Dick Raaijmakers

Dick Raaijmakers (Maastricht, 1 September 1930 – The Hague, 4 September 2013), also known as Dick Raaymakers or Kid Baltan, was a Dutch composer, theater maker and theorist.

He is considered a pioneer in the field of electronic music and tape music, but has also produced numerous musical theater pieces and theoretical publications.

Raaijmakers studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

Raaijmakers studied at the Koninklijk Conservatorium The Hague until 1953.

From 1954 to 1960, he worked at Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. in Eindhoven in the electro-acoustic field.

Under the pseudonym Kid Baltan, a anadrome of "Dik Natlab" – Raaijmakers' nickname, he realized three tests of popular music with the help of electronic means.

This work has been collected and re-released under the name Popular Electronics.

From 1954 to 1960, he worked in the field of electro-acoustic research at the NatLab of Royal Philips Electronics Ltd. in Eindhoven.

Using the alias Kid Baltan (Dik NatLab reversed), he and Tom Dissevelt formed Electrosoniks and produced some of the very first electronic pop music.

From 1954 to 1960, he worked at Philips in the field of electroacoustics, after which he was a research assistant at the Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht until 1962.

Early Dutch electronic music from Philips Research Laboratories, 1956-1963.

The most important LP of these two artists is The Fascinating World Of Electronic Music published in Netherlands in 1959.

Two years before, one of the tracks on the album (Song of the 2nd Moon) was published separately.

Nine years later was the launch of the US version of the LP entitled Song Of The Second Moon.

Jean-Jacques Perrey visited them at the time and cited them as an inspiration.

From 1960 to 1962, he was affiliated with the University of Utrecht as a researcher.

From 1960 to 1962, he held an appointment as scientific staff member at the University of Utrecht.

In the early 1960s, Raaijmakers composed a number of electroacoustic works such as Vijf canons, Flux and Plumes.

From 1963 to 1966, he worked with Jan Boerman in a self-established studio for electronic music in The Hague.

From 1963 to 1966, he collaborated with Jan Boerman in his own studio for electronic music in the Hague.

He was one of the co-founders of STEIM, the STudio for Electro-Instrumental Music.

From 1963 to 1966, he ran a studio for electroacoustic music in The Hague with Jan Boerman.

From 1966 until his retirement in 1995, he worked as a teacher of Electronic and Contemporary Music at the Royal Conservatory (The Hague) and from 1991 as a teacher of music theater at the interfaculty of Sound and Vision of the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Antwerp).

Raaijmakers was born as Bernardus Franciscus Raaijmakers in Maastricht and studied the piano at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

In 1966, he founded the electronic music studio at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and lectured on electronic and contemporary music until his retirement in 1995.

Between 1967 and 1972, he created "photokinetic objects", which were exhibited in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1971 and in the Gemeentemuseum The Hague in 1972.

De grafische methode tractor was created in 1976 and De grafische methode fiets in 1979, two pieces based on the work of film pioneer Etienne-Jules Marey.

In 1977, the audiovisual production Mao leve!

Was born.

Between 1981 and 1984 Raaijmakers created a series of productions for tape, film, theater and percussion ensemble that revolved around the film Night Owls by Laurel and Hardy (Shhh !, The Microman, The Soundman, The Soundwall, Ow! And Come on!).

In 1983, Ping-Pong was created, a stereo radio production about a table tennis game between Louis Andriessen and Cornelis de Bondt.

The following year, Ecstasy (in memoriam Josine van Droffelaar) was performed, for which Raaijmakers received the Matthijs Vermeulenprijs.

The series for which Raaijmakers composed the music was performed at the 1984 Holland Festival.

In 1985, he designed a neon sculpture for the new building of the Groningen City Conservatory.

In the 1990s, a series of works for music theater was created: Intona (1991), Dépons / Der Fall (1992), The happy hand / open (1993), Der Fall / Dépons (1993), De promenoir van Mondriaan, (1994 ), De val van Mussolini (1995) and Scheuer im Haag (1995).

Raaijmakers' oeuvre covers a wide variety of genres and styles, varying from sound animations for films to extremely abstract pulse structures, from "action music" to infinite voice patterns, from electro-acoustic tableaux vivants to extracts of music theatre.

From 1991, he taught music theatre at the Image and Sound Interfaculty at the same conservatory.

Until 1995, he taught electronic music, from 1991 electronic music for musical theater at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague.

He died on 3 September 2013.

His archives are preserved at the Netherlands Music Institute.