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Lennaert Nijgh
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Lennaert Nijgh was a Dutch lyricist. He was born in Haarlem in 1945 and grew up in Heemstede. At the Coornhert Lyceum he was at school with his childhood friend Boudewijn de Groot. Later he studied at the Film Academy, without finishing it. In an 8mm film by Nijgh, De Groot sang two songs, and the newsreader Ed Lautenslager then put the duo in touch with the record company Phonogram. Ernst van Altena, the translator of Jacques Brel, became a kind of mentor to Nijgh.
Music and breakthrough
The duo's first hit was Een meisje van 16, an adaptation of a ballad by Charles Aznavour. With Welterusten mijnheer de president, about the war in Vietnam, De Groot became known as a protest singer. Het Land van Maas en Waal and Prikkebeen followed. In 1968 they split up, because De Groot felt the lyrics no longer suited him, but in 1973 they worked together again on the LP Hoe sterk is de eenzame fietser, which was a great success. It included Avond, which in 2005 finished at the top of the Top 2000. Nijgh also wrote for Liesbeth List, Ramses Shaffy, Jasperina de Jong, Rob de Nijs and his first wife Astrid Nijgh, among others, and translated chansons by Aznavour and Brel.
Influence
Nijgh liked to work with old forms such as the rederijkers' ballad (the ballad form of the medieval Dutch chambers of rhetoric) and the acrostic. His lyrics are full of references to painters, writers and Bible stories, and deal with love, peace and current affairs. In this way he gave the Dutch-language pop song a literary depth that had until then been rare. He died in 2002. Since 2014 there has been a Lennaert Nijgh Prize for the best lyricist.
Listening
In School of Rock
The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.
- Mixtape 11: NederpopNL Reader
Mentioned in other articles
- Kleinkunst Genre
Around 1965 that tradition shifted towards pop, when Boudewijn de Groot sang songs to lyrics by Lennaert Nijgh, inspired by American folk and Bob Dylan.
- Welterusten mijnheer de president Song
The lyrics were written by Lennaert Nijgh.