Geert van Keulen

Geert van Keulen, Dutch composer and bass clarinettist, was born in Amsterdam on 1 October 1943. His training combined conservatory study with self-directed learning in composition. He studied clarinet with Jan Koene, and conducting and orchestration at the Muzieklyceum in Amsterdam between 1961 and 1971, and he took private composition lessons with Heppener and bass clarinet lessons with Dick Mesman. He also studied conducting with Zinman.

From 1966 he was a member of the bass clarinet section of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and between that same year and 1988 he played with the Netherlands Wind Ensemble. Between 1978 and 1995 he taught orchestration at the Amsterdam Conservatory, and from 1989 to 1995 he also taught composition there. His chamber music activity encompasses performance, conducting and concert organisation, and he has made numerous arrangements of works by other composers, above all Russian ones.

His compositional interest centres on chords and harmony, as titles such as Chords (1974), Koraal (1980), Armonia (1988) and Harmoniemusik (1993–4) suggest. After his Violin Concerto, he set out to find a harmonic system that would combine features of tonal harmony with serial procedures. It is based on the fourfold combination of diatonic tetrachords separated by fifths, from which he derives a series of forty eight-note chords. This series is treated as a potentiality: it may be used in full or in fragments, and in later works, such as Tympan (1990), it is diversified. The result evokes three centuries of harmonic music, including twentieth-century idioms.

Van Keulen conceives his output as a continuum rather than as a sum of isolated works. His pieces are related through the common series and through direct quotation: Tympan incorporates extensive fragments of Terze, and Trompeau, based on Machaut's Ma fin est mon commencement, contains the final chorale of Tympan. Among his points of reference he cites Bruckner, Mahler and Boulez.

His legacy lies above all in a catalogue closely tied to wind instruments, with a preference for the lower registers, and in a conception of the work as an open-ended process. His scores are published mainly through Donemus.