Willem Boogman

composer


Invention

»… finding - inventio, invenire - of something real, true.«
[Claudio Magris, Non luogo a procedere | Blameless, afterword (2015)]

Find things as they are and make up as little as possible.

Lately I work with readymades (found objects), fragments of music, which regularly play through everybody’s head. These are the building blocks for compositions I now work on. By changing their shape I create completely authentic and new music. With modern techniques like transformations and interpolations at the level of their DNA (modulations) I make their identity fluid as clouds that float by and past each other against a blue sky. This way I compose my ultimate polyphony. (Listen to Distant Voices, Intermezzi, Ihr Tore...) Of the reflection of the known I make the opening to the unknown. Not driven by dreams but by desire.

Recent work to which the above applies: The Road To Here for brass quartet and organ (based on popular music from different styles) and Dive Along the Coral Reef for accordion and five or six instruments of choice (with Bach, Schumann and Reich).

With this way of creating new music I find myself in a longstanding tradition in classical music. Through the centuries composers have often made use of fragments, musical themes or melodies of their predecessors, colleagues, or for instance folkmusic, to create their own works.