ABSTRACT
Maja Trochimczyk: I would like to start asking questions about the musical story of your life from a discussion of painting. There is a picture on the wall next to the kitchen door, which appears also on the cover of one recording of De Stijl.1 You mentioned in passing that it is “your” painting. Could you tell me more about it? Louis Andriessen: If I do, you will have to make sure that you can have it printed in the book. The painting is clearly from Paris from the 1920s: you may recognize the fashion of clothes worn by the women, about 1928 or 29, and you may see the little silhouettes of the Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame cathedral. Why is this painting mine? My parents took me to their friend’s house during the war; I was four or five years old. During the visit they let me run around the house; I came back from the attic with a linen roll and I showed it to my parents. “Look, what I have found!” It was this painting. Then the host said to me, “If you like it so much, you may have it.” So my father bought a frame for it and here it is. Through my youth it was hanging in the house of my parents. Later, when I started to live on my own as a student, I took it with me; it was OK because it was my painting. It always was “my” painting.
