André Laporte (born 12 July 1931) is a Belgian composer.

Biography

Laporte was born in Oplinter, near

Tienen Tienen (; french: Tirlemont ) is a city and municipality in the province of Flemish Brabant, in Flanders, Belgium. The municipality comprises Tienen itself and the towns of Bost, Goetsenhoven, Hakendover, Kumtich, Oorbeek, Oplinter, Sint-Margriete ...

in Flemish Brabant. He studied music with Edgard de Laet,

Flor Peeters Franciscus Florentinus Peeters, Baron Peeters (4 July 1903 – 4 July 1986) was a Belgian composer, organist and academic teacher. He was director of the Conservatorium in Antwerp, Belgium, and organist at Mechelen Cathedral from 1923 to his deat ...

, and Marinus De Jong at the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen, and musicology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven from 1953 to 1957. From 1960 to 1964 he participated annually in the

Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik "The Internationale" (french: "L'Internationale", italic=no, ) is an international anthem used by various communist and socialist groups; currently, it serves as the official anthem of the Communist Party of China. It has been a standard of th ...

in Darmstadt, where he came into contact with Pierre Boulez,

Bruno Maderna Bruno Maderna (21 April 1920 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian conductor and composer. Life Maderna was born Bruno Grossato in Venice but later decided to take the name of his mother, Caterina Carolina Maderna.Interview with Maderna‘s th ...

Luciano Berio Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled '' Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...

György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century ...

, and

Mauricio Kagel Mauricio Raúl Kagel (; 24 December 1931 – 18 September 2008) was an Argentine-German composer. Biography Kagel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into an Ashkenazi Jewish family that had fled from Russia in the 1920s . He studied music, his ...

, amongst others.( In addition, he attended the Second and Third Cologne Courses for New Music organized by

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th and early 21st-century ...

, in 1964–65 and 1965–66 where, in addition to Stockhausen, he had the opportunity of meeting the composers

Henri Pousseur Henri Léon Marie-Thérèse Pousseur (23 June 1929 – 6 March 2009) was a Belgian classical composer, teacher, and music theorist. Biography Pousseur was born in Malmedy and studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 t ...

and

, as well as the conductor

Michael Gielen Michael Andreas Gielen (20 July 19278 March 2019) was an Austrian conductor and composer known for promoting contemporary music in opera and concert. Principally active in Europe, his performances are characterized by precision and vivacity, aid ...

. Starting in 1953, Laporte taught music at a secondary school in Brussels. In 1963 he helped to establish the SPECTRA work group at the Institute for Psycho-Acoustic and Electronic Music (IPEM). In 1972, together with Herman Sabbe, he founded the Belgian section of the

International Society for Contemporary Music The International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) is a music organization that promotes contemporary classical music. The organization was established in Salzburg in 1922 as Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM) following th ...

(ISCM), and has been its chairperson ever since. Beginning in 1968, he taught new-music techniques at the

Royal Conservatory of Brussels The Royal Conservatory of Brussels (french: Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles, nl, Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel) is a historic conservatory in Brussels, Belgium. Starting its activities in 1813, it received its official name in 1832. Provid ...

, later being appointed to teach music analysis, theory of musical form, harmony and counterpoint. In 1988 he was appointed Professor of Composition there, and simultaneously became teacher of composition at the Muziekkapel Koningin Elisabeth in Waterloo. From 1979 to 1989 he worked at Belgian Radio and Television (BRT, now VRT), first as a music producer, then as a program coordinator, becoming in 1989 director of production for the BRT Philharmonic Orchestra, and from 1993 until 1996, director of ensembles.

Style

Laporte's earliest compositions, such as the 1954

piano sonata A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement ( Scarlatti, Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Berg), others with ...

, are neoclassical in character but, beginning in the 1960s, his work was increasingly influenced by the

Darmstadt School Darmstadt School refers to a group of composers who were associated with the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music (Darmstädter Ferienkurse) from the early 1950s to the early 1960s in Darmstadt, Germany, and who shared some aesthe ...

avant garde. His style is

eclectic Eclectic may refer to: Music * ''Eclectic'' (Eric Johnson and Mike Stern album), 2014 * ''Eclectic'' (Big Country album), 1996 * Eclectic Method, name of an audio-visual remix act * Eclecticism in music, the conscious use of styles alien to th ...

, drawing on a range of pitch materials, for example, extending from traditional triads to clusters and

microtones Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones— intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of t ...

, with such contrasting material often alternating within a single piece. Though he often employs

twelve-tone technique The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...

