Louis Andriessen - Writing to Vermeer

This is my second post of a work by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. Why two in a row? Well, he’s quite new to me, so the man fascinates me at the moment. How strange one tends to ignore one’s own countrymen’s contributions to modern music! – or at least, I do.

This opera was written in collaboration with film director Peter Greenaway, who had created a tableaux vivant for the opening of the ’96 Vermeer exhibition in The Hague: women writing letters to the painter (I saw the exhibition, but missed the tableaux). Greenaway provided Andriessen with the libretto.

Synopsis (by Peter Greenaway)

“Women and the letters they write are the subject of this new opera, Writing to Vermeer. Vermeer has left his household of women and children in Delft to spend fourteen days in The Hague. They write to him, six letters from his wife, Catharina Bolnes, six letters from his mother-in-law, Maria Thins, and six letters from his model Saskia de Vries. They write of domestic arrangements, the activities of Vermeer’s children, marriage plans, domestic accidents, but most of all they write to Vermeer to tell him to hurry back home. They miss him, they miss his company, they miss his presence and his affection.

Whilst Vermeer is absent, the women defend their household against the potential erosion of five liquids: ink, from an excess of writing; varnish, which threatens the life of a child; milk, which endlessly pours from the milkmaid’s jug; blood, which demonstrates the violence of political assassination; and, finally, water, which ultimately sweeps them, their household, their children, and the stage, away.”

I would add, the fictional date of the women writing their letters is 1672, our historic “Year of Disasters”, as we Dutchmen were taught as early as primary school…French King Louis XIV, the English and two German bishropies declared war on the young Dutch republic, important politicians were assassinated, and in order to stop the enemies from progressing, large parts of our country were deliberately inundated.
Ecchoes of these events are to be found in this composition; so, there’s an antithesis between the cozy, domestic chit-chat of the women’s, and the external violence of War.

Performers:

Schönberg Ensemble – Reinbert de Leeuw
Asko Ensemble “’
De Nederlandse Opera
Children’s choir “De Kickers”