Daniel Ruyneman

Daniël Ruyneman (8 August 1886 – 25 July 1963) was a Dutch composer and pianist.

Intended for marine service, Ruyneman travelled to India in his early years. He didn't begin studying music until the age of 18, and from 1913 to 1916 studied composition at the Amsterdam Conservatory with Bernard Zweers. He was initially influenced by Grieg, Debussy and Ravel, followed neoclassical trends (Partita for Strings, 1943, 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).[1]

In 1918 he 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.[2]

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. As part of this work he invented the Electrophone, an instrument consisting of various electric bells, playable from a keyboard. The unique cup-bells used for this were (according to some), specially cast by the bell foundry John Taylor & Co of Loughborough, England, though others say they were found by the composer in a London junk shop. The instrument was used in his 1918 chamber work Hiëroglyphs and later in the Symphonie Brève of 1927. However, the Electrophone was destroyed during World War II in an air raid on Rotterdam, so subsequent performances have substituted vibraphones.[3] Another set of works explores the use of "colour" vocal polyphony, in De roep, ("The Call", 1918) for chamber choir a cappella, using various vowels and consonants but no words, followed up in 1931 with the Sonata for Chamber Choir.[1]

Ruyneman's opera De Gebroeders Karamazov, follows Dostoyevsky. He also orchestrated fragments of Mussorgsky’s unfinished opera The Marriage in 1930, supplementing the missing parts with his own music.[1]