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- Original Release Date: 17 Sep 1996
- Format - Music: MP3
- Compatible with MP3 Players (including with iPod®), iTunes, Windows Media Player
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| Song Title | Time | Price | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Play | 1. Part I (LP Version) | 25:36 | Album Only | ||
| Play | 2. Part II: Hadewijch (LP Version) | 28:47 | Album Only | ||
| Play | 3. Part III: De Stijl (LP Version) | 26:00 | Album Only | ||
| Play | 4. Part IV (LP Version) | 28:04 | Album Only |
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I don't normally leave ratings for things, but I just had to here as I can't believe noone else has...
Suffice it to say that I am a BIG music fan, across so many genres, and very fussy about what I like - but track 2 here, 'Hadewijch' I think has to be my favourite piece of music in the world. Shivers down the spine every time.
I absolutely love the rest too, though I'd have to concede that it is perhaps an acquired taste... for instance track 1 starts with one single chord repeated around 150 times, and the final track ends with just spoken voice on its own for a while. But if you're willing to surrender yourself to the Andriessen world it is absolutely mind-blowing. And even if you never listen to the rest, it's worth the purchase price for track 2 alone.
Suffice it to say that I am a BIG music fan, across so many genres, and very fussy about what I like - but track 2 here, 'Hadewijch' I think has to be my favourite piece of music in the world. Shivers down the spine every time.
I absolutely love the rest too, though I'd have to concede that it is perhaps an acquired taste... for instance track 1 starts with one single chord repeated around 150 times, and the final track ends with just spoken voice on its own for a while. But if you're willing to surrender yourself to the Andriessen world it is absolutely mind-blowing. And even if you never listen to the rest, it's worth the purchase price for track 2 alone.
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Louis Andriessen's 1988 classic "De Materie" here receives a knockout performance from some of the Netherlands' finest musicians.
The first thing to say about this work is that it is BIG, clocking in at close to 2 hours. The second thing is that this music is KINETIC. The first movement (of 4) begins, famously, with a single chord repeated 144 times. The rest of this 25-minute movement follows suit by hammering out richly harmonised chords over and over again in a kind of mantra-like fury. The third movement, "De Stijl", based partly on texts about Piet Mondrian, uses boogie-woogie music as its motor, and coupled with Andriessen's big band-style lineup, builds up a 26-minute powerhouse of incessant funk. At one point, there's even a sort of boogie-woogie "fugue" built from piling successive entries of the main theme on top of each other and letting them play out independently.
The two slow movements, "Hadewijch" and the untitled last movement, also deal in unrelenting, obsessive focus on musical material and process (hence the title!), but here sheer power is traded in for glacial implacability: indeed, the last movement takes a full 19 minutes to reach its first climax!
Material and sources of inspiration for the work include: a text on shipbuilding by Nicolaes Witsen, the "Ideae Physicę" of David van Goorle, Hadewijch's "Zevende Visioen" (Seventh Vision), "The Principles of Plastic Mathematics" by M. H. J. Schoenmaekers, text about the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, excerpts from two sonnets by Willem Kloos, and finally a passage from the diary of Marie Curie and her Nobel Prize speech.
Suffice to say this music is gigantic, thrilling, uncompromising and of visionary grandeur: a composer going the whole hog to do justice to the sheer magnitude of his subject-matter. One of the 20th century's key works, and perhaps the achievement of a lifetime for Andriessen - not to be missed!
The first thing to say about this work is that it is BIG, clocking in at close to 2 hours. The second thing is that this music is KINETIC. The first movement (of 4) begins, famously, with a single chord repeated 144 times. The rest of this 25-minute movement follows suit by hammering out richly harmonised chords over and over again in a kind of mantra-like fury. The third movement, "De Stijl", based partly on texts about Piet Mondrian, uses boogie-woogie music as its motor, and coupled with Andriessen's big band-style lineup, builds up a 26-minute powerhouse of incessant funk. At one point, there's even a sort of boogie-woogie "fugue" built from piling successive entries of the main theme on top of each other and letting them play out independently.
The two slow movements, "Hadewijch" and the untitled last movement, also deal in unrelenting, obsessive focus on musical material and process (hence the title!), but here sheer power is traded in for glacial implacability: indeed, the last movement takes a full 19 minutes to reach its first climax!
Material and sources of inspiration for the work include: a text on shipbuilding by Nicolaes Witsen, the "Ideae Physicę" of David van Goorle, Hadewijch's "Zevende Visioen" (Seventh Vision), "The Principles of Plastic Mathematics" by M. H. J. Schoenmaekers, text about the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, excerpts from two sonnets by Willem Kloos, and finally a passage from the diary of Marie Curie and her Nobel Prize speech.
Suffice to say this music is gigantic, thrilling, uncompromising and of visionary grandeur: a composer going the whole hog to do justice to the sheer magnitude of his subject-matter. One of the 20th century's key works, and perhaps the achievement of a lifetime for Andriessen - not to be missed!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
A monumental work by an incredible creative voice
2 April 1999
Format:Audio CD
Listeners unfamiliar with Andriessen's music may hesitate to invest in this two-disc set, but it is perhaps the best introduction to this unfortunately underappreciated composer. Andriessen brings together seemingly disparate elements--from jazz and rock to neo-medievalism, Stravinskian rhythmic inventiveness and Messaien-like mysticism--and molds them into his own intensely incisive musical personality. De Materie contains some of the most captivating examples of "minimalism" I've ever heard: the luminous, hypnotically slow unfolding of Part 4 is genuinely otherworldly, while the 144 accelerating fortissimo chords which open Part 1 create an exhilirating, terrifying "granite wall" of sound. Other sections, especially the bold choral declamation in Part 1 and much of "De Stijl" seem highly anti-minimalist in their rhythmic and harmonic intricacy. The performance, under the direction of Reinbert de Leeuw, is consistently forceful (though I think I detected some insecurity in the quick accelerandos and retardandos of Part 1) and the sound quality is uniformly excellent. I recommend this set without reservation and anticipate future Andriessen releases, as he is still very much with us.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Justin was right!
8 May 2000
Format:Audio CD
Just got a chance to hear it in completion in the libary this weekend. The third movement (this was my second time for this gem) is absolutely mind-blowing. Bye-bye lunch money!
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Andriessen...easily the most underappreciated composer.
30 Mar 2000
Format:Audio CD
There is something in this music that has more life than anything I've heard recently. It's a burning energy combined with a genuine craft, and superior technique. Wonderful washes of sound, huge powerful blasts of energy. This CD made me go out and buy EVERYTHING that Andriessen had to offer. He is one of the greatest composers of our time. I highly reccomend this music, but add it is not for the faint of heart...it gets pretty deep :)
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