The past as a presence in part one of Louis Andressen'sDe Materie
Louis Andriessen, Edward Harsh · Contemporary Music Review · 1992
Premiered at the annual Holland Festival in June of 1989, Louis Andriessen's De Materie is a piece of music theater which actively engages the past both visually and aurally. This latter encounter is promoted to a large extent by incorporation of specific materials and practices from past musics into the fabric of the newer work. The primary function of these models and citations is a structural one, as they provide the architecture and materials for a large part of the new piece's framework. They are not framed as isolated iconic entities, but are integrated into and changed by their new contexts. This interaction depends upon the employment of a quasi-tonal musical language which can simultaneously embrace, and offer a new perspective on, older material.