Biography
Giel Vleggaar was born on January 9, 1974 in Amsterdam. He studied jazz arranging and composition with Jurre Haanstra at the Hilversum Conservatory and classical
composition with Daan Manneke and Theo Verbey at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. He has taken master
classes with George Crumb, among others.
Upon finishing his studies, Vleggaar won the NOG Encouragement Prize from the Netherlands Ballet Orchestra (Holland Symfonia) for his orchestral piece Fast Lane Woodpecker. A steady stream of commissions and performances have followed since, both in the Netherlands and abroad. He has written works for the Asko Ensemble, Orkest de Volharding, the Nieuw Ensemble, the Nederlands Strijkers Gilde, the Nederlands Vocaal Laboratorium, the Doelenkwartet and the Radio Kamer Filharmonie.
Music critic Anthony Fiumara wrote: “Giel Vleggaar’s music is characterized by its great accessibility and listenability. Vleggaar playfully intertwines the most disparate styles from various historical eras, all the while keeping his background in pop and jazz firmly on the forefront. In Appalachia, written in 2004 for the Nieuw Ensemble, bluegrass, bebop and avantgarde enter into an explosive marriage; in Dead as Disco, written in 2006 for the Radio Kamer Filharmonie, Vleggaar describes the slow decline of the disco genre in the light of 80’s electro-pop. His music resounds with lyricism and has an incessant, even obstinate rhythmic drive. What’s more, he writes just as easily for percussion duo or ensemble with electric guitar as he does for wind or symphony orchestra.”
Essay on Vleggaar
Show me where you work and I’ll tell you who you are. Giel Vleggaar’s (1974) studio looks like a post-modern altar: an electric guitar with a multi-FX processor on the left, their lamps constantly flickering, as if in anticipation of their master’s touch; on the desk a large computer screen, a computer equipped with the latest notation and sequencing software; a mobile phone, an iPod and a laptop. On a music stand to the right: ordinary manuscript pater, with a long melodic contour which will form the basis for a new piece. It seems that every new work of Vleggaar’s begins which just such a simple line on paper. “I start each composition with some licks and chords jotted down on an A4,” reveals Vleggaar about his process. “I then work those out into one long melody. I continue completely intuitively without worrying in any way about the next note. It’s just a phrase on paper. My second stage is to expand the melody, bringing in harmony, counterpoint and rhythm. But I put off important decisions as long as possible in order to keep asking myself simply, what does the melody actually need?”
The contrast between this Beethoven-like process (I don’t know of many composers apart from Beethoven working from purely melodic sketches) and the otherwise completely computer-controlled environment is remarkably significant. Vleggaar wants to send a message with his music. Accessibility and listenability are important goals of his. These are the qualities he admires, for example, in the recent works of Klas Torstensson (“technically-speaking my hero”), but also in the music of Prince, which is equally eclectic. Vleggaar’s orchestral work Dead as Disco, however, which is full of disco quotes, illustrates his fear that modern music has reached a dead end and has lost its connection to the world around us. A closer relationship with pop music is his solution to contemporary music. Just like his red guitar, Vleggaar has no qualms about showing his colours.
Putting notes on paper began, according to his memory, at age eleven, when he was allowed to play on the piano of a class mate for the first time. The young Vleggaar couldn’t be torn away, so much so that it didn’t take long for his parents to find him his own instrument. “ I was completely fascinated with musical notation right from the beginning. I wanted to understand this mysterious secret language, so one of the first things I did was to write my own melodies. I even have a piano concerto and a symphony lying around from when I was twelve: a stack of manuscript paper where it seems I’m just doing whatever. But I still kept making orchestral pages during my whole puberty, because I thought they were so beautiful. And because I kind of lived in this composition fantasy world.”
The kind of music Vleggaar was writing at the time is what he refers to as “John Williams-ey”, since he was so impressed at his young age by the way the American used and manipulated the orchestra. That’s what Vleggaar wanted. Every week he borrowed LPs and their corresponding scores, as long as they had them, from the local library. Like this he sifted through many Beethoven symphonies. “Classical music struck a deep emotional chord in me,” he says about this period. “I could just let myself sink into it completely.”
