Gaudeamus festival – Ton de Leeuw

2026 marks the centenary of Ton de Leeuw’s birth. During the Gaudeamus Muziekweek, the New European Ensemble and The Hague Vocal Ensemble, conducted by Angeliki Ploka, present a program centered around De Leeuw’s conception of music as a ritual act.

Midare, written for the Japanese marimba player Michiko Takahashi, is a virtuoso exploration of the instrument. The title (‘free’, ‘unorthodox’) refers to the open structure of the work, in which divergent playing techniques converge and the boundaries of what is executable are pushed to their limits.

In Invocations, the relationship between text, sound, and meaning takes center stage. The Latin texts are primarily drawn from the Psalms and the Missa pro defunctis, structuring the work from the De profundis clamavi ad te, via the Libera me, Domine, to later invocations such as Miserere mei. An instrumental interlude forms a turning point, after which the Gregorian melody is introduced and further developed, featuring a prominent role for both the choir and the solo voice. The work culminates in a concluding Amen.

Invocations is conceived as the third part of a trilogy, alongside Car nos vignes sont en fleur and And they shall reign for ever (both 1981). The three works are linked by their biblical texts and by a shared musical approach, which De Leeuw himself described as ‘extended modality’: a cyclically structured sound field, partly inspired by non-Western traditions such as raga, maqaam, and patet. In this music, sound does not appear merely as form, but as the bearer of a deeper, cohesive whole.