Jan van Dijk

Jan van Dijk (born June 4, 1918 in Oostzaan , † November 25, 2016 in Zwijndrecht ) was a Dutch composer and pianist.

Van Dijk had piano lessons from 1930 to 1935 with Henk Zanen and violin lessons with Johan van de Woude and was a piano student of Emile Eberle at the Rotterdam Music School in 1935 . At the Rotterdam Conservatory from 1936 to 1941 he studied piano with Jaap Callenbach , violin with Johan Warnars and composition with Willem Pijper , whose private student he was afterwards until 1946. He also took organ lessons from Ferdinand Timmermans .

From 1942 to 1944 van Dijk taught at the Toonkunst music school in Rotterdam. From 1946 to 1962 he taught harmony, counterpoint, theory and composition at the Rotterdam Conservatory. He was also a teacher at the Brabants Conservatorium in Tilburg from 1955 to 1983 and at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague from 1962 to 1977 . His students included u. a. Marinus Kasbergen , Joop Voorn , Henk Stoop , Kees Schoonenbeek , René Pieper and Tom de Vree .

Van Dijk was a juror at various competitions, wrote as a music critic a. a. for the Algemeen Handelsblad and was a co-founder of the Gouds Symphonie Orkest and the Nederlandse Pianola Vereniging . From 1936 to 1993 he worked as a church organist, as well as a conductor and accompanist for various amateur choirs and orchestras.

With over 700 works, van Dijk covered practically all musical genres: he composed orchestral and drama music, instrumental concerts, chamber music, choral, piano and organ works and songs. He received the Visser Neerlandia-prijs in 1959 and 1969 and the Willem Pijper-prijs in 1970 , was awarded the North Brabant Culture Prize in 1980 for his life's work and in 1991 he was given honorary citizenship of Gouda for his services to the city's musical life.

Web links

• Homepage of the Jan van Dijk Foundation with a detailed catalog raisonné
• In memoriam ( Memento from November 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive )