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Home » Composers » Rolf Straver

Rolf Straver

Saturday, 25 September, 2010

Rolf Straver (The Hague 1953) is a Dutch composer writing mainly chamber and vocal music, often involving the classical guitar, his instrument. He studied musicology in Holland at the Nijmegen University and in the former Soviet Union at the Leningrad (St. Petersburg) State Conservatoire named after Rimsky Korsakov.

Most of his works are neoclassical and polyphonic in a romantic style, favouring extended forms such as sonata, chaconne, fugue, with a cyclical structure between the movements. For example, in his first guitar concerto a folk-like theme is heard in all movements and the lyric 2nd theme of movement 1 comes back in a loud orchestral climax in the final movement.
His melodic style is often diatonic, using free rhythm with tuplets, unusual metric divisions like 9/8 as 2/4 + 5/8 or less used time signatures, sometimes alternating (e.g. Double concerto d minor for bandoneon and guitar second movement: 11/8+7/8) Melodies -even if they have different time signatures-turn out to be combinable at the end of a piece and often a climax is produced with strettos of all themes.
Harmonically the music is mainly tonal and most often written in a minor mode. Characteristic are sudden shifts to remote tonalities and pandiatonic passages. Chromatism and polytonality are features found in development sections.
His vocal music is most often based on romantic, forgotten poets like the song cycle "Eu quero amar" (I want to love) , twelve Portuguese songs on texts by Florbela Espanca.

His mission as a composer is

-to contribute to a wider use of the classical guitar in chamber music and enlarge its repertoire as a partnering instrument with flute, violin, viola, string quartet, bandoneon etc.
-to set music to vintage poetry in less well known languages (Portuguese, Maltese, Bask, Slovenian etc.)
-to continue and revitalize the tradition of excellent forms, melody and extended tonality into the 21st century
-providing musical background (sound tracks) to documentaries and movies with artistic quality

more info on www.rolfstraver.com

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