, this is by no means an exclusive concern, and he often quotes music by earlier composers. For example, his

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

''Das Schloss'' (1981–85, based on

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

's '' The Castle''), quotes from

Berg Berg may refer to: People *Berg (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) *Berg Ng (born 1960), Hong Kong actor * Berg (footballer) (born 1989), Brazilian footballer Former states * Berg (state), county and duchy of the Hol ...

and

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

, and the

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

l work ''Nachtmuziek'' (1970–71) contains citations from Mozart. His ''Fantasia-Rondino con tema reale'' for violin and orchestra, composed for the 1989 Queen Elisabeth f BelgiumCompetition, introduces national and royalist symbolism, first by using as tonal centres the notes B, G, and E drawn from the letters of the word "Belgique", second through the use of the Belgian national anthem, and third by the invention for the rondino of a "royal theme" composed of notes drawn from the names of the three most recent royal couples: EliSABetH, ALBErt, LEopolD, AStriD, FABiolA, BouDEwijn.

Compositions (selective list)

*Piano Sonata (1954) *''Fugue in the Phrygian Mode'', for organ (1958) *''Ostinato'', for organ (1962) *''Sequenza I'', for solo clarinet (1964) *''Sequenza II'', for three clarinets and bass clarinet (1965) *''Jubilus'', for brass and percussion (1966) *''Ascension'', for piano (1967) *''Ludus fragilis'', for solo oboe (1967) *''Story: Actus quasi-tragicus'', for violin, viola, violoncello, and harpsichord (1967) *''Inclinations'', for solo flute (1968) *''De Profundis'', for a cappella choir (1968) *''Le morte chitarre'' (text by Salvatore Quasimodo), for tenor, flute, and strings (1969) *''Reflections'', for solo clarinet (1970) *''Nachtmuziek'' (Night Music), for orchestra (1970–71) *''La vita non è sogno'' (Life Is Not a Dream, texts by

Salvatore Quasimodo Salvatore Quasimodo (; August 20, 1901 – June 14, 1968) was an Italian poet and translator. In 1959, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own time ...

and

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (; 22 December 1876 – 2 December 1944) was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye d ...

), tenor, bass, narrator, chorus, and orchestra (1971–72) *''Icarus' flight'', for piano and twelve instruments (1977) *''Transit'', for 48 strings (1979) *''Das Schloss'', opera in 3 acts, libretto by Laporte, after M. Brod's adaptation of Franz Kafka's novel of the same title (1981–85) *Two Suites from ''Das Schloss'', for orchestra (1987, 1988) *''Fantasia-Rondino con tema reale'', for violin and orchestra (1988) *''De ekster op de galg'' (

The Magpie on the Gallows ''The Magpie on the Gallows'' (German: ''Die Elster auf dem Galgen)'' is a 1568 oil painting, oil-on-panel painting, wood panel painting by the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, Netherlandish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It ...

), concert overture, after Breughel (1989) *''Testamento de otoño'' (text by Pablo Neruda), for baritone, harp, and strings (1990) *''Winter Pastorale'', for four bassoons and contrabassoon (1991) *''Seven Visions from the Apocalypse of Saint John, with an Introduction and Seven Trumpet-calls'', for trumpet and organ (1993) *''Passacaglia serena'', for orchestra (1994) *''Trois pièces'', for piano (1997) *''Toccataglia'', for piano (2002) *''Rieten-Ritueel'', for 4 oboes, 2 oboes d'amore, 2 horns, bassoon, and contrabassoon (2005)

Selected recordings

* ''André Laporte: Chamber Music''. (''Sequenza I'' for clarinet solo; ''Sequenza II'' for clarinet quartet; ''Story'' for 2 violins, cello, and harpsichord; ''Harry's Wonderland'' for bass clarinet and two tapes; ''Peripetie'' for brass sextet; ''C'isme'' for cello solo; ''A Flemish Round'' for clarinet, trombone, cello, and piano; ''Chamber Music'' for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, and piano (adapted from James Joyce); ''Icarus' Flight'' for piano and 12 instruments.) Walter Boeykens, clarinet; Jan Guns, bass clarinet; Lieven van de Walle, violoncello; Antwerp Clarinet Quartet; Flemish New Music Group; Marc de Smed, conductor. Belgium: René Gailly International Productions, 1986. * ''André Laporte: Das Schloss''. Lena Lootens, Emily Rawlins, sopranos; Lucienne van Deyck, mezzo-soprano; Johanna Dur, contralto; Christoph Homberger, Philip Sheffield, Donald George, Wilhelm Richter, tenors; Bjørn Waag, Mario Taghadossi, baritones; George-Emil Crasnaru, Marcel Rosca, basses; BRTN-Mens-Choir; BRTN Philharmonic Orchestra Brussels; Alexander Rahbari, conductor. Recorded at the Magdalena Hall, Brussels, 25 September – 7 October 1995. 2-CD set. DICD 920375/920376. ienna Koch Discover International, 1997. * ''Symphonic and Vocal Works.'' including "The Magpie on the Gallows" concerto, ''La vita non è sogno'', ''Testamento de otoño'', and opera ''Das Schloss'' with Italian Spanish and German libretto. 4CDs. Fuga Libera

References

Sources * * * * * * *

External links