Diepenbrock, Alphonse (1862 - 1921)

[mathias broucek]

Recently came accross his Die Nacht. Stunning music if you like the vocal/operatice works of R Strauss, Korngold, Zemlinsky. Have now ordered more from the river people!

Am surprised at how little know this is. Any other fans?

[hafod]

Recently came accross his Die Nacht. Stunning music if you like the vocal/operatice works of R Strauss, Korngold, Zemlinsky. Have now ordered more from the river people!

Am surprised at how little know this is. Any other fans?

Yes - I have only the 2cd collection of orchestral works and symphonic songs on Brilliant Classics (licensed from Chandos) but when funds allow I have designs on the 8cd 150th Anniversary set from Etcetera:

http://www.mdt.co.uk/diepenbrock-150th-anniversary-box-annette-baker-etc-etcetera-8cds-dvd.html

I have a soft spot for late romanticism particularly when it is as sensitive and evocative as the small amount of D's output that I have heard.

[Serial_Apologist]

Ah yes - I head a piece of his on Through the Night a few weeks ago, and had to look him up in my music dictionary.

Me too, hafod - something about its clinging by fingernails to the dying vestiges of 19th century diatonicism appeals in my case.

I wonder why we never hear his stuff on daytime schedules, or why he never seems to get programmed for concerts. Could it have something to do with being Dutch, and therefore considered somewhat outwith the central European post-Wagnerian tradition? This, if the case, might have to some extent also affected the Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck's music too.

[Roehre]

Anyone studying Dutch cultural live in general, and western musical live in Western europe more particularly between ca.1880 and 192, and not paying attention to the person of Alphons Diepenbrock, does so at his/her own peril.

His correspondence (the Mahler/Strauss letters are just a (small !) part of it) is published in 9 volumes, in total some 4500 pages IIRC.

The register of these letters read as a "who is who" in the musical world. Obviously his connections with Mengelberg, Strauss, Mahler are now considered to be the most important, but (just a small selection) Grieg, Schmuller, Rachmaninov, Frederick Lamond, Stanford, Casella, Puccini, Alma Mahler, Kreisler, Debussy, Widor, d'Indy, Schmitt, Koechlin, Grainger, Reger, Schmidt, Schönberg and approximately any Dutch composer (2 or 3 generations: Zweers, Röntgen, Wagenaar, Dopper, Pijper, Vermeulen), poet, artist or scientist (the Nobel-prize winner Lorentz) of some name will be found there.

The best part of these acquaintances were a result of meetings at the Mengelberg-home or during concerts (home and abroad) of the Concertgebouw orchestra.

he was therefore of some importance :)

=========================

Now the composer Diepenbrock.
Some observations:

All but two of his works are set to texts, incidental music, or a tone-poem (the latter just one: the pianopiece Avondschemering [dusk]).
The two non-vocally-inspired works in his not very large output are an early “Academische Festmarsch” for wind orchestra and themuch more important Hymn (please note the title!) for violin and piano. The latter to be found on the Brilliant/Chandos CDs in D’s own version for violin and orchestra. There exists another version by D. for orchestra in which the whole first-violin-section is playing the violin part unisono. It's effect influenced Koechlin in one of the Jungle-book sections.

All his orchestral music is incidental music: Elektra, Marsyas, The Birds (Aristophanes), Faust (Goethe), and Gijsbrecht van Amstel (after Joost van den Vondel, some kind of Dutch Shakespeare).
Where texts are spoken, neither pitch nor rhythm is notated for the reciters, which caused a discussion with one Schönberg.....

His songs (to be found on 3 NM-Classics CDs) are set to Dutch, German or Latin texts, and D was the first Dutchman to set French poetry. He also sometimes included a solo- instrument in a song, e.g. in Goethe’s Celebrität.

Much more important are his symphonic songs.
Have a look at chronology, and please note that the symphonic song of which is Mahler’s Lied von der Erde a prime example was developed by Diepenbrock quite some years before LvdE: Both Hymnes An die Nacht [Novalis] date from 1899, Wenigen wissen das Geheimnis [Novalis] 1902, Im grossen Schweigen [Nietzsche]1906 (the version recorded is a 1918 revision btw).

