Dutch Invasion

For March Madness, a Sports Factoid...

Towering at 6 feet - 10 inches, Dutchman Kenneth van Kempen plays basketball for the Ohio Bobcats. He is a Senior at Ohio University, but his hometown is Weert in the Netherlands.

http://www.ohiobobcats.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/vankempen_kenneth00.html

---------------

Notenkrakers

Yesterday at Harvard University, composer Rob Zuidam delivered the second of three lectures on contemporary Dutch music. The ongoing series is presented by the Harvard Music Department in conjunction with the Erasumus Lectures on History and Civilization of the Netherlands and Flanders.

Zuidam focused on what's known as Hoketus - or "ensemble culture" in the Netherlands and how it evolved.

It really all began in 1966 when a group of five Dutch composers organized to protest against the artistic direction taken by the Concertgebouw Orchestra. The group called themselves The Five and led a larger group known as Notenkrakers ("Nutcrackers" - which has multiple meanings, including "note" and "nut").

The Notenkrakers wanted the orchestra to hire Bruno Maderna as a second conductor to work along side with their current Music Director, Bernard Haitink. Maderna was perhaps the leading conductor of contemporary music at that time.

Over the course of the next few years little progress was made by Concertgebouw to purge the conservatism from their programs and inject music composed by the younger generation of Dutch composers (such as members of The Five). The Notenkrakers made little if any progress with the Concertgebouw managements on this matter.

It all came to a head in November of 1969 when The Notenkrakers stormed in and disturbed a concert about to begin in the Concertgebouw. This "notenkrakersactie" (nutcracker action) was a historic event that some say changed level of acceptance of new music in Holland.

Just before Haitink was able to complete his initial downbeat, the protesters had skillfully disrupted the concert with their noise makers and megaphones. The group of students passed out leaflets and confronted the orchestra and audience.

Peter Schat (1935-2003), a member of The Five, used his megaphone to demand that Bernard Haitink come down off the podium and address The Notenkrakers and the audience in an open public discussion. The confrontation instilled a a minor riot, and the police were soon called to eject the protesters from the concert hall.

Besides Peter Schat, members of The Five included Misha Mengelberg (b. 1935), Louis Andriessen (b. 1939), and Reinbert de Leeuw (b. 1938) - all of which had studied with the composer Kees van Baaren.

To the disappointment of The Notenkrakers , their protest was denounced by their philosophical mentor: Matthijs Vermeulen. The Five had held Vermeulen (who was the subject of Zuidam's first lecture) in high regard for his harsh reviews of the Concertgebouw and their lack of interest in performing contemporary music. But to their surprise, Vermeulen released a public statement that The Five was off-base. Vermeulen wrote that hiring Bruno Maderna would be impractical and that Concertgebouw actually supported modern music rather well compared to other international orchestras.

Undeterred, throughout the 1970s and into the early 80s, members of The Five independently formed and led ad hoc new music ensembles throughout Holland. Effectively, younger Dutch composers had largely abandoned the idea of the symphony orchestra as an instrument in favor of more responsive new music ensembles that were fluid and dynamic. Louis Andriessen's group Hoketus is a prime example of the resulting "ensemble culture" which continues on today.

(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oNZtjnOjSY )

In the end, the incident of the November 1969 notenkrakersactie when The Notenkrakers stormed in at the Concertgebouw resulted in a positive change for musical performance in the Netherlands. The Five has been credited with "shaking Dutch musical life out of its suffocating provincialism."

Links:

www.Robertzuidam.com/essays

http://deconstructing-jim.blogspot.com/2010/02/discovering-vermeulen.html

-------------------

Discovering Vermeulen

Visiting Dutch composer Rob Zuidam delivered the first of three public lectures at Harvard on Thursday afternoon. Zuidam (b. 1964) holds the distinction of being Harvard's "Erasmus Visiting Professor" for the Spring of 2010. The Erasmus Lectures are dedicated to the History and Civilization of the Netherlands and Flanders, and funded by a generous endowment. I already know of Zuidam from hearing some of his music in the 90s when his "Three Mechanisms" was performed at Tanglewood. Since then he has composed four operas.


From Room 2 of the music building (directly adjacent to the composer's office), Zuidam chose for the subject of his first Erasmus lecture a rather obscure Dutch composer from the 20th century. The talk was about a composer who is still rarely heard outside of his native country today, and who was virtually ignored for most of his career within Holland as well. His name was Matthijs Vermeulen (not to be confused with the famous Grand Prix motorcycle racing champ, Chris Vermeulen).


Matthijs Vermeulen (1888-1967) was by all accounts a maverick. He was known for his sharp tongue and outspokenness as a music critic (his primary source of income). He famously yelled "Long live Sousa" after a performance at the Concertgebouw of a piece by Cornelius Dopper - a rather conventional Dutch composer. Vermeulen didn't like music that derived from the Germanic tradition, and he was no fan of Sousa. To make matters worse, much of the audience thought he was shouting the name of a socialist revolutionary who had a attempted to bring down the Dutch government a few days prior. Vermeulen was banned from attending future concerts by the management of the Concertgebouw.


His Second Symphony (page two of the score is shown below) is without a doubt his best-known work.

Vermeulen composed this symphony in 1920. The piece has a complex main theme with no particular tonal center, which is constructed from large interval jumps and a mixture of chromatic/whole-tone interval structures. The theme goes through an elaborate development process which Vermeulen may have honed from his study of the Dutch polyphonic composers. Underneath the relentless counterpoint and thematic development, the Second Symphony pounds away in tone-clusters and a battery of non-pitched percussion instruments. It's very reminiscent of Edgard Varèse - although Vermeulen most definitely came upon his unique stylistic bent quite independently.

