Baaren, Kees van

(b Enschede, 22 Oct 1906; d Oegstgeest, 2 Sept

1970). Dutch composer and teacher. The son of a music dealer, he
first learned music from his fathers stock of scores and recordings,
before studying the piano with Rudolph Breithaupt and composition
with Friedrich Koch at the Berlin Hochschule (19249). Also working
as a jazz and cabaret pianist (under the name Billy Barney), and
encouraged by his fellow student Boris Blacher, he developed
simultaneous enthusiasms for Gershwin and Webern. He returned to
the Netherlands in summer 1929, shortly after meeting Pijper in
Berlin; some months later he began composition studies with the
latter, at the same time destroying all his compositions from before
1930. The study sessions grew progressively less formal, and Pijper
remained a friend and mentor until his death in 1947. After several
years in Enschede, mostly working with amateur ensembles, van
Baaren became director of the Amsterdam Musieklyceum in 1948. In
1953 he was appointed director of the Utrecht Conservatory and in
1958 director of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He, like
Pijper, became the mentor of younger composers and performers
(including Louis Andriessen, Bruins, Reinbert de Leeuw, Misha
Mengelberg, Porcelijn, Schat, van Vlijmen and Wisse), who led the
Dutch avant garde from the 1970s onwards.
Following public performances of his Piano Concertino (1934) and
Trio for winds (1936), which shows Pijpers influence, van Baaren
completed nothing more until 1947. His first major work, a striking
cantata setting of Eliots The Hollow Men, was written in 1948. While
essentially tonal, the harmony grows out of a recurring six-note
figure, employed as a series. For a time he wrote simultaneously in
an accessible tonal style, largely for students and amateurs (as in
the hearty Partita for band, 1953), and in progressively more
ambitious applications of serialism. The Settetto (1952), while still
reliant on Pijpers germ-cell principle, was his first wholly 12-note
work; he became the first major Dutch serialist. Van Baarens
approach was rarely orthodox. Some compositions employ several
unrelated rows; others involve exchange of notes within a row.

The Muzikaal zelfportret, Variazioni per orchestra, Sovraposizioni

I and II and the Piano Concerto, and parts of the Musica per
campane, Musica per orchestra andMusica per organo, rely on a
special formation around a tritone axis, resulting in either an allinterval row or, depending on octave placement, one in which the
second half is a strict intervallic retrograde of the first (see ex.1). In
portions of the Musica per campane and Musica per organo, rows of
more than one octave appear: 72, 47 and 51 pitches respectively,
matching the keys of the instrument.
Van Baarens close attention to structure is seen in the
five Variazioni per orchestra, based respectively on isometric pitch
series, vertical groupings of notes, intervals, what the composer calls
variable metres (actually metres arranged according to interlocking
numerical progressions) and groupings of durations. The variable
metres are a recurrent feature in the later works and lead to
increasingly pointillistic textures. A special case is the sonic collage
in the finale of the Musica per orchestra, quoting his own music,
Latin dance rhythms and eight other composers from Bach to Pijper.
Van Baaren and his music were respected in the Netherlands and he
received many prizes. The melodic imagination, sensitivity to
instrumental colour and rhythmic vitality in his work overcame the
customary resistance of audiences to atonality and won him a
dedicated group of supporters at home and abroad. He was awarded
the important Sweelinck Prize for his lifes work as a composer in
January 1970, nine months before his death.
WORKS
Orch: Concertino, pf, orch, 1934; Suite, school orch, 1951; Partita, sym. band, 1953;
Sinfonia, orch, 1957; Variazioni per orchestra, 1959; Pf Conc., 1964; Musica per
orchestra, 1966, rev. 1968
Vocal: Recueillement (C.P. Baudelaire), Mez, pf, 1947; 3 Poems by Emily Dickinson,
female chorus, 1947; The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot), S, Bar, chorus, chbr orch, 1948,
rev. 19556; 2 Songs (P. van Ostaijen, H. Marsman), male chorus, 1952
Chbr and solo inst: Kleine tude, pf, 1933; Str Qt no.1, 1933; Trio, fl, cl, bn, 1936;
Sonatina, pf, 1948; Settetto, vn, wind qnt, db, 1952; Muzikaal zelfportret, pf, 1954;
Canzonetta triste, vn, pf, 1960; Quartetto [no.2] per archi (Sovraposizioni I), 1962;
Quintetto a fiati (Sovraposizioni II), 1963; Musica per campane, carillon (72 bells),
1964; Musica per flauto solo, 1964; Musica per campane, 47 bells, 1969; Musica
per organo, 1969; Vlug en toch niet langzaam [Quick, yet not Slow], pf, 1969

Arr.: 3 Songs from A. Valerius: Nederlandtsche Gedenck-Clanck, SSAA, 1945

Principal publishers: Alsbach, Broekmans & van Poppel, Donemus

BIBLIOGRAPHY
K. van Baaren: Het concertwezen in Nederland [Concert life in
the Netherlands] (The Hague,1942)
J. Geraedts: Kees van Baaren: variazioni per
orchestra, Sonorum speculum, vi (1961), 435
J. Wouters and A. Jurres, eds.: Conversations with Dutch
Composers: Kees van Baaren and Hans Henkemans, Fifteen
Years Donemus (Amsterdam, 1962), 5059
J. Hill: The Music of Kees van Baaren (diss., U. of North
Carolina, 1970)
J. Wouters: Kees van Baaren, Dutch Composers
Gallery (Amsterdam, 1971), 7187
H. Kien: The Composer Kees van Baaren: towards a
Revaluation of Sound Material, Key Notes, iv (1976), 418
E. Vermeulen: Kees van Baarens Antischool, Key Notes, xxvi/1
(1992), 1417
HARRISON RYKER