Top 10 Remarkable Facts about Alphons Diepenbrock

Alphons Diepenbrock. Photo by Willem Witsen. Wikimedia

Top 10 Remarkable Facts about Alphons Diepenbrock

Alphons Diepenbrock, eminent Dutch composer; born in Amsterdam on September 2, 1862; died on April 5, 1921. He learned to play the violin and piano as a child. He enrolled in the University of Amsterdam in 1880, where he studied classical philology and received his Ph.D. in 1888. Diepenbrock taught academic subjects at the grammar school in’s-Hertogenbosch from 1888 to 1894, then abandoned his pedagogical activities to focus on music.

Diepenbrock studied the works of the Flemish School of Renaissance composers, as well as the scores of Berlioz, Wagner, and Debussy. Despite this belated study, he was able to develop a rather distinctive individual compositional style in which Wagnerian elements curiously intertwine with impressionistic modalities.

1. Diepenbrock was a self-taught musician

Alphons Diepenbrock. Photo by Rijksmuseum. Wikimedia

Diepenbrock recognized his calling as a composer early on, despite the fact that he was self-taught in this field. He began by playing the organ, piano, violin, and viola. He also sang in the a cappella choir and later took swimming lessons with JM Messchaert.

Diepenbrock was known as a learned dilettante during his lifetime. The truth is that he had no formal training as a composer. As a result, there was some justification for his father’s skepticism about a career as a conductor.

Diepenbrock later regretted wasting so much time learning skills that others learned at a young age thanks to a good education. It’s remarkable that he almost entirely composed vocal music.

2. Alphons focused primarily on sacred choral music composition

His Catholic upbringing led him to focus primarily on sacred choral music; he wrote no symphonies, concertos, or instrumental sonatas. In 1962, an exhibition catalog of his works was published in Amsterdam.

He also published “Some Melodic Patterns in Alphons Diepenbrock’s Music,” composers’ Voice, 3 (1976/1).

3. Diepenbrock’s literary interests and philological studies influenced his vocal preference

Alphons Diepenbrock. Photo by Willem Witsen. Wikimedia

Perhaps the autodidact also struggled with the design of large instrumental works without the formal support of a text. Few musicians from the years 1885-1890 were familiar with the work of the Tachtigers, with whom he had become intimately acquainted as a student.

The composer had a fondness for Goethe, which was not unusual in the context of German-language art song. Later, he orchestrated 50 songs. In addition to these orchestrated keyboard songs, his songs written for voice and orchestra are among his best. In terms of orchestral song, Diepenbrock, along with Mahler, helped to shape this late-romantic genre, beginning with the two Hymns of the Night to Novalis (1899).

4. Diepenbrock wrote a cappella choir works as well as keyboard songs

A choir. Photo by Haley Rivera. Unsplash

The influence of Schumann and other German romantics can be seen in his choral compositions, and the example of Danil de Lange, who was a pioneer in the rediscovery of Dutch 16th-century polyphonic choral music at the time, was important. In the first period, these two elements, German Romanticism and Renaissance polyphony, left an indelible mark on Diepenbrock’s style.

In the 1890s, he worked harder to achieve a synthesis of both elements, which was crucial for his compositional technique. 

5. During the war, Alphons Diepenbrock took his patriotic role as a composer very seriously

Alphons Diepenbrock’s life was greatly influenced by the war. During the war, he took his patriotic role as a composer very seriously, writing songs opposing Germany. He was a member of the Ligue des Pays Neutres and wrote many anti-German articles and songs, including ‘Belges, debout’l and ‘Les poilus de l’Argonne.’

6. Diepenbrock was a product of his time in many ways

Alphons Diepenbrock. Photo by Willem Witsen. Wikimedia

The eclectic pursuit of a synthesis of strict Palestrina style and exuberant Wagner chromaticism fits neatly into the fin-de-siècle framework. His ideal style was achieved early on, for example, in the Stabat Mater dolorosa of 1888. Already, a strange combination of nostalgia for the purity of old polyphony and the passionate surrender of contemporary sensual art is emerging.

The censors of Roman Catholic Church music found it difficult to reconcile these extremes: as late as 1906, the censors’ committee rejected the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus because a certain passage appeared to be an accidental reminiscence with a fragment of Wagner’s Tannhauser. Diepenbrock’s reputation was cemented when he performed the Te Deum on the first evening of the Dutch Music Festival in 1902.

However, that was in the concert hall, and in the circles of church music composers, the principles of the Nederlandse Gregoriusvereniging were applied, which was a reflection of the Deutsche Cäcilienverein in Regensburg, founded in 1867, and which used exclusively the Gregorian and Palestrina styles as the foundations of Catholic Church music.

7. Diepenbrock struggled with discord stemming from his own formation

Aside from these conservative ideas, Diepenbrock struggled with a schism rooted in his own formation: that between Nietzsche’s contemporary German culture and late romanticism, and the Latin foundations of the Roman Catholic tradition.

This also explains why, after lavishly admiring Wagner and Richard Strauss in music and writing, he turned away from his father’s homeland’s Germanic culture before the First World War to express his connection with the Romanesque foundations of contemporary French civilization.

8. Alphons Diepenbrock developed a musical idiom that fused 16th-century polyphony with Wagnerian chromaticism

In later years, he added the impressionistic refinement he discovered in Debussy’s music. He was constantly polishing his music out of insecurity. Collaboration with directors and singers who were convinced of his work’s quality, on the other hand, always fortified and aided him.

9. Diepenbrock rose to prominence in musical circles as a result of the publication of the Mass

Alphons Diepenbrock. Photo by Wikimedia

This grew after the premiere of his Te Deum for four vocal soloists, double mixed choir, and orchestra in 1902. From around 1900, Diepenbrock frequently dedicated his major works to Willem Mengelberg, who was gaining international fame with the Concertgebouw Orchestra at the time.

Despite this, only a few of his works were published during his lifetime. The Diepenbrock Fund was in charge of publishing his music after his death.

10. Alphons first met his future wife Elsa at House Annastate in Den Bosch

This is where Alphons played Richard Wagner music. Wagner was admired by Elsa. Diepenbrock was hesitant to propose marriage. The combination of being a teacher and having artistic ambitions played a role. Elsa would be subordinate to the artist, who receives all the attention in that case. Alphons’ perverse enjoyment of his own melancholy also played a role.