46. Festival NEUE MUSIK

Elektroakustische Musik: Niederlande I

Ton Bruynèl
was born in Utrecht in 1934. He died in Mailly, France, in 1998. From 1952 to 1956 he studied the piano with Wolfgang Wijdeveld at the Utrecht Conservatory of Music. His choice of teacher was motivated both by the fact that Wijdeveld had been a pupil of Béla Bartók as well as that he was active as a composer at a time when composition was not offered as a course of study in Utrecht. In defiance of the cold shoulder given to composition, Bruynèl banded together with fellow students Peter Schat and Jan van Vlijmen, rallying round the composer Kees van Baaren. Van Baaren introduced his young disciples to dodecaphony, with which Bruynèl felt little affinity. His attention, rather, was focused enthusiastically on the French musique concrète. He chose his instrumentation with the reproduction of concrete sounds in mind, and oriented himself at the Electronic Music Studio at the universities of Utrecht and Delft, later renamed the Institute for Sonology. In 1957 he established his own studio in Utrecht - the first private studio in the Netherlands - specializing in writing music which combines electronic and acoustic sounds. In the 1970s and 1980s he taught electronic composition at the Utrecht Conservatory. 
Bruynèl won the prize for ‘Best Dutch entry’ during the 1966 International Gaudeamus Music Week with his composition Mobilefor two recorded soundtracks. In 1971 his audio-visual ‘Kubus-project’ (created together with architect Aldo van Eijck and sculptor Carel Visser) was exhibited in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His compositions Chicharras (a joint project with the poet Bert Schierbeek) and Adieu Petit Prince (based on texts by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) earned Bruynèl awards at the 1986 International Festival for Electronic Music in Bourges, France. His composition Non sono un uccello, a video opera on the history of flight, was broadcast on Dutch television in 1998.