In terms of construction, the drawn out preludes, interludes and codas in the orchestra are straightforward precursors to Mahler’s Der Abschied. Mahler knew all these songs, either because they were performed in Amsterdam in his presence, or from the scores, presented to him by the composer. One of the moments of presentation of these scores is nearly caught in the photograph showing D, Mahler, Mengelberg, Dopper and the administrator of the CGOA, where Mahler looks away from the camera, the others straight into the lens.


His fervent Roman-Catholocism inspired a Missa in Die Festo and a Te Deum next to some madrigal like motets and other works for choir only. The Missa is originally set for male choir with organ, but between its first performance in the 1880s and D’s death in 1921 he work on an orchestration, incomplete at D’s death. D’s friend Hendrik Andriessen (father of Louis) completed the orchestration. (Originally this Missa plus the Te Deum were planned for a third Chandos CD, but contractual problems led to this project to be abandoned prematurely).

=================

Style and influence:

Very early D studied Wagner’s scores extensively, as early songs like Der König von Thule or Mignon (1886) testify. But the establishing of the Dutch Society for Music History (est.1869, the oldest in the world!) enabled D to study Netherlandish/Franco-Flemish polyphonists, and works like Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli. This made him declare that “vocal music is the highest form of musical art”. And Gregorian chant defined to a rather high degree the shape of his melodies. All his choral works, including the Missa in Die Festo, are unthinkable without the influence of the 16th C polyphonists.
(But there the importance doesn’t end: D was a kind of founding father of the series of edited scores of Desprez, Obrecht and Ockeghem a.o. and therefore at the basis of a general re-appraisal of these works.)

AFTER Mahler’s death, some inspiration seem to be taken from M’s music, and Debussy became an influence as well. This started an increasingly French influence on Dutch music, thereby pressing the until then predominant German influence more into the margins in the 1930s.
As directly influenced composers Hendrik Andriessen, Mathijs Vermeulen (Symphony no.1 !) and Willem Pijper need to be mentioned. The latter is considered to be the “Father” of Dutch music in the 1920s-1950s, until dodecaphony through his pupil Van Baaren entered the stage.
(Vermeulen would marry Diepenbrock’s daughter btw.)


There is more in diepenbrock than just some music....


===============

The Etcetera 8CD set is one to have, despite the following.
The provenance of the recordings is a bit uneven.
The Van Beinum recording of the Te Deum dates from 1958, but the recordings which show their age are the ones made from the orchestrated songs. The rest is from the Dutch Radio archives (especially the recordings with Haitink and the Cncertgebouw orchestra and CNM/Donemus/NMClassics), Etcetera itself and Chandos. Apart from the (piano-)songs and the Chandos recordings AFAIK all performances were recorded live.

[Serial_Apologist]

Anyone studying Dutch cultural live in general, and western musical live in Western europe more particularly between ca.1880 and 192, and not paying attention to the person of Alphons Diepenbrock, does so at his/her own peril.

His correspondence (the Mahler/Strauss letters are just a (small !) part of it) is published in 9 volumes, in total some 4500 pages IIRC.

The register of these letters read as a "who is who" in the musical world. Obviously his connections with Mengelberg, Strauss, Mahler are now considered to be the most important, but (just a small selection) Grieg, Schmuller, Rachmaninov, Frederick Lamond, Stanford, Casella, Puccini, Alma Mahler, Kreisler, Debussy, Widor, d'Indy, Schmitt, Koechlin, Grainger, Reger, Schmidt, Schönberg and approximately any Dutch composer (2 or 3 generations: Zweers, Röntgen, Wagenaar, Dopper, Pijper, Vermeulen), poet, artist or scientist (the Nobel-prize winner Lorentz) of some name will be found there.

The best part of these acquaintances were a result of meetings at the Mengelberg-home or during concerts (home and abroad) of the Concertgebouw orchestra.

he was therefore of some importance :)

=========================

Now the composer Diepenbrock.
Some observations:

All but two of his works are set to texts, incidental music, or a tone-poem (the latter just one: the pianopiece Avondschemering [dusk]).
The two non-vocally-inspired works in his not very large output are an early “Academische Festmarsch” for wind orchestra and themuch more important Hymn (please note the title!) for violin and piano. The latter to be found on the Brilliant/Chandos CDs in D’s own version for violin and orchestra. There exists another version by D. for orchestra in which the whole first-violin-section is playing the violin part unisono. It's effect influenced Koechlin in one of the Jungle-book sections.

All his orchestral music is incidental music: Elektra, Marsyas, The Birds (Aristophanes), Faust (Goethe), and Gijsbrecht van Amstel (after Joost van den Vondel, some kind of Dutch Shakespeare).
Where texts are spoken, neither pitch nor rhythm is notated for the reciters, which caused a discussion with one Schönberg.....

His songs (to be found on 3 NM-Classics CDs) are set to Dutch, German or Latin texts, and D was the first Dutchman to set French poetry. He also sometimes included a solo- instrument in a song, e.g. in Goethe’s Celebrität.

Much more important are his symphonic songs.
Have a look at chronology, and please note that the symphonic song of which is Mahler’s Lied von der Erde a prime example was developed by Diepenbrock quite some years before LvdE: Both Hymnes An die Nacht [Novalis] date from 1899, Wenigen wissen das Geheimnis [Novalis] 1902, Im grossen Schweigen [Nietzsche]1906 (the version recorded is a 1918 revision btw).

In terms of construction, the drawn out preludes, interludes and codas in the orchestra are straightforward precursors to Mahler’s Der Abschied. Mahler knew all these songs, either because they were performed in Amsterdam in his presence, or from the scores, presented to him by the composer. One of the moments of presentation of these scores is nearly caught in the photograph showing D, Mahler, Mengelberg, Dopper and the administrator of the CGOA, where Mahler looks away from the camera, the others straight into the lens.


His fervent Roman-Catholocism inspired a Missa in Die Festo and a Te Deum next to some madrigal like motets and other works for choir only. The Missa is originally set for male choir with organ, but between its first performance in the 1880s and D’s death in 1921 he work on an orchestration, incomplete at D’s death. D’s friend Hendrik Andriessen (father of Louis) completed the orchestration. (Originally this Missa plus the Te Deum were planned for a third Chandos CD, but contractual problems led to this project to be abandoned prematurely).

=================

Style and influence:

Very early D studied Wagner’s scores extensively, as early songs like Der König von Thule or Mignon (1886) testify. But the establishing of the Dutch Society for Music History (est.1869, the oldest in the world!) enabled D to study Netherlandish/Franco-Flemish polyphonists, and works like Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli. This made him declare that “vocal music is the highest form of musical art”. And Gregorian chant defined to a rather high degree the shape of his melodies. All his choral works, including the Missa in Die Festo, are unthinkable without the influence of the 16th C polyphonists.
(But there the importance doesn’t end: D was a kind of founding father of the series of edited scores of Desprez, Obrecht and Ockeghem a.o. and therefore at the basis of a general re-appraisal of these works.)

AFTER Mahler’s death, some inspiration seem to be taken from M’s music, and Debussy became an influence as well. This started an increasingly French influence on Dutch music, thereby pressing the until then predominant German influence more into the margins in the 1930s.
As directly influenced composers Hendrik Andriessen, Mathijs Vermeulen (Symphony no.1 !) and Willem Pijper need to be mentioned. The latter is considered to be the “Father” of Dutch music in the 1920s-1950s, until dodecaphony through his pupil Van Baaren entered the stage.
(Vermeulen would marry Diepenbrock’s daughter btw.)


There is more in diepenbrock than just some music....


===============

The Etcetera 8CD set is one to have, despite the following.
The provenance of the recordings is a bit uneven.
The Van Beinum recording of the Te Deum dates from 1958, but the recordings which show their age are the ones made from the orchestrated songs. The rest is from the Dutch Radio archives (especially the recordings with Haitink and the Cncertgebouw orchestra and CNM/Donemus/NMClassics), Etcetera itself and Chandos. Apart from the (piano-)songs and the Chandos recordings AFAIK all performances were recorded live.

Most informative. Thanks very much, Roehr.

[mathias broucek]

..... he never seems to get programmed for concerts

My encounter with him was via a NL PO concert at the Concergebouw. They placed Die Nacht before Bruckner 4 (no interval) and performed the programme three times in four days. So he's at least getting programmed on home turg. But given the popularity of Mahler it's sad that we don't hear much in the UK. As well as the close parallels to Der Abschied there's even a Mahler 7-style mandolin in Die Nacht!

[Lat-Literal]

A very interesting thread with an especially informative post by Roehre.

In my recent exercise of "discovering Dutch and Belgian composers", Diepenbrock was one who stood out. I bought this - https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....UL._SX425_.jpg - essentially for the Marsyas Suite which when translated into English has a fairly similar title to a work by Delius. Others who like Delius as I do would probably find it appealing.