World premiere of Portret

On february 11th and 12th 2006 my piece for ensemble Portret was played at Scheltema, Leiden. The piece was written for the occasion of Rembrandt's 400th birthyear. The ensemble was conducted by Taco Kooijstra.

With this piece I wanted to make a musical portrait of Rembrandt. But how do you translate fine arts to music? Because a direct, one to one translation is not possible I tried to transform several of Rembrandts painting techniques to composition techniques. At first the music transforms from clear lines towards more free gestures. And by shifting focus between the layers I tried to suggest a kind of depth, as Rembrandt tried to do with his paintings. A painting doesn't just say something about the object that is painted, but also about painting itself, and in the end the music just follows its own logic, independent of what is portrayed. So maybe, in the end, it might have become not a portrait of a painter, but a selfportrait.