netherlands has produced few composers with worldwide recognition. To a large extent, "recognition" may be the key word here: before 1900, composers who were recognized tended to be from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, France, and Russia, with only a handful of exceptions.
Daniel de Lange (1841-1918) is a case in point. He was well known as a pedagogue and as a musicologist. He founded the Amsterdam Conservatory in 1884, was largely responsible for reviving Dutch and Belgian Renaissance music that had gathered dust for centuries, and was one of the first Europeans to write extensively on Indonesian gamelan music. While he was not a prolific composer, some of his surviving works are arguably the first great Dutch masterpieces since the Renaissance.
De Lange was born in Rotterdam in a musical family: his father was a church organist, his brother Samuel was an internationally known piano virtuoso, and Daniel himself toured extensively as a cellist. In 1864, he moved to Paris, where he worked mainly as a piano and cello teacher. He was only in Paris for a short time, as he was forced to return to the Netherlands in 1870 at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Back in the Netherlands, he was a successful choral conductor, but found his time increasingly taken up by administrative work after he founded a whole string of music organizations: first a music school in Zaandam, then the Dutch Association of Music History in 1881, and finally the Amsterdam Conservatory. Late in his life, he became immersed in the Theosophy movement and relocated to the Theosophical Society's headquarters in San Diego, California, where he was put in charge of the Isis Conservatory of Music. Thus, his compositional output slowed down dramatically after 1870, and the majority of his compositions date from his few years in Paris. These include two symphonies, an opera, a Requiem, and a cello concerto, though his second symphony and his opera have been lost to posterity.
This is Daniel de Lange's first (and only surviving) symphony, composed around 1865 in Paris and dedicated to his friend Jules Massenet. It is uncertain whether the symphony was ever performed during the composer's lifetime; it was not recorded until 2006.