Wim Mertens - Struggle for Pleasure ( Very beautiful!)

 



Wim Mertens - Struggle for Pleasure  (演奏版）



Film - Al di la dei sogni, con Robin Williams in una grande interpretazione.

Struggle For Pleasure is the name of a song released in 1983 by Belgian composer Wim Mertens. It is the theme song used by the Belgian Proximus phone operator. It featured in the Peter Greenaway movie The Belly of an Architect. It was also covered by Belgian dance music group Minimalistix in 2000 and reached dance charts across Europe.

Wim Mertens (b. Neerpelt, Belgium, May 14, 1953) is a Flemish Belgian composer, countertenor vocalist, pianist, guitarist, and musicologist.

Mertens studied social and political science at the University of Leuven (graduating in 1975) and musicology at Ghent University; he also studied music theory and piano at the Royal Conservatories of Ghent and Brussels.

In 1978, he became a producer at the then BRT (Belgian Radio and Television, now called Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroep). For Radio 2 (Radio Brabant) he produced concerts by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Urban Sax, and others, and hosted a program called Funky Town together with Gust De Meyer (with whom he recorded the experimental CD For Amusement Only).

Known primarily as a composer since the late 1970s, Mertens is best known for his opus "Struggle for Pleasure". He is also well known for his piece "Maximizing the Audience", which was composed for Jan Fabre's play The Power of Theatrical Madness, which premiered in 1984 in Venice, Italy.

Mertens' style has continually evolved during the course of his prolific career, starting from downright experimental and avant-garde, always gravitating around minimalism, usually, however, preserving a melodic foundation to the forays that he makes into the worlds that he is exploring. His compositional quality has often overweighted the "labelling issue" and reached wider audiences although stemming from a far-from-mainstream musical context (see section In Popular Culture).

Mertens' music was used in the 1987 Peter Greenaway film The Belly of an Architect, along with that of Glenn Branca as well as in the Dutch-British film Shadow Man (1988), directed by Piotr Andrejew.

Mertens is the author of American Minimal Music^[1], which looks at the school of American repetitive music.

In March 1998 Mertens became the Cultural Ambassador of Flanders.

In August 2007 Mertens signed a contract with EMI Classics for his entire catalog^[2]. The label has prepared an ambitious re-release plan of his back-catalog which will start in January 2008. His "oeuvre intégrale" will be made available digitally and worldwide. But first EMI Music Belgium released Mertens' newest (51st) 9-track album Receptacle on September 24. For this album Mertens decided to work with an orchestra consisting of only women, 17 in total. It is not the first time that Mertens has worked together with EMI. Already in 1999 Mertens released the soundtrack to the Paul Cox film Father Damian via EMI Classics.

About Wim Mertens http://www.wimmertens.be/web/wmertens/docs/biography/frame_biography.html