Peter-Jan Wagemans was born in 1952 and studied organ, music theory and composition at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, composition with Jan van Vlijmen; for a time he worked in the electronic studio in The Hague and with Klaus Huber in Freiburg. His music has been performed at festivals in Donaueschingen, Warsaw, Venice and Royan and by leading Dutch orchestras and ensembles, among them the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly, the Schönberg Ensemble and the Netherlands Chamber Choir. Wagemans teaches composition and music theory at the Rotterdam Conservatory and is artistic director and programme planner of the North Holland Philharmonic Orchestra in Haarlem and the Doelen Ensemble in Rotterdam. His most important works include the Symphony No. 6 “Panthalassa” (1994–95) for symphonic wind band, the piano cycle “Het Landschap” (1989) and the Symphony No. 7 (1998–99).
In his text “A declaration” in the booklet, Wagemans sets out his position. He wants to write music whose musical and emotional core can be felt by listeners capable of understanding Mahler’s Sixth Symphony; when he first wrote this, it was a declaration of war on the modernist current. He is no opponent of Schönberg or Stockhausen, he says, he simply has nothing to add to them. For him music is first of all an art of time, in which the narrative element and the emotional value of sound are essential. As a “renewing traditionalist” he has chosen Europe as his source: he draws his means from tradition, restores and polishes, and even where his music sounds like spontaneous improvisation, everything is calculated “down to the last millimetre”.
The Strijkkwartet of 1997/98 has five movements instead of the customary four, which, as Anthony Fiumara writes in the booklet, points to a classicist dramatic tradition: Wagemans tells a story in five acts, the first of which bears the character marking “raccontando”. In Raccontando the voices enter in pairs, as in a Renaissance madrigal, and conduct short fugato dialogues; Organum refers to the counterpoint of the Notre-Dame school, with parallel upper voices above the “tenor” in the cello. The two following, aphoristically short movements bring the motion to a standstill; at their ends Wagemans wrote the mottos “give me the wings of faith to rise” and “fiery the angels fell – Roy Batty”, words of the android in the film “Blade Runner” (1982). The first four movements become ever more minimal and fleeting, a gradual acceleration that explodes in the mighty finale Labyrinth and gives the quartet an almost orchestral weight.
The title of Ewig (1993) for piano and percussion refers to the last sung word of Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde”. Wagemans describes the piece as a collection of windblown sounds, as in an almost illegibly faded score, grouped around a slow Gregorian melody, often played by a percussion instrument in unison with the piano, which produces strange mixed sounds and interferences; the low, muffled bells are formed by an empty oil drum and the two lowest, prepared strings of the piano. Frage, worauf hoffen (1999) for two violoncellos takes up a “pessimistic sentence” from B. A. Zimmermann’s “Requiem für einen jungen Dichter”. With a very simple gesture, the question is posed again and again in different ways, violently, almost inaudibly softly, fearfully, hysterically or expectantly; in the end the two cellos slowly work their way up “into the eternally blue air” in circling, broken triads.
The DoelenKwartet, with Frank de Groot, Laurens van Vliet, Karin Dolman and Hans Woudenberg, grew out of the Doelen Ensemble, for which Wagemans plans the programmes, and is based at the De Doelen concert hall in Rotterdam. Ewig is played by Paul Hermsen (piano) and Richard Jansen (percussion), principal percussionist of the North Holland Philharmonic Orchestra. Frage, worauf hoffen is played by the cellist Monique Bartels, to whom Wagemans has dedicated works, together with her pupil Monique Heidema. The recordings were made in June, July and September 2000 in the Dorpskerk in Rhoon.