Frans Brüggen, a Pioneer of the Early Music Revival, Died in August at Age 79

Frans Brüggen, a pioneer of the early music revival, died in August at age 79. Frans Brüggen (1934-2014) Born in Amsterdam, The Nether- Indeed a superb role model! encounter. Every time I would call him lands, he studied musicology at the Uni- to arrange it, he would say: “I no longer ver sity of Amster dam and recorder at By Cléa Galhano, St. Paul, MN play the recorder,” with a cynical tone. Amsterdam’s Muzieklyceum with Kees I would explain to him that the award Otten, a student of Karl Dolmetsch. Thank you, Frans, for being a role represented how he inspired a genera- Brüggen became the first Muzieklyceum model! tion of recorder players and changed graduate to earn a diploma in recorder. Everybody in life has and needs a the way we thought about the instru- At age 21 in 1955, he was named role model who inspires them. My role ment. professor at the Royal Con serva tory in The model, as well as that of many recorder After several calls, he agreed to Hague. His written output included players around the world, was Frans receive it. On a beautiful spring day recorder exercises, treatises on playing, and Brüggen. I was inspired by his expres- in May 2001, Marion Verbruggen, editions of Baroque music. He commis- sivity, his musicianship, and, above all, the harpsichordist Jacques Ogg and sioned a number of recorder works, among his intelligence. The way he thought I went to his home. We had coffee in them Luciano Berio’s 1965 work Gesti. about music and revolutionized the the kitchen while his five- and seven- In the late 1960s, his recording label recorder and the Early Music world year-old daughters listened to the Telefunken capitalized on his near-cult was extraordinary. St. John Passion upstairs! popularity, including a poster of Brüggen Although he was no longer At the beginning it was a bit with his LPs. His solo performing was full teaching when I studied in The Hague, formal, but after three hours of talking of rubato, many shades of tone color, daz- I had many encounters with Frans, all and walking outside, the atmosphere zling technique and dramatic affect— of them very meaningful to me. I even was amazing. We talked about the films at first startling, then widely accepted. had a dream about him once, in which of Bergman, music and architecture. He justified these by pointing to 17th- he put me in front of his orchestra to When I left, I gave him a hug and said and 18th-century performance treatises. listen to Beethoven symphonies. He to him: ”You see, Frans, you didn’t need With disciples Kees Boeke and Walter then asked me to just listen to the to be cynical after all. It was even fun.” van Hauwe, in 1972 (during the Dutch silence!!! It was a magical moment! He replied: “Indeed, you were right!” counterculture movement), he formed the When I served on the American A couple of months later he sent avant-garde recorder trio Sour Cream. Recorder Society Board of Directors, I a nice letter to ARS, thanking this Tours by this group, his residencies at had the honor of personally delivering beautiful organization for the award. Harvard University and at the Univer- the Distinguished Achievement Award (Photo below by Jacques Ogg in sity of California, Berkeley, and his many to Frans at his home in Amsterdam. 2001 shows Brüggen, center, with family lectures, workshops and private lessons cre- It was quite a task to arrange the members; Galhano in blue, on his right; ated a following in the U.S. He was the Verbruggen in grey at his far left) subject of at least a dozen articles in AR. In 1981, he and Sieuwert Verster co- founded the period-instrument Orchestra of the 18th Century, the group for which he wielded the baton for the rest of his life. Brüggen’s health deteriorated in his later years, to the point that his last concert was conducted from a wheelchair. Brüggen is credited with inspiring generations of recorder players. In 2000, AR readers chose him as “Recorder Player of the [20th] Century; in 2001 he received the ARS Distinguished Achievement Award (see the May 2001 AR). He is survived by his wife, the art historian Machtelt Israëls, and their daughters, Zephyr and Eos. www.AmericanRecorder.org Winter 2014 17 An Example of How to Live dam that Frans often visited. He was sitting at the bar, and Paul went to By Adriana Breukink, Enschede, greet “Uncle Frans” (the Loeki The Netherlands Stardust Quartet guys all called him that, because he was the uncle of In 1980 all the students in the Daniël Brüggen, a quartet member). recorder making class of the