This text is read aloud on my YouTube channel. Additional video and audio material can also be found there:
Arthur and Lucas Jussen consider his ‘Sonata for Two Pianos’ (1935) to be the highest mountain to climb. Anne-Maartje Lemereis was so inspired by his music that she wanted to become a composer. In the US, musicologists are still writing doctoral theses on aspects of his work. Yet the music of Willem Pijper (1894–1947) is rarely performed in the Netherlands and his name seems to have been forgotten. Language and music scholar Arthur van Dijk hopes to change that. His comprehensive and entertaining biography of Pijper is the crowning achievement of a lifelong fascination with the leading composer and razor-sharp music critic.
Born in Zeist as the son of a paperhanger, Willem Pijper reviewed music for the Utrechts Dagblad newspaper. Despite his sometimes harsh criticism, his music essays stood out for their originality, humour and elegantly formulated clarity. A selection of his pieces was compiled in De Quintencirkel (The circle of fifths, 1929) and De Stemvork (The tuning fork, 1930). When writing, Pijper paid no attention to reputations. He considered it his duty to subject musical performances to honest analysis. This sincerity did not win him a lot of friends. Many musicians wanted his blood. The editors regularly received letters begging for the dismissal of the dreaded critic. His most famous victim was the Utrecht conductor Jan van Gilse, whose performances he dissected week after week in many different ways. Van Gilse became so angry that he made futile attempts to deny the reviewer access to the concert hall. ‘You want to teach these people something and then they start complaining,’ Pijper responded.
The newspaper protected its reviewer until things got too out of hand. The Rotterdams Nieuwsblad gave him another chance. With his sharp pen, Pijper also cut his own fingers. The Dutch music world was small, and Pijper often applied unsuccessfully for positions for which he had the right qualifications. In 1930, he was offered the position of director of the conservatory in Rotterdam, but he would have much preferred to go to The Hague or Amsterdam. His lack of enthusiasm for the port city was evident in one of his letters: ‘Rotterdam is not a city to settle down in permanently, especially the so-called better neighbourhoods, which are so sinister.’ When Pijper applied for the position of conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, he was once again passed over; that honourable position went to Eduard Flipse, who was better positioned in the market.
Pijpers’ First Symphony (1917) was well constructed, but could have been composed by Gustav Mahler. His Second Symphony (1921) was influenced by American classical music and Cuban habanera rhythms. In his Third Symphony (1926), he found his own voice for the first time. In this short but impressive work, melody and polyrhythm are perfectly balanced. Pijpers’ idiosyncrasy was expressed in a completely unexpected final chord. He believed that once you had made your point, there was no need to add melodious but meaningless phrases.
In addition to the symphonies mentioned above, Pijper composed concertos, works for solo piano and piano trio, adagios, incidental music, sonatas, string quartets and vocal works. Thanks in part to his international contacts, his music was performed at major European and American concert venues.
He was not only critical in the newspaper; Pijper also applied strict standards in his daily interactions with others. He corrected linguistic errors without being asked. If someone invited him to stay for dinner, he expressed his appreciation for the meal by giving it a score. Pijper loved teaching. He had more difficulty with the social obligations that came with his directorship. He described himself as ‘anti-socially introverted’.
During the bombing of Rotterdam (14 May 1940), he lost his house on the Schiekade, including all its contents. Pijper mourned especially for the loss of his dog. Fortunately, most of his compositions were safely stored in a safe. As fiercely as Pijper had written about the imminent danger of Nazism before the war, he remained silent after the Germans seized power. In order to survive the occupation, he behaved as inconspicuously as possible. He even called the radio station with a friendly request not to play any of his music on his fiftieth birthday.
After liberation, his critical spirit flared up once more when he learned that ‘wrong’ musicians such as conductor Willem Mengelberg had been rehabilitated. ‘Why not give Mussert (leader of a Dutch fascist party) a statue too?’ Pijper responded grumpily.
Pijper married twice, but was unable to commit to a woman. Poet Hendrik Marsman called him ‘a harem keeper’, but he himself preferred the term ‘pluralist’. He had love affairs with many women, often several at the same time. ‘No marriage is worth sacrificing a relationship for,’ was his motto.
He abandoned his Christian upbringing early on after studying the writings of Freud and Nietzsche. Later in life, he joined the Freemasons. In his own words, this select male environment offered him the opportunity to distance himself from ‘the rabble’ he was forced to deal with on a daily basis.
For years, he worked with writer and, in this case, librettist Simon Vestdijk on the opera Merlijn, which ultimately remained unfinished. ‘The highly gifted composer, the creative spirit par excellence, was forced to surround himself with students, manage a conservatory and listen to endless whining,’ Vestdijk explained Pijper’s slow progress.
On 18 March 1947, Pijper died at the age of 52 from cancer. The composer was honoured posthumously with a cartouche bearing his name in gold letters on the right-hand front balcony of the Concertgebouw. A few years later, his star had already faded. Reinbert de Leeuw and other music innovators known as the ‘Nutcrackers’ spoke with disdain in the 1960s about Pijper, who they considered hopelessly old-fashioned. Later in his life, De Leeuw revised his opinion, but the damage had already been done.
The biography focuses primarily on the life of Pijper, who was a gifted composer, a compulsively honest critic and a complicated person. Van Dijk leaves the discussion of the 104 compositions to others. After collecting Pijper’s letters (In het licht van de eeuwigheid, In the light of Eternity, 2016) and selecting the best essays (Het papieren gevaar, The paper danger, 2011), this three-part monument is now complete.
Occasionally, Pijpers’ music can be heard again on stage. It is high time that the oeuvre of this remarkable Dutch composer was recorded using today’s technology. Arthur and Lucas Jussen, who recorded a beautiful performance of Pijpers’ ‘Sonata for Two Pianos’ (Dutch Masters, 2022), deserve to be emulated.
