From the performance that took place on Friday, November 20, 1998, in the the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, by Het Reizend Muziekgezelschap (The Travelling Music Society) Chistiaan Bor (see picture) and Kerry McDermott, violins Giles Francis and Marcus Thompson, violas Eugene Osadchy, cello Rien Wisse, contrabass 0:00 III. Elegy - Sas Bunge in memoriam attacca: 7:38 IV. Finale My sextet for strings, opus 33, dedicated to Christiaan Bor and The Travelling Music Society, is more or less ‘autobiographical’. It is a piece with an ‘idée fixe’ theme, which contains both the initials of my chosen pseudonym and also the beginning of my name: AC-EddeB. A short description of each of the four movements could be as follows: I. An impactful traumatic experience II. On the surface, the damage appears to be not too bad III. Crisis after all, years later IV. Regeneration and new strength III. Elegy - Sas Bunge in memoriam After my time as a conservatory student, I received a number of composition commissions from radio, regional orchestras, choirs and chamber ensembles. However, the reviews of the compositions I wrote were mostly negative. I was mostly described as a fossil from a time gone by. And so I came to adopt a pseudonym, in Latin, a ‘dead language’: Alexander Comitas. The Latin word comitas means kindness, affability. The idea behind it was: I intend to always remain friendly and sympathetic on the subject of contemporary music, but as a composer I will keep pursuing my own path. The way I compose is not the result of ineptitude, but of a conscious and considered choice. See for example my articles Busoni's Garden (https://www.eduarddeboer.org/busonis-garden/) and Music and Spirituality (https://www.eduarddeboer.org/music-and-spirituality/). Meanwhile, the crisis, resulting from what is depicted in the first movement, came after all. A crisis on a personal level as well as in my composing, which for some time didn’t go well. Just before that I had met Maaike, my later – and present – wife. Fortunately for me, not always easy for her. She managed to help me out of the depression I fell into at the time, and I will always be grateful to her for sticking with me throughout this difficult period. The choice of the pseudonym had yet another background. Alexander refers to Ernst Alexander (Sas) Bunge, a piano major teacher at the Utrecht Conservatory during the time I studied there, and also a composer of some very beautiful pieces, including many songs. He attended the premiere of my Five Tolkien Songs and became interested in me, and his knowledge became a major influence on my composing. A few years later, he would become seriously ill. When he knew that he did not have long to live, he asked me if I would like to become a trustee of his musical legacy. Thus, after his death, I got to know many more of his compositions than I had known before, including a beautiful setting of François Villon’s poem Ballade des pendus (Ballad of the Hanged) for alto and orchestra. I created a version of this work for alto and piano that I performed with a singer friend, and had a modest part in having the version with orchestra performed again. In the third movement of the string sextet, the main theme from this Ballad is used as the central theme for an adagio full of grief, culminating towards the end of this movement (at rehearsal number 107, at 4:50) in a quotation of the first bars of Bunge's composition. 7:35 IV. Finale This movement is about (my) regeneration and recovery. This partly came about through the study of folk music from various parts of the world. I listened to lots of records with folk songs and dances, preferably as authentic as I could find, copied numerous melodies by ear, and I visited places like the Jaap Kunst Etnomusicological Institute in Amsterdam and the library of the musicology department of the Utrecht University, where I spent many hours copying books. As a result, I became acquainted with folk music from the Caucasus, and thus with the Armenian ethnomusicologist and composer Komitas. The last name of my pseudonym refers to him and in the final movement of the sextet some folk melodies from the Caucasus are quoted. Incidentally, in 2013 I ended the period of my pseudonym with a musical tribute to the Armenian Komitas, in the form of my third symphony (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA0DrmYppt8&t=3005s). ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmDlSPMFsaE

For general information about this Oratorio, see https://www.eduarddeboer.org/oratorio-toward-a-golden-future-pu-met-voorwerk/, pages v and vi. VIII. Over the Top, for choir and orchestra The various government measures to combat the pandemic inevitably led to occasional hilarious scenes, which we can now look back on with good-natured humor. An anthology. The text of the lyrics, including explanatory footnotes, can be read in the preface to the vocal score: https://www.eduarddeboer.org/oratorio-toward-a-golden-future-pu-met-voorwerk/, pages xv - xviii. This movement starts at page 61 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfrXVK2Iam8

This is an excerpt from a conversation about current times, together with fellow truth seekers and musicians Steven Walker and Ole Dammegard. The conversation can be heard in full here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/zdMCt53xx4UQ/. More information about the composition can be found here: https://www.eduarddeboer.org/toward-freedom-symphonic-poem-in-twelve-stanzas-op-100-version-for-orchestra-with-choir/. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0MwztNFswk

00:00 I. Andante amoroso 12:29 II Scherzo. Presto molto agitato 17:42 Cadenza 20:54 III. Tema con Variazioni I have tried to follow as closely as possible the various descriptions of the concerto as they appear in Thomas Mann’s novel. On top of this, it has opus number 34 and lasts 34 minutes, in line with Albrecht Dürer's Magic Square from his Melencolia I (1514), which plays an important part in the novel. Excerpts from the novel: From Chapter XXXIII: And suddenly (…) Rudi came to speak of the violin concerto (…). "And you would do it wonderfully (…) — with an unheard-of simple and singable first theme in the main movement that comes in again after the cadenza. That is always the best moment in the classic violin concerto, when after the solo acrobatics the first theme comes in again. (…) for my part you can have the allegro molto in the middle, a real 'Devil's trill,' and you can juggle with the rhythm, as only you can do, and the adagio can come at the end, as transfiguration — it couldn't be too unconventional, and anyhow I want to put that down, that it will make people cry. " From Chapter XXXVI: He was then, in the spring of 1924, in Vienna, where in the Ehrbar Hall and in the setting of one of the so-called Anbruch evenings Rudi Schwerdtfeger at last and finally played the violin concerto written for him. It was a great success, not least for Rudi himself. I say not least, and mean above all; for a certain concentration of interest on the art of the interpreter is inherent in the intention of the work(…). From Chapter XXXVIII: There is one strange thing about the piece: cast in three movements, it has no key-signature, but, if I may so express myself, three tonalities are built into it: B-flat major, C major, and D major, of which, as a musician can see, the D major forms a sort of secondary dominant, the B-flat major a subdominant, while the C major keeps the strict middle. Now between these keys the work plays most ingeniously, so that for most of the time none of clearly comes into force but is only indicated by its proportional share in the general sound-complex. Throughout long and complicated sections all three are superimposed one above the other, until at last, in a way electrifying to any concert audience, C major openly and triumphantly declares itself. There, in the first movement, inscribed "andante amoroso," of a dulcet tenderness bordering on mockery, there is a leading chord which to my ear has something French about it: c, g, e, b-flat, d, f-sharp, a, a harmony which, with the high f of the violin above it, contains, as one sees, the tonic chords of those three main keys. Here one has, so to speak, the soul of the work, also one has in it the soul of the main theme of this movement, which is taken up ag ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ7zZ76ED8A