late I hid behind Paul because I was Fred Morgan made a copy of the so nervous. Then Frans started jok- Stanesby Sr. alto recorder from ing with me. He recognized me Frans Brüggen’s private collection. from an article about the Dream At the end of the project, the whole recorders in the Mollenhauer maga- group went to Frans’s house in zine. I was so surprised he knew Amsterdam to compare their first about my project, that I could not try with the masterpiece from speak a word. I think he was still Stanesby Sr. interested what was going on in Remembering Uncle Frans Frans welcomed us into his the recorder world, even after he huge 17th-century home. In a beau- stopped playing recorder in the ’80s. By Daniël Brüggen, Bussum, The [email protected] tiful room with dark red silk wallpa- Before I started making record- Netherlands, per, we were able to try out and ers in the class at the conservatory in study the original. We were totally The Hague, I studied recorder per- When I interviewed Frans a few years ago, impressed by the instrument, but formance and went to all of Frans’s it was a sort of special occasion for both of even more by the atmosphere of this master classes. Frans was my greatest us. I had only learned about his attitude event. Frans was sitting in the room teacher and example of how to live towards music and the recorder through next to our room; we could see him and play. He was a master at teach- his students—my teachers—rather than studying the score of a Rameau ing, and he could improve a person’s through personal contact. At that point, opera. He had just started conduct- playing with a few words—always I knew he was extremely reluctant to talk ing his famous Orchestra of the spoken very, very slowly. It was as if about his former life as a recorder idol. 18th Century. He was so kind to us, he were a shaman, first absorbing People in the audience always and endured all of our playing and the energy of what you had to reminded me of that status, occasionally testing very patiently. At the end, understand—and then, very slowly, driving me and my fellow [Amsterdam he wished us all success—although the sentences came. He never said Loeki Stardust Quartet] colleagues crazy. to be honest, Frans was not inter- anything twice. But we all knew this was perfectly justified ested in our copies of his recorder. He treated each student very because of his exceptional talents—for Morgan was in The Nether- differently. I remember a student being able to control all technical aspects lands then to teach a recorder mak- who played the slow movement of of the recorder and of combining it with ing class at the conservatory at The a Handel sonata with many embel- musical vision and original ideas. Hague. First we learned to make a lishments, and with a lot of ego. My teachers, Kees Boeke and Walter Ganassi, in the new and famous After he finished the piece, Frans van Hauwe, told me that the level of play- “modern Ganassi style” Morgan had waited some very long seconds and ing should be so excellent that all possible developed. I love this wide bore, and he said; “terrible….” The student critique would evaporate. I suppose this the sound of its tone with the strong had to play the first two bars, with was actually a trace of being raised in the fundamentals. All the later models I all the notes separated and not artic- ideas of Frans. developed (like the Dream recorders ulated, and he had to breathe The interview took place in a friendly and the Eagle recorder) have this between all of the notes. So for and open manner, underlining how wide bore. Frans Brüggen loved this one minute we heard only, “huuuu. important it is to keep blowing at all times. Ganassi model, and Fred made huuuuu, huuuuu….” As the student While instruments got better and better, many prototypes for him to test. finished, Frans said in a deep voice; finally resulting in playing museum origi- Twenty years and many hand- “much better!” When the student nals, I think that [playing the recorder] made recorders later, I went with left 30 minutes later, he played this became less relevant. As a brilliant musi- Paul Leenhouts to a cafe in Amster- movement beautifully! cian, he found the way to the very heart of 18 Winter 2014 American Recorder the sound on any instrument, using his ideas proved to pay off, being just as We are the heirs of quite a lot of shadings and nuances, magically trans- special and effective as in our favorite contemporary music dedicated to him, forming and modeling it in order to recorder repertoire.

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