Organizing labor: Composers, performers, and "the renewal of musical practice" in the Netherlands, 1969-72

Musical Quarterly

Volumn 90, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 539-577

  Adlington, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 62849115359     PISSN: 00274631     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/musqtl/gdn015     Document Type: Review

References (129)

1. Throughout this article I make generalizations about this generation of composers. In fact, their music covered a wide range of styles and there were differences of opinion with regard to politics. Nonetheless, most of the significant composers of the generation collaborated in some form in the activities that form the focus of my discussion, and to this extent they shared a singularity of outlook during the period in question. For more on the political engagement of avant-garde composers during the 1960s, see Arnold Jacobshagen and Markus Leniger, eds., Rebellische Musik: Gesellschaftlicher Protest und kultureller Wandel um 1968 (Cologne, Germany: Verlag Dohr, 2007),
2. Beate Kutschke, ed., Musikkulturen in der Revolte (Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner, 2008),
3. and Robert Adlington, ed., Sound Commitments: Avant-garde Music and the Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
4. Pamphlet of the Actiegroep Notenkraker, November 17, 1969, reproduced in H. J. van Royen, Historie en kroniek van het Concertgebouw en het Concertgebouworkest 1888-1988, vol. 2 (Zutphen, the Netherlands: Walburg Press, 1989), 133.
5. Jaane Krook, "Louis Andriessen: 'Veronica ramp voor mensheid,"' Haarlems Dagblad, May 8, 1976.
6. For a short but reliable account of the composers' activities see Leo Samama, "Muziek en het onbehagen in de cultuur in de jaren zestig," in Een muziekgeschiedenis der Nederlanden, ed. Louis Peter Grijp (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001), 743-49.
7. The most wide-ranging English account is Rudy Koopmans, "On Music and Politics: Activism of Five Dutch Composers," Key Notes 4 (1976): 19-36.
8. For a detailed account of the Netherlands' "ensemble culture" and its origins in the composers' campaigns, see Pay-Uun Hiu, "Een cultuur apart? De Nederlandse ensemblecultuur," Ssst! Nieuwe ensembles voor nieuwe muziek, ed. Elmer Schönberger (Amsterdam: International Theatre and Film Books, 1996), 24-57.
9. The consequences of the composers' activities for Dutch performers of early music is assessed in Kailan R. Rubinoff, "Between 'Old Left' and 'New Left': The Notenkrakersactie and Its Implications for the Dutch Early Music Movement," in Rebellische Musik: Gesellschaftlicher Protest und kultureller Wandel um 1968, 125-36.
10. In spite of this, the story of BEVEM has never been recounted in detail. BEVEM receives no mention in Grijp et al., eds., Een muziekgeschiedenis der Nederlanden, Hiu, "Een cultuur apart?" or Rubinoff, "Between 'Old Left' and 'New Left,'" and is mentioned only in passing in other accounts of the period: see Johan Kolsteeg, Één groot oeuvre. Donemus: vijftig jaar tussen componisten en publiek (Amsterdam: Donemus, 1997), 120;
11. Rudy Koopmans, "On Music and Politics," 22 and 26;
12. Leo Samama, Zeventig jaar Nederlandse muziek 1915-1985 (Amsterdam: Querido, 1986), 261.
13. I wish to distinguish between "avant-garde composition" and other forms of avant-garde musical practice that aim to dispense with the function of the composer. During the late 1960s, some avant-garde composers with a disposition to leftist politics explored improvisation as a more democratic way to make music. However, issues of composerly authority often continued to loom over such experiments: see Amy C. Beal, "'Music is a Universal Human Right': Musica Elettronica Viva," in Sound Commitments, ed. Adlington;
14. Timothy D. Taylor, "Moving in Decency: The Music and Radical Politics of Cornelius Cardew," Music and Letters 79, no. 4 (1998): 555-76.
15. Engels, cited in John Kelly, Trade Unions and Socialist Politics (London: Verso, 1988), 18.
16. Kelly, Trade Unions, 55. This analysis was developed above all by Antonio Gramsci.
17. Richard Hyman, Industrial Relations: A Marxist Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1975), 68.
18. Bram Peper, "The Netherlands: From an Ordered Harmonic to a Bargaining Relationship," in Worker Militancy and its Consequences, 1965-75, ed. Solomon Barkin (New York: Praeger, 1975), 118-53; 126.
19. Tinie Akkermans and Peter Grootings, "From Corporatism to Polarisation: Elements of the Development of Dutch Industrial Relations," in The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe since 1968, vol. 1, ed. Colin Crouch and Alessandro Pizzorno (London: Macmillan, 1978), 159-90; 159.
20. Akkermans and Grootings, "From Corporatism to Polarisation," 162.
