June 2017

Eduard de Boer

Eduard de Boer (b. 1957) is a Dutch composer, music educator, conductor and pianist. He is also known as his pseudonym: Alexander Comitas .

Eduard de Boer was born in 1957. He studied piano with Thom Bollen, and composition with Hans Kox at the Utrecht Conservatory in Utrecht, The Netherlands. He then studied orchestral conducting with Anton Kersjes at the Maastricht Conservatory in Maastricht, The Netherlands. From 1981 to 1990, he worked as a free-lance pianist for the orchestras and choir of the Dutch radio. After that, he decided to dedicate himself entirely to composing.

Since 1981, he has received a nearly continuous stream of commissions. He composed an orchestral overture on the occasion of the opening of the Enschede Music Centre in 1988, which he later reworked into his “Caucasian Epode” for wind orchestra. For the opening season of the Eindhoven Frits Philips Music Centre (1992), he wrote the cantata “The Wedding of the Moon and Sun”, and composed his first violin concerto for the opening of the Tilburg Concert Hall, in 1996.

He has composed three operas, two symphonies, two ballets, two string quartets and many other works, including compositions for choir, symphony orchestra and wind orchestra. Several of his compositions for wind orchestra have served as test pieces for the concert department during the World Music Contests WMC in Kerkrade, The Netherlands. In 1995, he wrote “Armenian Rhapsody No. 1 for symphonic wind orchestra and, in 2001, “A Night on Culbin

Sands” for symphonic wind orchestra. His “Vita Aeterna Variations” for brass band were composed as a response to an invitation to write the A section test piece for the 2012 European Brass Band Competition EBBC in Rotterdam.

His opera with wind orchestra titled “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was premiered at the WMC in 2013. Apart from his composing activities, he has been active as a pianist, as a jury member

of composition and piano contests and occasionally as a conductor of his own works. He also

teaches courses and lectures on composing at the Leopold Mozart Centre of the Augsburg University.

YouTube:

Eduard de Boer: Prelude to a New Era, version for fanfare orchestra

Cory Band & Robert Childs – Vita Aeterna Variations closing bars

Alexander Comitas: Sacrum Sacramentum, for fanfare orchestra

Alexander Comitas: The Witches’ Cauldron. Version for wind orchestra

Excerpts from Devil’s Dance by Alexander Comitas

Alexander Comitas: Devil’s Dance, inspired by the Norwegian Folk Melody Fanitullen

Alexander Comitas: Armenian Rhapsody Nr. 2 (1996)

Alexander Comitas: Symphony Nr. 3 ‘A Tribute to Komitas’. Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy

Alexander Comitas: Elegy for Tohoku

Works for Wind Orchestra or Wind Ensemble

A Night on Culbin Sands, Op. 38 no. 1

Armenian Rhapsody no. I, Op. 22

Armenian Rhapsody no. II, Op. 32

Caucasian Epode, Op. 19

De Heksenketel (The Witches’-Cauldron), Op. 38 no. 2

Homage to Dmitri Shostakovich, Op. 4 (Comitas/Scheepers)

Marsch-Zyklus (Kagel/Comitas)

De Heksenketel (The Witches’-Cauldron), Op. 38 no. 2a

Macbeth. Music after Act I of Shakespeare’s Play

Ode to Lilith, Op. 45 no. 2

Sacrum Sacramentum, Op. 46