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The Music of Louis Andriessen.

Article Excerpt
Edited by Maja Trochimczyk. (Studies in Contemporary Music and Culture, 7.) New York: Routledge, 2002. [xii, 327 p. ISBN 0-8153-3789-2. $85.] Music examples, illustrations, discography, index.

Louis Andriessen is one of the most important living composers of Western art music. Call that a bias--a bias that the reviewer shaves with Maja Trochimczyk, editor of the present book, The Music of Louis Andriessen. For those who share such high regard for this composer's music, publication of this varied compilation devoted to the composer and his work is a highly significant milestone, for it is the first book-length study available in the United States on the subject. (Note, however, that 2002 also saw the publication in the United Kingdom of a composer-supervised selection of his own writings in English translation, Louis Andriessen: The Art of Stealing Time, ed. Mirjam Zegers and trans. Clare Yates [London: ARC Publications, 2002].) As such, it should be a priority acquisition for most music libraries and interested individuals.

Among the many qualities that make Andriessen's music stand out in his overcrowded and too frequently undifferentiated field, one quality holds particular rewards for scholarly study, and this is an uncommonly powerful bond between thinking and musicmaking. In this respect, his compositions are resonant feedback loops--abstract ideas find thought-provoking, concrete realization...

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