Divertimento facile

Composer Bertus van Lier was a versatile and determined intellectual. From the start of World World II he upheld his principles against the occupier. During and after the war he maintained this attitude towards those colleagues who were suspected of collaboration with the enemy. In compositions written during the war, Van Lier expressed his resistance to the deprivation of liberty, especially in his vocal works. After the liberation his work as composer diminished and he focused on his activities as a musicologist, pedagogue and publicist. by Diet Scholten location of manuscript: www.nederlandsmuziekinstituut.nl archive registration number 193/034 Introduzione recitando I-Tempo di scherzo Introduzione recitando II-Allegretto Commissioned by the Gemeente Amsterdam Program note: The commission from the muicipality of Amsterdam for 'a work for orchestra with a maximum for double woodwind, 2 French horns, 2 trumpets and 2 members of the percussion section' to last 'from 10 to 20 minutes' aroused in me the need to write an entertaining work not having an emphatically "symphonic" character, which would at the same time be received without special effort, in other words easily, by the public. 'Facile' consequently does not mean that the work is easy for the performers, since at certain points it is not. At first hearing, the work appears to have two movements: 1. Introduction a, Scherzo-trio-adagio-trio-scherzo and 2. Introduction b, Rondo (Finale) - but the two slow introductions (a + b) nevertheless imperceptibly carry some weight - almost the weight of an 'absent First Movement', while the adagio fragment, in the middle of the Scherzo, evokes associations of a 'slow movement' without there nevertheless being a more symphonic development thereof. There has been an effort in ths Divertimento not to delve so 'symphonically' into any of the divertissement should be violated. Towards the end, the principal material in the game forms a contrapuntal whole from which there afterwards nevertheless appears a connexion with previously contrasting elements. - BERTUS VAN LIER