Daniël Ruyneman

Daniël Ruyneman (8 August 1886 – 25 July 1963) was a Dutch composer and pianist, and inventor of the Electrophone. Career Ruyneman was born in Amsterdam and travelled to India in his early years. He took piano lessons as a child but, intended for a career in marine service, he did not take a serious interest in music until the age of 18. From 1913 to 1916 he studied composition at the Amsterdam Conservatory with Bernard Zweers. In 1918 Ruyneman helped found the Society of Modern Dutch Composers (Nederlansche Vereeniging voor Mod-erne Scheppende Toonkunst), which in 1922 became the Dutch branch of the International Society for Contemporary Music. He was also president of the Netherlands Society for Contemporary Music from 1930 until 1962. In the 1920s he worked in Groningen, where he became associated with the expressionistic De Ploeg group of artists. Ruyneman made a special study of Javanese instruments. Before the war he established and edited Maandblad voor Hedendaagsche Muziek (Contemporary Music Monthly Magazine), which was banned during the German occupation of the Netherlands. He published a book about the Dutch composer Jan Ingenhoven in 1938. Ruyneman became director of the Stedelijk Museum Concerts in Amsterdam in 1950, a position he held until his death. Music He was initially influenced by Grieg, Debussy and Ravel, followed neoclassical trends (in pieces such as the Partita for Strings, 1943 and the Nightingale Quintet, 1949), produced some large scale romantic works (such as the Violin Concerto), and towards the end of his life experimented with serialism in the four Réflexions (1959-1961). Another set of works explores the use vocal polyphony as "colour", as in De roep, ("The Call", 1918) for chamber choir a cappella which uses various vowels and consonants but no words, followed up in 1931 with the Sonata for Chamber Choir. Ruyneman's opera De Gebroeders Karamazov, follows Dostoyevsky.