On 9 October 2022 at 11:00 a.m., a documentary about Leo de Vries (1924–2018) will be shown at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam (and afterwards online), made by Sharis Coppens and Sander Germanus on behalf of the Huygens-Fokker Foundation. De Vries was a violinist, composer and music theorist, specialised in microtonality. He studied violin at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and until 1985 worked successively as a violinist with the Groninger Orkest Vereniging and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1977 onwards he developed a ‘quarter-tone music’ based on the meantone technique. For the performance of this music he had a special guitar and a harpsichord (1980) built. From 1980 to 1988 he published several articles on microtonality. He was also part of the Rotterdam microtonal group. For this he had special instruments built and published articles on microtonal systems. In 1983 he introduced a transposing principle for quarter-tone genera that is applicable to all tone systems. In the feature, the footage of which was largely recorded in 2014 at De Vries’ home in Capelle aan den IJssel, one gets a clear picture of the remarkable musical world of this seasoned violinist and microtonal music-theoretical thinker. Watch the documentary ‘The musical world of Leo de Vries’ here.
The ‘new’ online archive
In addition to our new website, the Huygens-Fokker Foundation has an extensive online archive, which largely consists of the contents of the former website that had been online since 2008. Although the design of this old website is now somewhat dated, it contains a...



















