This new release in Etcetera’s Dutch Composers series is a fascinating musical portrait of Roderik de Man, a composer in the ‘royal’ line of Dutch electroacoustic composers, starting with Jan Boerman and Dick Raaijmakers. Like his colleague Ton Bruynel (1934-1998) De Man often prefers to combine traditional live performance with his electronic creations. This release boasts the cooperation of contemporary music specialist Peter Eötvös in the title piece. Roderik de Man was born in Bandung, the capital of West Java in Indonesia on 23 May 1941. The city was then known as the ‘Paris of Java’ because of its fine architecture and thoroughly modern shops. De Man was not to remain long in such a lavish environment, for his entire family was taken by the Japanese to a prison camp when he was one year old. He was placed in the women’s camp with his mother and brother, while his father was taken to the men’s camp. The experience does not, however, seem to have been traumatic for him: ‘I remember the sound of shooting, but I didn’t find it frightening it was just another part of my life’, relates de Man. Although he has composed various pieces for the Javanese gamelan, he did not grow up with the sounds of this Indonesian collection of bronze percussion instruments in his ears. He had, however, heard his mother and an aunt, a professional pianist, play the piano; his father was a lawyer. The family moved to The Hague after the end of WW II, when de Man went to study percussion under Frans van der Kraan as well as music theory at the Royal Conservatory there. He soon began to take composition lessons from Kees van Baaren and to experiment in the electronic studio run by Dick Raaijmakers.



Rhythm and timbre play a large part in his music. De Man: ‘Everything had more or less been said as far as tonality was concerned, whilst the serialism that van Baaren advocated was a dead end for me; it may well be highly organised, but it neglects the rhythmic pulse, the most vital force in music. Raaijmakers made me listen to unusual electronic pieces and taught me how to use the various pieces of equipment. By continual experimentation I taught myself how to create incredibly personal sounds with electronics.’ De Man also often pairs electronic sounds with live instruments. He concluded his studies in 1972 and immediately took up a position teaching music theory at the Royal Conservatory; he taught composition there also from 1992 onwards and retired in 2007. Roderik de Man has written over one hundred compositions, many of which have been performed throughout the world; his works have also won a great number of awards.