Péter Louis van Dijk

(1953-) Music director, composer.

Biography and career

Born in Rotterdam. Relocated with his family to Cape Town when he was a child. He attended Athlone Boys High School and as a teenager took piano lessons. In 1984, he joined CAPAB as assistant music manager, and from 1986 he pursued a freelance career as a composer. He subsequently went on to teach in high schools in the western cape, as well as at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Western Cape. In 1998, he was appointed senior lecturer in Composition and Musicology at Rhodes University. He relocated to Port Elizabeth in 2003, and joined the faculty of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

In November 2009, van Dijk was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

Training

B.Mus (at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town). He obtained a Teacher's Licentiate Diploma from Trinity College London. He received his Doctoral degree from UCT in 2004. In 2016, he was the resident composer at th Johannesburg International Mozart Festival.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

As composer

He composed the operettas (presented by UCT Opera Company):

• The Contract (1973)
• Die Noodsein (1975)

He composed for several works on commission for CAPAB, including

• The Fall of the House of Usher
• Francis (1985)
• Fiela se Kind (1986)
• Twelfth Night (at Maynardville, 1990)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (1994)

Works for Cape Town Opera:

• Macbeth (directed by Brett Bailey) (2001), van Dijk 'Africanised' the score.
• earthdiving (2003) (a techno-opera composed by Mokale Koapeng with Péter Louis van Dijk and Martin Phipps, with text by Nancy Duigud and Nan Hamilton).
• Mandela Trilogy (2010)
• Out of Time (2010)

As musical director

• Fiela se Kind (1986)

Sources

Fiela se Kind theatre programme, 1986.

Wayne Muller. 2018. A reception history of opera in Cape Town: Tracing the development of a distinctly South African operatic aesthetic (1985–2015). Unpublished PhD thesis.

Keith Moss. 2017. The complete works of Péter Louis van Dijk. University of Pretoria. Unpublished DMus thesis.

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