OBITUARY. By Emilio Moreno

The morning of August 19 was a cool and strange one, with sunshine and rain following each other in rapid succession. At the door of the imposing Oude Kerk, in the heart of the old part of Amsterdam, the hearse bearing the body of Frans Brüggen, heavily laden with floral tributes, was ready for its departure; two accompanying black cars for family members – with yet more flowers – stood at its side, adding further solemnity to the scene. The bells of the church were tolling slowly and sombrely whilst a crowd of passersby and tourist visitors who had gathered respectfully in the vicinity, were looking on at the densely-packed and silent group of friends and colleagues who were seeing Frans Brüggen off on his last journey, all conscious that, once the hearse had turned the corner of the church and had advanced into the surrounding network of narrow streets and canals, and had disappeared from view, Frans would never more be among us.

Minutes previously, the farewell ceremony for Frans Brüggen had taken place in the packed surroundings of the ancient church in Amsterdam’s red-light district; close and private, simple and straightforward, whilst charged with emotion, spoken contributions came from Brüggen’s wife, his daughters and from Sieuwert Verster, the manager of the Orchestra of the 18th Century. The ceremony was accompanied by the music of Bach, Schubert, Hotteterre and Scheidt, performed by friends, old pupils and companions of Brüggen.

Just around that corner, an incomparable epoch was taking its departure towards the infinite, an unconventional and iconoclastic musician, a standard bearer for the future and a fundamental cornerstone for what we call “early music”. Frans Brüggen the flautist was not satisfied with his instruments and with the limitations of the repertory which these imposed upon him: with his cultured and inquiring mind, he had – in the company of figures like Leonhardt, Harnoncourt, Schröder and Bijlsma – laid the foundations for a revolutionary new musical area, that of performance based on historical criteria. Continuing to believe in the vast range and universality of musical language, Brüggen set about searching for new horizons, be it with his friends from the ensemble Sour Cream, with the kinship and shared aspirations of figures like Luciano Berio, or with the adventure of creating a new orchestra which, by employing original instruments, would reconstruct and re-establish what had been dismissed and tainted by layer upon layer of tastes and trends.

Frans Brüggen was a teacher and taught in many places, but despite engendering an enormous stream of students who would go on to become great musicians, his calling as an educator and transmitter was that of a new approach to playing and hearing music – both of the past and of the present – and which led him in directions very different to that associated with a professorial chair: his concerts alongside Leonhardt and Bijlsma, that legendary “Baroque” trio, were never to be forgotten and continuous lessons in music which encouraged a whole generation of musicians and singers to map out and undertake their own professional paths, to confront their musical task from new guidelines and subjects.

Not content with the limits which his flutes – both the transverse and the recorder in which he was a supreme virtuoso – imposed on him, he founded his Orchestra of the 18th Century in 1981 in order to replenish a virtually undeveloped area of the repertory with the new ideas which from the second half of the 1960s onwards were reviving the world of performance and listening. What started out as an urge to discover new musical ideas turned into a relentless pursuit onwards and forwards, and from the initial idea of reconstructing the sound of the “new” orchestra of Mannheim which Mozart had been fascinated so much by, Frans Brüggen became an accomplished interpreter of those kinds of music which nobody in the early stages of the “early music” movement ever dreamt would be encompassed by that movement: Mozart, Haydn, necessary steps for progressing to Beethoven, from him to Schubert, Mendelssohn and as far as Brahms – even Stravinsky with “original instruments” – all taken in slow stages, meticulously considered and agreed upon with his orchestra.

Brüggen, a fabulous interpreter, was not a typical orchestral director; conducting without a baton, with gestures that were not always precise (but which were so expressive and so persuasive), he possessed, however, a magical gift for words and imagery. His was a beguiling way of making the music speak and reach to the depths of what one was listening to, never leaving anyone indifferent. Brüggen was astute, always surrounding himself with excellent musicians, never lowering his guard in the question of selecting repertory (“los experimentos con gaseosa” – in the sense of leaving nothing to chance – was a typical Spanish phrase which he understood and was wont to repeat). He was able, in a wonderful form of cooperation with his orchestra in which the “divo attitude” and the notion of “one-man rule” were completely out of place, to create a new musical language which, if it initially was reviled and disparaged by the more conservative layers in the musical establishment, thanks to Brüggen – and clearly to many other musicians who were either concurrently working with the same approach or who continue to do so – in the end it managed to convince everyone of the honesty of his thinking because of what emerged from his amazing manner of working and of explaining his wonderful experience of music.

With Frans Brüggen, who was on the point of reaching 80 years of age, departs an inimitable era, leaving us with a vacuum that is impossible to fill, but we are also left with a legacy, a manner of acting and a standard which will be difficult to forget. Frans Brüggen continues living in our memory and his seed has fallen on fertile ground. He has been the teacher, but his teachings have not fallen on deaf ears, and that is something which we have to be grateful to him for as much as for his legacy.