Willem Pijper - Wind Quintet

- Composer: Willem (Frederik Willem Johannes) Pijper (8 September 1894 -- 18 March 1947)
- Performers: Danzi Wind Quintet:
Brian Pollard (bassoon), Piet Honingh (clarinet), Frans Vester (flute), Adriaan van Woudenberg (horn), Koen van Slogteren (oboe)
- Year of recording: ~1972/1973

Quintet for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn, written in 1928-1929.

00:00 - I. Allegro
01:25 - II. Adagio
04:24 - III. Andante moderato
06:49 - IV. Vivace

Willem Pijper studied piano briefly at the Utrecht School of Music, and music theory with Johan Wagenaar afterwards. Pijper developed into a precocious, inquisitive but also self-centered man. He allowed himself to be led by a strong intellectual curiosity and regarded himself as an autodidact composer.

Pijper began his career as a composer in the wake of the German late romantic school: He was especially fascinated by Mahler, as is evidenced by his first symphony from 1917, and from the lavish orchestration of the second symphony from 1921, although in the 2nd symphony Pijpers admiration for French impressionism is already apparent.

Pijper strived for what he later called absolutist music, free of any literary additive, which came fully to bear in his work after 1920. In his critiques and essays from the 20s the admiration emerges for figures like Milhaud with his pluritonality, with Stravinsky's 'Sacre du printemps' and Bartók with his polyrhythmics. Pijper's second style period is usually dated between 1920 and 1932. Works from these years are to be characterized by the simultaneous use of different keys, the pluritonality.

This Wind Quintet dates from this so-called second period, in which his own characteristic style came to full development and was noticed by the international avant-garde. The work is based entirely on the germ cell technique, in which a composition is based on a single melodic, harmonic and/or rhythmic idea.

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