His eagerness to learn was stifled somewhat by his first piano teacher, who pinned him down to boring etudes and scales. It was only when Vleggaar got to know Prince’s music from his older sister that he was ready to take a new and important step. Parade emerged as the key album: “It took a while to really sink in, but really listening to Prince was the same kind of shock as Stravinsky’s Sacre is for many other composers. Parade changed my whole musical vision. Because I didn’t understand it at all. It was magical, almost haunting, but I couldn’t put my finger on what made it so good. Prince had a sound I coun’t place, and rhythm I couldn’t play with my classical background.”
So Vleggaar grabbed onto Prince. The piano was traded in for an electric guitar, complete with lessons with a teacher who had studied jazz in Hilversum. The jazz harmonies Vleggaar learned brought a second wave of shock. He applied to the arrangement department of the former Conservatory of Hilversum, built himself a separate sound studio at home and wrote music for commercials briefly.
But arranging got boring fairly quickly, and when in 1996 he wrote the music for a theatre project of Orkater’s, he realised he had found his calling. He studied composition at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, first with Daan Manneke, then with Theo Verbey. But Vleggaar had already found his musical language back in Hilversum. “The sound and the kinds of harmonies were already there, but I didn’t have the ease I do now. Nowadays it’s easier to make broader gestures; I’m more shameless. The pieces from my Hilversum time are still so careful. I seem to have let that go since then."
Vleggaar describes his own music as “a kind of overcooked Bernstein,” while pointing to Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from The West Side Story in particular. The comparison is not so far-fetched: Vleggaar also uses classical and popular techniques, often sounds lyrical and has a incessant, sometimes obstinate, rhythmic drive. And he writes just as easily for a percussion duo or an ensemble with electric guitar as he does for a wind or symphonic orchestra. “It sounds pleasant, but has it’s ugly sides too,” he interjects when the word ‘accessible’ is mentioned. “I use a lot of restraint in my music. I drive a lyricisim in which I never really let go of the reins. I’d find that too simple. I want to let the control be heard. That’s what I find interesting.”
Composition is foremost an exposition of emotional associations for Vleggaar. Most remarkable in that sense are titles such as Dead as Disco, Brave Cactus Hits the Road, Fast Lane Woodpecker, and Post Mortem. Evocative, often cartoonesque names with a strong – though completely hidden – autobiografical connotation. Is Vleggaar’s music narrative? “Yes, I think so. Each piece is a kind of diary, in which the listener is given space to make their own associations. Music should stay universal and not have a kind of one-sided personal statement of meaning: that would be masturbation.”
“I like music where something happens and develops. I have little patience for works that just start and end. For me, music is about contrast, light and dark, about overcoming the odds. I’m always letting my scarce thematic material be heard from different angles; that’s how I achieve cohesion. Maybe it is my Beethoven side.”
Anthony Fiumara / Translation by Teresa Hron
Text commissioned by Donemus
 |
Upon finishing his studies, Vleggaar won the NOG Encouragement Prize from the Netherlands Ballet Orchestra (Holland Symfonia) for his orchestral piece Fast Lane Woodpecker. A steady stream of commissions and performances have followed since, both in the Netherlands and abroad. He has written works for the Asko Ensemble, Orkest de Volharding, the Nieuw Ensemble, the Nederlands Strijkers Gilde, the Nederlands Vocaal Laboratorium, the Doelenkwartet and the Radio Kamer Filharmonie.
Music critic Anthony Fiumara wrote: “Giel Vleggaar’s music is characterized by its great accessibility and listenability. Vleggaar playfully intertwines the most disparate styles from various historical eras, all the while keeping his background in pop and jazz firmly on the forefront. In Appalachia, written in 2004 for the Nieuw Ensemble, bluegrass, bebop and avantgarde enter into an explosive marriage; in Dead as Disco, written in 2006 for the Radio Kamer Filharmonie, Vleggaar describes the slow decline of the disco genre in the light of 80’s electro-pop. His music resounds with lyricism and has an incessant, even obstinate rhythmic drive. What’s more, he writes just as easily for percussion duo or ensemble with electric guitar as he does for wind or symphony orchestra.”
