Instrumentation: Wind Band / Concert Band
Duration: 4’30 min.
Grade: 5
Price Digital Score: € 19,-
Price Complete Digital Set: € 39,-
‘The Great Dutchman’ (Revised 2025 Version) can be ordered as a complete download (single score or as a complete set) from the Sonolize website (www.sonolize.com). For viewing a score example, listening to a recording and for ordering this work, you can click here. The Sonolize website can be viewed in the English and Dutch language.
Program Notes:
‘The Great Dutchman’ was composed by Joop van Dijk for the celebration of the 400th birthday of Michiel
Adriaenszoon de Ruyter in the “Michiel de Ruyter year” in 2007. This great Dutchman (maybe even the
greatest) en sea hero was born in the Dutch town of Vlissingen on 24 March 1607. In that year the composer Claudio Monteverdi wrote his most famous work, the Orfeo, a composition that
is regarded as the first classical opera. During the life of De Ruyter, a famous Dutch composer by the name of Adriaen Valerius, composed and arranged a whole range of songs and folksongs. After his death, these were published under the title ‘Nederlandtsche Gedenck-Clanck’. Two of these songs are ‘Merck toch hoe sterck’ and the ‘Wilhelmus’, the national anthem of the Netherlands.
In ‘The Great Dutchman’ the composer has used a combination of the musical styles and techniques of
Claudio Monteverdi and Adriaen Valerius, who lived at the same time as De Ruyter. Because of this, the
character of this work resembles the music of that time.
‘The Great Dutchman’ was premiered by the Marine Band of the Royal Dutch Navy conducted by Pieter Janssen on 11 November 2006 in Concerthall The Doelen in Rotterdam.
