Willem Jeths


Willem Jeths is a Dutch classical composer.

Early life

Jeths was born in Amersfoort. He started his musical career as a child with piano and music theory lessons in the Music School of Amersfoort with Paul Seeling. He originally studied in the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, from 1980 to 1982. He continued with composition in the Conservatory of Utrecht with Hans Cox and Tristan Keuris. He finished his studies with Keuris in 1988. Parallel to composition Jeths studied musicology at the University of Amsterdam. He completed his studies with a doctoral dissertation about Elisabeth Kuyper, which was later published in the book Zes vrouwelijke componisten.

Activities

Jeths is composition teacher at the Conservatory of Amsterdam since 2007. He was composition teacher at the Fontys Conservatory in Tilburg from 2003 to 2007. In the 2004–2005 season Jeths was composer-in-residence with Het Gelders Orkest and the Brabant Orchestra, and during the 2006–2007 season with the Orkest van het Oosten. In the year 2000 there was a three-day Willem Jeths Festival in Rotterdam.
In November 2014 he was appointed by copyright organization BUMA/STEMRA as the first "Componist des Vaderlands" of The Netherlands.

Compositions

Jeths has written many works for chamber music but he is mainly focused on works for orchestra.
Some of his compositions are:
Jeths won the Composition price from the Conservatory of Utrecht in 1988. His composition Novelette for violin and piano was selected for the ISCM World Music Days in 1990 in Oslo. During the Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Wettbewerb für Streichquartettkompositionen in Dresden in 1991, Jeths received a distinction award for his string quartet Arcate. The following year Jeths received another distinction for the same work, but in the string orchestra version, part of the Music for string compositions competition from the Oare String Orchestra in Kent.
His work Novelette was chosen by listeners of the radio program concertzender as the second prize for a competition celebrating 80 years of the existence of BUMA in 1993. In 1996, Jeths received the third prize in the Internationaler Wiener Kompositionswettbewerb for his violin concerto Glenz.