Hendrik Andriessen
Hendrik Andriessen, full name Hendrik Franciscus Andriessen, was a Dutch organist, composer and music educator. He was born in Haarlem on 17 September 1892 and died there on 12 April 1981. Raised in a Catholic artistic family, he was the son of Nico H. Andriessen, organist of St Joseph's Church in Haarlem, and the painter Gesina Vester. His brother Willem Andriessen was a pianist and composer, and his brother Mari Andriessen was a sculptor.
Andriessen first studied with his father and with Louis Robert, Haarlem's city organist. After a brief period working for the Nieuwe Haarlemsche Courant, he studied organ with Jean-Baptiste de Pauw and composition with Bernard Zweers at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Following his father's death in 1913, he became organist of St Joseph's Church. He developed particular skill as an improviser and formed an important friendship with Alphons Diepenbrock, whose style initially influenced his own work. In 1968, Andriessen completed the orchestration of Diepenbrock's 1890 Missa.
From 1927 to 1949, he taught music theory and composition at the Amsterdam Conservatory, while also teaching organ, improvisation and Gregorian chant at the Roman Catholic School of Church Music in Utrecht. In 1934 he became organist and conductor at St Catherine's Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Utrecht, and from 1937 he was director of the conservatory in that city. He later directed the Royal Conservatory in The Hague from 1949 to 1957 and served as extraordinary professor at the Catholic University of Nijmegen from 1952 to 1963. He received the Van der Leeuw Prize, a Dutch state lifetime achievement award for composers later renamed the Sweelinck Prize, in 1960.
His early work, especially music of the 1920s for organ and voice, shows his admiration for César Franck, Gabriel Pierné and André Caplet; the 1923 song cycle Miroir de peine was a major work of this period. Andriessen played an important part in the development of liturgical music. His 1919 two-part Missa in honorem sacratissimi Cordis reduced vocal lines and instrumental accompaniment to simple essentials, an approach continued in the six-part unaccompanied Missa diatonica (1935) and Missa Christus Rex (1938), for two choirs and two organs.
He also composed chamber, orchestral and stage music, including four symphonies, the opera Philomela (1948–49), on a libretto by Jan Engelman, and The Mirror of Venice (1964), with a libretto by Hélène Nolthenius. His notable orchestral works include Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Johann Kuhnau for string orchestra (1935) and Ricercare for symphony orchestra (1949). In the Symphonic Study (1953) and his Fourth Symphony (1954), he experimented with twelve-tone rows while retaining tonality. His music joined a hymn-like element with contemplation; his church music was innovative, while his other work followed a personal, moderately modern style.
Andriessen married Johanna Justina Anschütz on 12 August 1919, and they had six children. Jurriaan, Caecilia and Louis became composers, Heleen became a flautist, and Nico became an architect. He spent his final years in an assisted-living apartment in Heemstede.