Willem Pijper - Symphony No. 3 (1926)

Willem Frederik Johannes Pijper (8 September 1894 – 18 March 1947) was a Dutch composer, music critic and music teacher. Pijper is considered to be among the most important Dutch composers of the first half of the 20th century.

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Symphony No. 3 (1926) in one movement acc. by obligato piano
Dedication: Pierre Monteux (1875-1964)

1. Allegro (0:00)
Molto Adagio (4:51)
Piu leggiero (7:49)
Molto Allegro (11:59)

Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jac van Steen.
Recorded from live broadcast on December 2, 1994
From 4:47 to 4:51 there was a recording glitch which causes the last notes of the pizz. and harp to be omitted.

The symphony bears a quotation in Latin from Virgil:
"Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo".
(If I cannot bend the Gods, I will set the Acheron in motion) or
(If I cannot bend the heavens, I will move the underworld)

Pijper quickly chose his own path as a composer. The difference in style between his First Symphony (Pan; 1917) (in which Mahler's influence is evident) and the Second (1921) is significant, and between 1918 and 1922 he grew into one of the more advanced composers in Europe. In each successive work he went a step further, starting from his conception that every work of art arises out of a number of "germ cells" (somewhat akin to Igor Stravinsky's early "cell technique").

From 1919, Pijper's music can be described as polytonal. Yet there is no question of Pijper's consciously abandoning tonality; rather his polyphonic way of thinking and his sense of counterpoint made his harmonic style evolve in that direction. In that sense, he stands quite close to the music of his contemporary Matthijs Vermeulen, but his music does not quite reach the ecstatic level of Vermeulen's. Nonetheless, Pijper remained a composer of strong emotional character, to which his Third Symphony (1926) bears witness. In Pijper's later works the harmonic expression seems at times to approach monotonality.

The octatonic scale has been called the "Pijper scale" in Dutch. As a teacher, Pijper had a great influence on modern Dutch music, teaching many prominent Dutch composers of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. He was senior teacher of instrumentation at the Amsterdam Conservatoire, and from 1930 until his death in 1947 he acted as principal of the Rotterdam Conservatoire.