More or less self-taught, Gerard Drieman began composing at the age of nineteen in his native Amsterdam. His early works were composed in a neo-classical symphonic style, inspired by the music of Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler.
In 1936-1937, he composed his very extensive Second Symphony in three movements, the first two of which have been lost. Nevertheless, the third movement or Finale is in itself a comprehensive work for symphony orchestra and female choir (sopranos). Its Latin chorale is based on Prudentius’ religious hymn Deus ignee fons animarum. This Finale contains polytonal sections, in which various instruments play simultaneously in different keys. Polyrhythmics (different rhythms performed simultaneously) is also present. These stylistic forms were already known at the time by Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud and Charles Ives.
In 1936, while working as a salesman in the record shop of an uncle in the Van Baerlestraat in Amsterdam, close to the Concertgebouw, he met the German composer Hans Erich Apostel. The fourteen-year-old Apostel, who lived in Vienna, was at the time in Amsterdam representing the Viennese music publishing company Universal Edition. Apostel had studied with Arnold Schönberg and Alban Berg, and as a composer belonged to the so-called Second Viennese School. Drieman invited Apostel and showed him his work. The Viennese composer then presented Drieman with some musical suggestions. After their meeting, Drieman and Apostel stayed in contact through correspondence.
From 1938 onwards a change occurred in Drieman’s music. His compositions remained very limited in scope and tended more and more towards a musical form of expressionism, related to the Second Viennese School. The atonal idiom was applied, although the structure of his work is not strictly serial. The rather short compositions contain sequences of musical sounds or tones, without any repetition of a motif. In summary, Drieman’s later work can be considered expressionist music, in which some dissonant sounds are deliberately present. (In contrast to tonal music, in Expressionism a dissonant has no reciprocal relationship to a consonant). In this late work, the dissonant was used as a stand-alone expression, helping to create a certain amount of tension within these pieces of music. Differentiation and contrast of sound, timbre and tempo became essential. A typical feature of Drieman’s music in general is the presence of slow movements with an exceptionally low tempo.
From 1938 onwards a change occurred in Drieman’s music. His compositions remained very limited in scope and tended more and more towards a musical form of expressionism, related to the Second Viennese School. The atonal idiom was applied, although the structure of his work is not strictly serial. The rather short compositions contain sequences of musical sounds or tones, without any repetition of a motif. In summary, Drieman’s later work can be considered expressionist music, in which some dissonant sounds are deliberately present. (In contrast to tonal music, in Expressionism a dissonant has no reciprocal relationship to a consonant). In this late work, the dissonant was used as a stand-alone expression, helping to create a certain amount of tension within these pieces of music. Differentiation and contrast of sound, timbre and tempo became essential. A typical feature of Drieman’s music in general is the presence of slow movements with an exceptionally low tempo.
After 1933, atonal music in Germany was officially branded by the Nazis as entartet, degenerate. After the so-called Anschluß of Austria in 1938, atonal music was banned there as well, which was shortly afterwards also the case in all occupied territories, including the Netherlands from 1940 onwards. In the years after the war, appreciation for so-called ‘modern’ music hardly returned. The Second Viennese School had in fact ceased to exist after 1945. Arnold Schönberg, who was Jewish, emigrated to America in 1933, Anton Webern died in Austria in 1945, and Alban Berg had already died in 1935. After the war, in the relatively austere years of reconstruction, modern experimental music was not particularly appreciated.
Gerard Drieman, who had married after the war in September 1945, worked in almost complete isolation. His almost exclusive contacts in the field of music were Apostel and a few musician friends, including violinist Herman Salomon. Both his wife and neighbours disliked his exercises at the piano – the daily repetition and development of experimental pieces of music. He did not succeed in having his works published or performed. As he suffered from severe asthma, he was unable to perform his own works on the piano in front of an audience. In 1950, he composed his last works. After the presumably difficult decision to stop, his attention went in directions that had nothing to do with his former musical life. He radically set music aside in all respects. Even in 1954 Apostel wrote to him that he regretted this decision, but for Drieman his music remained a closed chapter. Shortly before his death in 1980, however, he unexpectedly declared that his music, although he had not touched it for thirty years, was his life’s work. Recognition came only after his death. Most of his works were published posthumously.