The maverick aspect of Vermeulen's career is not unlike that of Charles Ives in America. Vermeulen didn't get along with Mengelberg, the omni-present and all-powerful Music Director of the Concertgebow Orchestra. He frequently hammered the conductor in his published music criticism, and this rift probably resulted in his orchestral music being ignored by conductors for decades - at least in the cultural capital of Amsterdam. Although his Second Symphony was composed in 1920, it did not receive a reading until 1953 at what was said to be a flawed performance. Vermeulen himself first heard this work in 1956 - a full 36 years after he wrote it.

Vermeulen lived in near abject poverty with his family, and had to leave Amsterdam for a journalism position near Paris. In France, he lived in self-imposed exile for decades. His music was largely ignored both in Holland and abroad. His vision of what 20th century music composition should be was in sharp contrast to both the prevailing Stravinsky-inspired neo-classicism and those who adhered to Schoenberg's 12-tone school compositional process. Vermeulen had in fact invented his own musical language which only he was able to converse in. Somehow he found the means to survive in his own self-invented bubble without falling victim to the effects of bitterness, anger, or dejection.

Eventually Vermeulen returned from France to the Netherlands. Toward the end of his life the Dutch took a second look at his music, and Vermeulen ultimately received more frequent performances of his work. Although recordings have finally been made of most of Vermeulen's work, according to Rob Zuidam's comment in the Q&A session following the talk, "it does not travel well." It's not easy to obtain his CDs outside of Holland, and I suspect the only way most of us will be able to hear this music performed live is to travel to the Netherlands.

Even today, the Concertgebouw Orchestra rarely performs Vermeulen, and his name does not appear on the walls of the Concertgebouw concert hall along with the better-known Dutch composers of his generation. In fact, in the great city of Amsterdam where virtually every composer has a street named after them (see my link to "Composer-Streets" below), Vermeulen is conspicuously absent from the map (although there is a street in his name in Amersfoort in the Province of Utrecht).

Vermeulen was never part, and probably never will be, a member of the Dutch musical establishment.



In 1967 Vermeulen died in Laren, a small and idyllic town in the province of North Holland (which I have visited many times).

(The photo on the right is from the

collection of Odilia Vermeulen in Laren)

We look forward to Rob Zuidam's additional presentations about contemporary Dutch music at Harvard's "Erasmus Visiting Professor" lecture series. If you can't make it in person, the text of the lectures will be posted on Zuidam's website (link below).


The two remaining lectures in the series are scheduled for March 11th and April 10th, 2010 at 5:15 PM. It's free and open to all.

Links:

deconstructing-jim.blogspot.com/2008/08/composer-streets.html
www.classical-composers.org/comp/vermeule
www.RobertZuidam.com/essays

------------------

Island Life

A sunny summer day on a small private island in Loosdrecht, Holland....



Guido and Jasper






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loosdrecht

http://www.maplandia.com/netherlands/utrecht/oud-loosdrecht/






Jan and Jim














The summer house














Guido on the swing while Joseph mows the grass

A view of Loosdrecht from the yard

Video of Island Life

The Dutch sky

The cousins (Guido, Jasper, and Joseph)

--------------

Amsterdam!

OK, ...these are not my photographs, but by the time you read this I am probably fast a sleep and getting over jet lag in Holland. We are now in Amsterdam enjoying a little R&R with family. With any luck I will be able to post a few messages to this blog during the trip, but expect them to be rather infrequent during the next two weeks.

Ariel view. The Stopera is the large structure on the right

that houses the modern City Hall and Opera House. That's

where Jan plays cello with the Holland Symphonia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stopera

http://www.hollandsymfonia.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiphol_Airport

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canals_of_Amsterdam

There are about 700,000 bicycles in the city. Each year, about 80,000 of them are stolen and 25,000 end up in the canals.

The two oldest warehouses in the city

A Narrow house (painted red)

...an even Narrower house (narrowest in Europe). It's located at Oude Hoogstraat 22 and is about 2 meters wide (or 6 2/3 ft.)

THE Narrowest house in the world. Singel #7. 1.05 meters wide (3.4 ft)

The Rijksmuseum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijksmuseum_Amsterdam

De Oude Kerk (inside and out). It has a great organ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oude_Kerk_(Amsterdam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvBNuXAPgsA

Anything is possible in Amsterdam...

An example of the Amsterdam School of Architecture on the Keizersgracht
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_School

Look carefully, this bridge doubled as a prison

The new Muziekgebouw
http://www.muziekgebouw.nl/

Jan performing there with his quintet "Nepomuk"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RJi45mctKY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvIcjIMUbRk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_jPyyNC5X4&feature=related

Interesting facts:

1) Holland is the most densely populated country in Europe.

2) Two-thirds of the country is below sea-level and has been victim of flooding - most recently in 1995.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_the_Netherlands

These two facts combined with the dire prospect of raising sea-levels due to global warming have prompted the design and construction of "floating homes."

http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/04/02/dutch-floating-homes-by-duravermeer/

"Waterworld" is here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterworld

Some cool links:

82 pictures of bicycles taken during 73 minutes on 9/12/06 in Amsterdam by"Brian" http://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bicycles/

The "WoZoCo" building...
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/amsterdam/wozoco_mvrdv.htm

The "Nemo"...
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/amsterdam/nemo.htm

The "Eastern Docklands"...
http://www.easterndocklands.com/east1.html

and Graffiti Artists too...
http://www.skezoid.nl/2008/03/amsterdam-series-4.html
http://www.amsterdam.info/graffiti/pictures/

General information...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tourist_attractions_in_Amsterdam

----------