Uploaded December 2010 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Apart from the aesthetic-ethical 'message', which is also the subject of most of his songs, Vermeulen's symphonies and chamber music offer an ingenious interplay of melodies, a colorful (orchestral) sound with many felicitous instrumental ideas, fascinating sound fields, innovating parallel harmony and a captivating canon technique.
Vermeulen's work has been quoted as seminal by influential Dutch composers such as Louis Andriessen, but his direct influence is much more difficult to trace - his style, after all, is eclectic and highly personal. Moreover, his actual collaboration with other composers remained very limited. Almost all of his recognition took place well after his death.
Apart from the aesthetic-ethical 'message', which is also the subject of most of his songs, Vermeulen's symphonies and chamber music offer an ingenious interplay of melodies, a colorful (orchestral) sound with many felicitous instrumental ideas, fascinating sound fields, innovating parallel harmony and a captivating canon technique.
Vermeulen's work has been quoted as seminal by influential Dutch composers such as Louis Andriessen, but his direct influence is much more difficult to trace - his style, after all, is eclectic and highly personal. Moreover, his actual collaboration with other composers remained very limited. Almost all of his recognition took place well after his death.
![Jörg Herchet, Komposition 1 für zwei Violinen, Viola und Violoncello [1980] - ii.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EJ3Ezo_1GYs/mqdefault.jpg "Jörg Herchet, Komposition 1 für zwei Violinen, Viola und Violoncello [1980] - ii.
The subject of Jörg Herchets thesis while studying in East Berlin was The Theoretical Writings of Arnold Schönberg and Their Significance for the Teaching of Composition. Herchet argued the need for a teaching method setting out from Schönberg and leading to Pierre Boulez. This line of thought was anathema to the school administrators, who felt that the teaching of composition should lead to Hanns Eisler [ironically, a student of Schönberg, and a fine composer in our opinion]. After failing to complete his degree Herchet worked for a year in Dresden as a temporary employee in the bookdealers trade. In 1970 Paul Dessau was able to have the young composer accepted as his special pupil at the Akademie der Künste in East Berlin even though he lacked a degree. In Dessau, Herchet found a teacher who could accept and further his own approach to composition.
Jörg Herchets Composition 1 for Two Violins, Viola and Violoncello was written in 1980 and is dedicated to Paul Dessau in veneration and gratitude. Herchets two-movement string quartet is based on a specific dramaturgical conception. The second movement starts out with scraps of material and motifs from the preceding movement. The texture becomes more compressed, and for a moment we hear once again the arpeggiated passage of chromatic saturation, this time built of all-interval chords. Then, in rigid and regular repetition, all-interval chords march past en masse in a wide variety of transpositions. The motor-like thrust of the rhythm, however, soon dissolves once again into a dense polyphony in which striking particles of melody occasionally rise to the surface. At the very end, clearly divided into dynamically activated chordal blocks, we hear mirror-reflections and inversions of the pure all-interval chord vanishing in pianissimo. A state of stability seems to have been reached.
The only supra-musical dimension that Herchet allows his works to assume is expressed in the phrased soli Deo gloria [to the glory of Gold alone] found at the end of each of his compositions since 1984. Herchet sees himself entirely as a composer of religious and sacred music. His understanding of religion, however, cannot be easily conveyed on words. Parts of it are alluded to in such concepts as veneration of the all-encompassing, the holistic, the common substance of man. He regards his music to as a yearning for God. The important thing for me is first to unify all the different areas and then the most important thing in all of my music to proceed from that unity.")
