Matthijs Vermeulen was born at Helmond in 1888. The eldest son of a blacksmith, his passion for music was revealed at the age of fourteen at the seminary in Heeswijk, where he was taught the rudiments of sixteenth-century counterpoint and received piano lessons.
A short period (1904–05) spent at a Jesuit boarding school in Belgium provided him with a thorough schooling in the classical writers and a fluent mastery of French.
After abandoning a plan to become a priest, Vermeulen moved to Amsterdam in 1907 to submit his first samples of composition to the director of the conservatory. At the age of 21, he became a newspaper critic.
In 1918 Vermeulen composed his Cello Sonata no. 1, in which he explored free atonality. In 1920 he gave up a literary career to devote himself entirely to composition.
Vermeulen reached a philosophical position which he elaborated in his book Het avontuur van den geest: behind all manifestations of matter and life lies a ‘creative spirit’, the awareness of which may bring mankind to an understanding of his responsibility for the future of the earth. In this credo, he hoped to offer a counterpart to existentialism. His vehement protests against nuclear arms proliferation in the 1950s fell within the same framework.
His earliest composition, the First Symphony, is in some passages reminiscent of Debussy, Diepenbrock, Bruckner and Mahler, four of his great models. In this work bursting with youthful élan – which according to the composer ‘plays on the boundary between the 19th and 20th centuries, when the great shadow had not yet fallen’ – he had already left traditional harmony behind. His freely handled part-writing repeatedly leads to complex chords, while conventional cadences are virtually absent. Modality, however, does play a major role.
The transition from diatonic thinking to an integral chromatic concept came, at the age of thirty, in the first Cello Sonata, and it was consolidated in the second Symphony, which dates from the expectant atmosphere of the post-war years. Revolutionary with respect to melody, harmony, form and instrumentation, the piece confirmed Vermeulen’s personal style, coupling overwhelming power and vitality with tenderness and lyricism. Extended passages are of a density and energetic pulse encountered in little other twentieth-century music, while organic transitions to simpler, open textures, which radiate contemplative rest, are equally striking.
Although significant developments occurred during the course of his output and works differ appreciably in character and structure, a number of basic principles remained the same: primacy of melody in all parts, equality of voices, no regulation in the succession of notes, and ‘unlimited chord formation’. Polymelody, i.e. the interaction of several independent melodies (in his symphonies mostly three to six and occasionally even eight or nine, in his chamber music two to four) acquired the significance of the reflection of an ideal society in which freedom, equality and fraternity prevail.
General aspects of Vermeulen’s melodic writing are a commonly vocal character, the preference for asymmetrical and long-spanned phrasing, varied repeats of interval patterns, the prevalence of small intervals, a tendency to chromatic completion, rhythmic variation and the avoidance of regular metric division (floating rhythm).
Despite an overall atonality, many times a melody is spun around a focal pitch, upon which it begins and ends. Such perpetually circling movement and gradual unfolding gives an insistent, often oriental flavour to the music, while the regular use of ostinatos and fixed or slowly moving ‘harmonic fields’ adds to the mesmerizing effect, as does, in the symphonies, the richness of orchestration.
Another notable feature of Vermeulen’s music is the differentiated application of canonic technique, most frequently in the string trio and Symphony no. 3, in which in particular we hear how a step-by-step shortening of the distance between dux and comes is applied to build up to a climax.
Although he always looked out for new developments with interest, he had, finally, little affinity with the main currents of twentieth-century music. In particular he rejected Stravinsky’s neo-classicism. He also saw the fallacy in Schönberg’s series technique, for him a self-imposed limitation which destroyed the freedom, only just acquired, of atonality.
He left us seven symphonies:
Symphony no. 1 (1914)
Symphony no. 2 (1920)
Symphony no. 3 (1922)
Symphony no. 4 (1941)
Symphony no. 5 (1945)
Symphony no. 6 (1958)
Symphony no. 7 (1965)
- as well as one string quartet (1961):
A short period (1904–05) spent at a Jesuit boarding school in Belgium provided him with a thorough schooling in the classical writers and a fluent mastery of French.
After abandoning a plan to become a priest, Vermeulen moved to Amsterdam in 1907 to submit his first samples of composition to the director of the conservatory. At the age of 21, he became a newspaper critic.
In 1918 Vermeulen composed his Cello Sonata no. 1, in which he explored free atonality. In 1920 he gave up a literary career to devote himself entirely to composition.
Vermeulen reached a philosophical position which he elaborated in his book Het avontuur van den geest: behind all manifestations of matter and life lies a ‘creative spirit’, the awareness of which may bring mankind to an understanding of his responsibility for the future of the earth. In this credo, he hoped to offer a counterpart to existentialism. His vehement protests against nuclear arms proliferation in the 1950s fell within the same framework.
His earliest composition, the First Symphony, is in some passages reminiscent of Debussy, Diepenbrock, Bruckner and Mahler, four of his great models. In this work bursting with youthful élan – which according to the composer ‘plays on the boundary between the 19th and 20th centuries, when the great shadow had not yet fallen’ – he had already left traditional harmony behind. His freely handled part-writing repeatedly leads to complex chords, while conventional cadences are virtually absent. Modality, however, does play a major role.
The transition from diatonic thinking to an integral chromatic concept came, at the age of thirty, in the first Cello Sonata, and it was consolidated in the second Symphony, which dates from the expectant atmosphere of the post-war years. Revolutionary with respect to melody, harmony, form and instrumentation, the piece confirmed Vermeulen’s personal style, coupling overwhelming power and vitality with tenderness and lyricism. Extended passages are of a density and energetic pulse encountered in little other twentieth-century music, while organic transitions to simpler, open textures, which radiate contemplative rest, are equally striking.
Although significant developments occurred during the course of his output and works differ appreciably in character and structure, a number of basic principles remained the same: primacy of melody in all parts, equality of voices, no regulation in the succession of notes, and ‘unlimited chord formation’. Polymelody, i.e. the interaction of several independent melodies (in his symphonies mostly three to six and occasionally even eight or nine, in his chamber music two to four) acquired the significance of the reflection of an ideal society in which freedom, equality and fraternity prevail.
General aspects of Vermeulen’s melodic writing are a commonly vocal character, the preference for asymmetrical and long-spanned phrasing, varied repeats of interval patterns, the prevalence of small intervals, a tendency to chromatic completion, rhythmic variation and the avoidance of regular metric division (floating rhythm).
Despite an overall atonality, many times a melody is spun around a focal pitch, upon which it begins and ends. Such perpetually circling movement and gradual unfolding gives an insistent, often oriental flavour to the music, while the regular use of ostinatos and fixed or slowly moving ‘harmonic fields’ adds to the mesmerizing effect, as does, in the symphonies, the richness of orchestration.
Another notable feature of Vermeulen’s music is the differentiated application of canonic technique, most frequently in the string trio and Symphony no. 3, in which in particular we hear how a step-by-step shortening of the distance between dux and comes is applied to build up to a climax.
Although he always looked out for new developments with interest, he had, finally, little affinity with the main currents of twentieth-century music. In particular he rejected Stravinsky’s neo-classicism. He also saw the fallacy in Schönberg’s series technique, for him a self-imposed limitation which destroyed the freedom, only just acquired, of atonality.
He left us seven symphonies:
Symphony no. 1 (1914)
Symphony no. 2 (1920)
Symphony no. 3 (1922)
Symphony no. 4 (1941)
Symphony no. 5 (1945)
Symphony no. 6 (1958)
Symphony no. 7 (1965)
- as well as one string quartet (1961):
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