Matty NiĆ«l decides at an early age to devote his life to music. His time as a student of Anton Webern is the most important period of his education. He composes an extensive body of works. Many of these are written on commission or funded by grants from the Dutch government, the Regionale Omroep Zuid [Regional Southern Broadcasting Company] and the BRT [Belgian Radio and Television]. His list of works shows a wide variety of instrumental and vocal settings: piano, organ and guitar, solo sonatas for violin, viola and cello, chamber music, many songs, cantatas, Masses, choral works, orchestral works, a piano concerto, and an opera on Georg Buchner’s Leonce and Lena. NiĆ«l sought in his music to return to the source – the Middle Ages – to discover in looking back from that starting point what was actual and permanent through the ages. According to NiĆ«l, the technique a composer chose was immaterial; what was important was how one made it one’s own. In his words: āMusic must become dialect. Only then can one speak of styleā. During his lifetime NiĆ«l often run into miscomprehension of his music. He dies before many of his works are performed or published.