D'Haene, Frederic

Frederic D’Haene is a Flemish avant-garde composer and the originator of a distinctive compositional approach that he himself describes as ‘paradoxophony’ or ‘paradoxical coexistence’. He was introduced to music at an early age by his father, who played both classical music and jazz on the piano. Around the age of fourteen, he began composing intensively, initially producing short sketches on a daily basis. He studied musicology at Ghent University and composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Liège, where his teachers included Frederic Rzewski, Walter Zimmermann, Henri Pousseur and Vinko Globokar. A decisive moment was his discovery of Japanese gagaku music, which led to works in which Eastern and Western traditions coexist.

D’Haene’s music does not proceed from a single style or dogma, but from a pronounced pluralism. Contrasts are not resolved but deliberately brought together: modality and atonality, fixed and changing tempi, silence and masses of sound, control and aleatoric procedures. This aesthetic of coexistence permeates harmony, rhythm and form. His output, much of it written on commission, includes orchestral works, chamber music and vocal music, and has been performed internationally by leading ensembles. Following a period of serious illness, he resumed work on a large-scale project: the opera Resist to Exist, centred on freedom and power.