Hoketus was an amplified musical ensemble founded by Dutch composer

Louis Andriessen Louis Joseph Andriessen (; 6 June 1939 – 1 July 2021) was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although ...

in the Netherlands in 1976. The group was originally formed to perform Louis Andriessen's minimal composition ''Hoketus'', but remained together and began to perform music composed for the group by other composers (many of whom came from within the group's ranks). The group disbanded in 1987. The ensemble's instrumentation and overall artistic aesthetic was quite radical; it was made up of two equal groups of instruments (two pianos, two Fender Rhodes electric pianos, two sets of

panpipes A pan flute (also known as panpipes or syrinx) is a musical instrument based on the principle of the closed tube, consisting of multiple pipes of gradually increasing length (and occasionally girth). Multiple varieties of pan flutes have been ...

, two

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...

s, two

electric bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and sc ...

s, and two percussionists). Hoketus considered itself a

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an ...

and set a number of rules for itself, rules so stringent that taken together they could be considered a manifesto. The group always performed with amplification set at a high volume, the two groups of instruments situating themselves as far apart as possible from one another on stage. Personal expression was not permitted; melodies could only be built through the interlocking of single notes or chords, played in alternation between the groups using the

Medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

technique of

hocket In music, hocket is the rhythmic linear technique using the alternation of notes, pitches, or chords. In medieval practice of hocket, a single melody is shared between two (or occasionally more) voices such that alternately one voice sounds whil ...

(hence the group's name). The group had an aesthetic bias toward works that were heavy, loud, dissonant, and brutal, showing influence from both

hard rock Hard rock or heavy rock is a loosely defined subgenre of rock music typified by aggressive vocals and distorted electric guitars. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the garage, psychedelic and blues rock movements. Some of the earliest hard ...

and the works of

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...

(one of Andriessen's favorite composers). Besides Andriessen, other composers who wrote for Hoketus include

Diderik Wagenaar Diderik Wagenaar (born 10 May 1946 in Utrecht) is a Dutch composer and musical theorist. Life and work Wagenaar has lived and worked all his adult life in The Hague. Born to a musical family that includes Johan Wagenaar, he began playing piano at ...

Cornelis de Bondt Cornelis de Bondt (born 9 December 1953) is a Dutch composer. Born in The Hague, de Bondt attended the Royal Conservatory there and currently teaches composition and music theory at the same institution. In 2011 all of de Bondt's scores were wi ...

Michael Nyman Michael Laurence Nyman, Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer, pianist, libretto, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film soundtrack, scores (many written during his length ...

Huib Emmer Huib Emmer (born 6 September 1951 in Utrecht) is a Dutch composer. He also plays electric guitar and electric bass guitar. He performed at the Claxon Sound Festival -for improvised music (1984) in the Netherlands, and featured in The Best of the ...

, Klas Torstensson, and Gene Carl. An ensemble of similar instrumentation called

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was formed in

York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in 1989, and continues to perform works from the Hoketus repertoire.

References

{{Reflist Contemporary classical music ensembles Dutch musical groups Musical groups established in 1976 1976 establishments in the Netherlands