Want to read the score while listening? The cursor goes along with the music. Click here.

At the bottom of this page you can also just listen to the music - click on this bar.

This composition was a struggle for me. On the one hand, I was particularly drawn to the poem, but on the other hand, I found it more of a description than an experience.
It only came to life when I realized why the beautiful lyrics attracted me so much: it was the intense longing for the friendship Vasalis describes. But it remained a description, not an experience that gave me the feeling for the music.
Suddenly I remembered my participation in a commemoration in the pouring rain at the Monument for Gays in Amsterdam. There - in front of the Westerkerk my husband and I gave an expressive dance presentation that for us reflected the meaning of this commemoration well - to music by Arvo Pärt (Fratres): the idea of ​​the primordial importance (and the lack of!) of a good friendship.
That is how I came across Jacob Israël de Haan and his poem of which I could only remember one line: Such an immoderate desire for friendship. Only then did the music for this composition went through my head and then toke shape.
I think that Vasalis, like my music, had forgiven, if not encouraged, this 'intervention' in her poem.

The poem Friend by Vasalis was published in 2002 in the collection Unpublished poems.

Vasalis therefore did not provide the subtitle herself. As a composer, I took the liberty of adding this subtitle to this composition - in the same way that through my music I also gave the poem an interpretation that was not necessarily hers. Once someone looks or listens, the emotions are no longer the artist's but the observer/listener's. It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

So the subtitle is a famous quote from the Dutch writer/poet Jacob Israël de Haan from the early 20th century. You will find the line in two important places: in the poem by Jacob Israël de Haan "For a young fisherman" (1917), but also closer to home you will find this line as a prominent inscription on the Momonument for Gays before the Westerkerk in Amsterdam.

For people who do not know her yet: M. Vasalis is the pseudonym of Margaretha Droogleever Fortuyn-Leenmans. She was a Dutch poet and a psychiatrist by profession. She lived from 1909 to 1998.

In 1982 she was awarded the P.C. Hooftprijs - a renowned literary price in the Netherlands - and in the same year her last poetry bundle was published, as well as a number of novellas which went along.

As early as 1988 I wrote my first composition on her poem Skeleton - a title that may not be very accessible - but that is only an illusion. It's a nice story. You can here listen to that composition and read the poem. I later added a piano accompaniment to it and recently made minor tempo adjustments. The poetess gave me personal permission for the use of that poem at the time and she liked the result very much.

In this cycle of songs have appeared so far:

1. My spring and my love are gone
2. Skeleton
3. Time
4. The Idiot in the bath
5. Autumn
6. Sotto voce
7. Metastases
8. Friend
In the menu at the top of this page, click on Compositions to go to the different lieder.

On Wikipedia there is more valuable information on Vasalis, might you be curious.

Aristos

The poem

Friend

Such an immoderate desire for friendship

Friend, companion, who is more and less
then father, mother, lover, child.
Same as me but different,
independent and dedicated -
older, younger, of the same time.

Comforter, who can be comforted.
Beacon and a shifter of signs.
Brother, but from another mother, without rivalry,
with whom I walk and who guides me.

He grants me to live and when I
would like to die, he agrees with me.

Sometimes it's that I endure because of him alone,
what seemed unbearable without him.

Without any commitment
I walk and always walk in his direction.

---

You can get an impression of the songs below.

© The complete copyright of the music (also this electronic version) has been deposited. This means that you can only listen but not use it nor partially, nor completely for your own purposes. Let alone that you use it for your own performances or productions. For citation rights please contact the publisher and the Buma/Stemra organization in the Netherlands.

---