Kersters, Willem

Willem Kersters – Symfonie nr. 4 “Gezellesinfonie“ opus 71

(Antwerp, February 9, 1929 – December 29, 1998)

(1979)

Moderato
Allegro vivo
Lento
Allegro marcato

The genesis of Willem Kersters’ Vierde Symfonie (Fourth Symphony) was rather erratic. In 1968 Kersters composed a new, fourth symphony, entitled Apocalyps. The intention of this Apocalypse Symphony was to serve as “occasional music” for a series of drawings as yet to be designed by Robert Vandereycken. It was the first time for Kersters to combine an abstract genre with a programmatic, in this case: biblical theme. This symphony, in which the composer experimented with serial composition techniques, did not endure. Even though the work was awarded the Visser-Neerlandia Prize in February of 1969, Kersters decided to withdraw his Apocalypse Symphony. During the year 1968 the composer struggled with an “artistic crisis” due to his decision to abandon serial technique. With a view to dealing in a roundabout way with his urge to create music, he wrote a series of poems that was eventually published in 1971 under the title Want ik ben Johannes niet (For I am not St. John). The religious theme, the biblical refe-rences, the religious imagery, but first and foremost the theme of hope and salvation in this volume betray affinities, at least as regards contents, with Kersters’ Apocalypse Symphony.

It was not until 1979 that Kersters composed a “new” Fourth Symphony. Like in its numerically identical predecessor, this symphony became a work in which Kersters integrated elements extrinsic to music into an abstract genre. In the third and fourth part of this symphony Kersters puts in the mouth of a contralto three songs steeped in an evening atmosphere, written by Guido Gezelle, a Flemish priest who was concurrently a leading poet in the nineteenth century (‘k Hore tuitend’ hoornen, ‘t Is stille and De navond komt zo stil – vertaling erbij?) [I hear the horns singing, It’s silent and The evening comes so still]. Even so, Kersters had no illustrative or figurative intentions, if we align ourselves with critic cum composer Willem Pelemans. After the premiere he stated that the composer “did not want to offer a musical transposition of Gezelle’s poetry. Instead he wrote a symphonic work in four movements constructed purely symphonically, in his richly coloured expressionist style. (…) From Gezelle he chose three twilight moods and developed those moods in the Andante and the Finale as a calming, unctuous, impressionist, simply singing outpouring.”(1)
Pelemans suggests that Kersters’ composition is more than a merely musical essay in contrast effect. Actually it was not Kersters’ purpose to “give musical expression to a certain kind of poetry”, but rather to explore the symbolic capacity of Gezelle’s words. Since Kersters’ musical style is teleologically indeterminable, based as it is on repetitive, non-narrative musical parameters, Gezelle’s selected verses represent a metaphorical Jenseits that enables us to interpret this symphony as a more quiet, poetical “version” of its predecessor, the rejected Apocalypse Symphony. …

Read preface / Vorwort > HERE