Super Suite | Willem Wander van Nieuwkerk

2016g

Suite in seven parts for clarinet and string quartet

35'

For the Bennewitz Quartet and Harry-Imre Dijkstra

Super ‘Victimae’

Super ‘Mitten wir im Leben sind’

Super ‘Stella’

Super ‘Spiritus’

Planctus super ‘Jusques à quand’ (Ps. 13)’

Super ‘Dies’

Super ‘Pange, lingua’

The “Super Suite” materialized very gradually between February, 2015 and September, 2016. The [Bennewitz Quartet](http://www.bennewitzquartet.com) and Harry-Imre Dijkstra asked for a piece consisting of seven short movements that, apart from their own fixed order, might also be programmed separately or in other combinations. I decided to match that wonderful number 7 with the musical starting point of chants from the great Western religious traditions. Each piece is based on, or fantasized ‘over’ (hence ‘super’) an early religious and liturgical melody: a Gregorian hymn or its Protestant counterpart (such as especially Luther so marvelously wrought) or an original early Protestant liturgical song.
My aim was no other than to learn how to make new, instrumental beauty spring from these early vocal gems, whose calm, well-worn beauty history has subsequently enriched with even more meanings.
In view of their liturgical provenance and religious texts, it is tempting to envision such melodies as being adorned with serene aureoles and the resonances of churches and cathedrals.
Yet their spirituality, like their maker’s worlds, also consisted and still also consists of struggle, anger, despair and awe, as much as of love, longing and desire. I am not sure humor would have been be part of it.Dancing probably would not, and yet I have styled each movement of this ‘suite’ (which used to be, after all, a sequence of dances) into particular ‘dance patterns’ that range from passacaglia to klezmer, in order to keep the spiritual starting point intimately welded with the vagaries of everyday life.
Should you know any of the original chants (being a good Catholic or Protestant, or simply a music lover): do not flinch. With my fingertips lovingly caressing the lines of these melodies, I very freely conjectured about their diverse relationships and about what lies in the depths between the highly antithetical images they conjured up in my mind.

The recording below was made at a private world première, sponsored by music lovers Richard van Remmen and Els van Liebergen, Deventer september 2016.

Recording by Laurens Beijer.

About me

Musical beauty and simplicity are my aim. My guiding principle is the classical European tradition. Folk music, church music and Early Music are the sources to which I return to seek new melodic beauty. I value musical craftsmanship and intuition highly. Musicians are my first audience. It is their virtuosic interplay, comic or dramatic, but always emotionally charged, that is the musical theater my music presents to the listener. The sounds I cherish most are those that through the musician’s hearts, breath and hands bear the mark of their personal interpretation.
Chamber music is, therefore, central to me – I have written for the Bennewitz Quartet and Harry-Imre Dijkstra, the Skampa Quartet, Rosanne Philippens, the Bartók Trio, the Utrecht String Quartet and many others.
My chamber music for recorders has a special place in my work and is played in large numbers by amateurs. The CD Kadanza is a fruit of decades of collaboration with the best professionals who were often also the best teachers.
For me, choral music is also a species of chamber music. It should challenge and offer musical satisfaction to those many amateur singers – that I am one of.

My music features individual performers – to convey a thought, an emotion, and a story to the audience in a virtuoso and intense fashion.

In rehearsal and performance, the performers and I learn a lot from each other. Sometimes their improvisations are included in the musical story. Scores will always be adapted to their needs.

The interplay between performer and composer is absolutely essential in newly written music. As is the interplay between sponsor and composer.

Would you like me to rehearse with you or do you want to know more about a piece?

Do you want me to write a piece for a particular line-up or event?

Please let me know and I will contact you.

Besides composing, I lecture in New Music at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, with a focus on chamber music and music aesthetics. Some of the writing and thinking that I do there can be found in the ‘text’ section.