During the Gaudeamus Festival this year, we will commemorate the 100th birth year of Ton de Leeuw, the influential Dutch composer and music educator, on two occasions. He was a pioneer in the 1950s and 1960s, with his interests lying in electronic and non-Western music. On opening night, the New European Ensemble and The Hague Vocal Ensemble, under the direction of Angeliki Ploka, will present a programme centering on De Leeuw’s concept of music as a ritual act.
Midare, written for the Japanese marimba player Michiko Takahashi, is a virtuosic exploration of the instrument. In Invocations, the relationship between text, sound, and meaning takes centre stage, featuring Latin texts, primarily derived from the Psalms, and Gregorian melodies. In this work, De Leeuw experiments with what he himself described as ‘expanded modality’: a cyclically structured soundscape, partly inspired by non-Western traditions such as raga, maqam, and pathet. In this music, sound appears not as mere form, but as the carrier of a deeper, coherent whole.