Essay on Vleggaar
 |
| first sketch page of Piano Concerto |
The contrast between this Beethoven-like process (I don’t know of many composers apart from Beethoven working from purely melodic sketches) and the otherwise completely computer-controlled environment is remarkably significant. Vleggaar wants to send a message with his music. Accessibility and listenability are important goals of his. These are the qualities he admires, for example, in the recent works of Klas Torstensson (“technically-speaking my hero”), but also in the music of Prince, which is equally eclectic. Vleggaar’s orchestral work Dead as Disco, however, which is full of disco quotes, illustrates his fear that modern music has reached a dead end and has lost its connection to the world around us. A closer relationship with pop music is his solution to contemporary music. Just like his red guitar, Vleggaar has no qualms about showing his colours.
Putting notes on paper began, according to his memory, at age eleven, when he was allowed to play on the piano of a class mate for the first time. The young Vleggaar couldn’t be torn away, so much so that it didn’t take long for his parents to find him his own instrument. “ I was completely fascinated with musical notation right from the beginning. I wanted to understand this mysterious secret language, so one of the first things I did was to write my own melodies. I even have a piano concerto and a symphony lying around from when I was twelve: a stack of manuscript paper where it seems I’m just doing whatever. But I still kept making orchestral pages during my whole puberty, because I thought they were so beautiful. And because I kind of lived in this composition fantasy world.”
The kind of music Vleggaar was writing at the time is what he refers to as “John Williams-ey”, since he was so impressed at his young age by the way the American used and manipulated the orchestra. That’s what Vleggaar wanted. Every week he borrowed LPs and their corresponding scores, as long as they had them, from the local library. Like this he sifted through many Beethoven symphonies. “Classical music struck a deep emotional chord in me,” he says about this period. “I could just let myself sink into it completely.”
His eagerness to learn was stifled somewhat by his first piano teacher, who pinned him down to boring etudes and scales. It was only when Vleggaar got to know Prince’s music from his older sister that he was ready to take a new and important step. Parade emerged as the key album: “It took a while to really sink in, but really listening to Prince was the same kind of shock as Stravinsky’s Sacre is for many other composers. Parade changed my whole musical vision. Because I didn’t understand it at all. It was magical, almost haunting, but I couldn’t put my finger on what made it so good. Prince had a sound I coun’t place, and rhythm I couldn’t play with my classical background.”
So Vleggaar grabbed onto Prince. The piano was traded in for an electric guitar, complete with lessons with a teacher who had studied jazz in Hilversum. The jazz harmonies Vleggaar learned brought a second wave of shock. He applied to the arrangement department of the former Conservatory of Hilversum, built himself a separate sound studio at home and wrote music for commercials briefly.
But arranging got boring fairly quickly, and when in 1996 he wrote the music for a theatre project of Orkater’s, he realised he had found his calling. He studied composition at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, first with Daan Manneke, then with Theo Verbey. But Vleggaar had already found his musical language back in Hilversum. “The sound and the kinds of harmonies were already there, but I didn’t have the ease I do now. Nowadays it’s easier to make broader gestures; I’m more shameless. The pieces from my Hilversum time are still so careful. I seem to have let that go since then."
Vleggaar describes his own music as “a kind of overcooked Bernstein,” while pointing to Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from The West Side Story in particular. The comparison is not so far-fetched: Vleggaar also uses classical and popular techniques, often sounds lyrical and has a incessant, sometimes obstinate, rhythmic drive. And he writes just as easily for a percussion duo or an ensemble with electric guitar as he does for a wind or symphonic orchestra. “It sounds pleasant, but has it’s ugly sides too,” he interjects when the word ‘accessible’ is mentioned. “I use a lot of restraint in my music. I drive a lyricisim in which I never really let go of the reins. I’d find that too simple. I want to let the control be heard. That’s what I find interesting.”
Composition is foremost an exposition of emotional associations for Vleggaar. Most remarkable in that sense are titles such as Dead as Disco, Brave Cactus Hits the Road, Fast Lane Woodpecker, and Post Mortem. Evocative, often cartoonesque names with a strong – though completely hidden – autobiografical connotation. Is Vleggaar’s music narrative? “Yes, I think so. Each piece is a kind of diary, in which the listener is given space to make their own associations. Music should stay universal and not have a kind of one-sided personal statement of meaning: that would be masturbation.”
“I like music where something happens and develops. I have little patience for works that just start and end. For me, music is about contrast, light and dark, about overcoming the odds. I’m always letting my scarce thematic material be heard from different angles; that’s how I achieve cohesion. Maybe it is my Beethoven side.”
Anthony Fiumara / Translation by Teresa Hron
Text commissioned by Donemus
