Rudolf Escher (8 January 1912 in Amsterdam – 17 March 1980 in De Koog) was a Dutch composer and music theorist. He left compositions for chamber orchestra and orchestra, vocal and one electronic composition. Escher was also a poet, painter and writer.
Biography
Youth
Escher was born the son of the geologist and mineralogist Berend George Escher and the Swiss Emma Brosy. His father was a son of the engineer George Arnold Escher and half-brother of the graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher. At the age of four, Escher moved with his family to Batavia, Dutch East Indies, where his father worked as a geologist for the Batavian Petroleum Company. His father was a good pianist and he gave the young Escher piano lessons.
Study
In 1922, five years later, they were back in the Netherlands, now in Leiden. Escher went to the Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden and continued his piano lessons, now with Bé Hartz. He also played the violin and got harmony lessons. After four years he quit school. At first he could not choose between music, visual arts and letters but in 1929 he decided to become a composer. Next he wanted to go to the conservatoire in Cologne. The Dutch composer Peter van Anrooy advised him to study piano. On second thoughts Escher went to the Toonkunst Conservatoire in Rotterdam in 1931. Until 1937 he studied the piano as major with the cello as minor. From 1934 to 1937 he also studied composition with Willem Pijper as his teacher. Escher's debut was in 1935 with his First piano sonata. He also attracted attention in 1938 with an important essay: Toscanini and Debussy, magic of reality. In this essay his views towards composing are evident. He also wrote a few poems, which were published in Forum.
Work
When the Second World War expanded into the Netherlands, many of Escher's compositions from his study period were destroyed in the bombing of Rotterdam on 14 May 1940. He also lost his house and all his possessions.
During the war Escher composed Musique pour l'esprit en deuil (1941–43). This work quickly elevated him to be the most important composer in the Netherlands. About the compositions from the war, he wrote: 'My work from this period has got a sort of gravity, a doggedness here and there, which makes it clearly to realize as grown amid disasters. For me, personally, that is the ethical significance of it: they are constructions of the mind, in a time that 'mind' (if you can still call it that way) is used almost exclusively for destructive purposes.’
Soon after the war Escher was a contributor about visual arts and music for the weekly Groene Amsterdammer. He turned out to be a talented poet, publishing poetry in literary magazines into the 1950s. Socially he had little to complain about; he was offered several administrative functions, his compositions were successfully performed, and his publications were followed with interest.
After 1946 Escher befriended the Dutch composer Matthijs Vermeulen. They shared the same social and literary interests and communist ideals. They had enough trust in each other so that they could write critically about the others' compositions. Escher's communist ideals were expressed in his membership of the Communist Party (from 1934 to 1940). He wrote a few critiques for the monthly communist periodical Politics and Culture, using the pseudonym A. Leuvens. During the 1950s he became critical of Russian communism, which he considered a failure. What remained was his leftist political orientation.