21. Ernest Hueting, Naar groter eenheid: de geschiedenis van het Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen 1906-1981 (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1983), 334.
22. Hueting, Naar groter eenheid, 336.
23. Peper, "The Netherlands," 130.
24. Rein van der Horst, "Nooit geweten dat pacifisten zo bloeddorstig konden zijn," Solidariteit 77 (February 1997), http://www.solidariteit.nl/ nummers/77/ Nooit-geweten-dat-pacifisten-zo-hloeddorstig-konden- zijn.html.
25. Hyman, Industrial Relations, 99.
26. Cited in "Verslag van de tweede openhare componistenvergadering, " March 29, 1971 (Nederlands Muziek Instituut (NMI) Geneco archive, file 1/2). I am grateful to the Genootschap van Nederlandse Componisten for permission to consult their archive.
27. "Voorstellen actiecomite ter vergadering Geneco," March 9, 1965;
28. "Notulen van de Algemene Ledenvergadering van Geneco," March 9, 1965;
29. "Notulen van de jaar-lijkse Algemene Ledenvergadering van Geneco," June 25, 1966 (all NMI Geneco archive, file 1/2).
30. "Notulen van de jaarvergadering van Geneco," November 1, 1969 (NMI Geneco archive, file 3).
31. For an exploration of this topic, see Peter B. Levy, The New Left and Labor in the 1960s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).
32. See Truus Gubbels, "Kunst en communisme in Nederland," in Kunst en beleid in Nederland (Amsterdam: Boekmanstichting, 1985), 163-242; 231;
33. and Teunis Ijdens, "Van kunstenaarsverzet tot politieke vakbond: Over de ontwikkeling van de BBK in de periode 1945-1973," in 100 jaar vakbeweging in de kunsten, ed. Florian Diepenbrock (Amsterdam: Ariadne, 1994), 81-95.
34. For a densely documented account, see Jacqueline Mineur, "Actie notenkraker: componisten tegen het Concertgebouworkest" (PhD diss., Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, 1989). "Noot" in Dutch means "(musical) note" as well as "nut"; "De Notenkraker" was also the name of the illustrated Sunday supplement to the socialist newspaper Het Volk between 1907 and 1936.
35. Pamphlet of the Actiegroep Notenkraker, November 17, 1969.
36. These are listed in the "Informatie-Bulletin Notenkraker," December 1969 (Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (IISG) Notenkraker archive, folder 12).
37. Reinbert de Leeuw, cited in "Notenkraker Reinbert de Leeuw: het gaat nu tegen de structuur van het Concertgebouworkest," De Volkskrant, November 23, 1969.
38. See "Ideologiese tegenspraken als oorzaak van een verschillende opvatting van het teorie-praktijk probleem bij de actie-groepen BBK, "De Tomaat" en "De Notenkraker," Aksie 1, no. 5 (n.d.): 6-7;
39. and "Informatie-Bulletin Notenkraker." The first of these was anonymously authored by Konrad Boehmer (communication with the author, April 5, 2005).
40. Cited in Gubbels, "Kunst en communisme in Nederland," 224-25.
41. Cited in Mineur, "Actie notenkraker," 37.
42. Lex van Delden, letter to Geneco members, December 3, 1969 (IISG Nederlandse Federatie van Beroepsverenigingen van Kunstenaars archive, folder 834).
43. The press release was reproduced in the journal of the Algemene Bond van Kunstenaars: "Aktie-groep De Notenkraker kraakt verkeerde noot," De Kunstenaar 6, no. 11 (December 1969): 7.
44. Van Royen, Historie en kroniek, 2:132.
45. On this, see Levy, The New Left and Labor, 94-95.
46. One such interview is reproduced in Johan Giskes, Waar bemoei je je mee: 75 jaar belangenstrijd van de Vereniging "Het Concertgebouworchest" (Zutphen, the Netherlands: Walburg, 1991), 166.
47. Peter Schat, reported in "Notulen van de jaarvergadering van Geneco," November 1, 1969.
48. "Notenkrakers en musici verwijten elkaar chantage en leugens," De Volkskrant, November 27, 1969.
49. Reinbert de Leeuw, cited in "Notenkraker Reinbert de Leeuw."
50. For a full account, see Jan Kosten, Kroniek van 75 jaar Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, vol. 2 (Rotterdam: Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, 1999), 140-45.
51. Kosten, Kroniek van 75 jaar Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, 2:144.
52. This was cited but not expanded upon in the "Informatie-Bulletin Notenkraker," 9.
53. and Wilma Tichelaar, "Het spel en de kickers: inspraak, democratiser-ing en rivaliserende musicibonden aan het eind van de jaren zestig," in 100 jaar vakbe-weging in de kunsten, ed. Diepenbrock, 70-80.
54. Giskes, Waar bemoei je je mee, 167-68.
55. Maurice Ferares, letter to Peter Schat, January 5, 1970 (IISG Notenkraker archive, folder 5).
56. Maurice Ferares, "De Notenkraker," Muziekwereld 51, no. 1 (January 1970): 3-4.
57. NTB Correspondance (IISG Notenkraker archive, folder 5).
58. "De ANOUK," Muziekwereld 51, no. 4 (April 1970): n.p. Articles in this periodical are often anonymous, but all bear the hallmarks of Ferares's distinctive political outlook. Copies are archived at the Boekmanstichting, Amsterdam.
59. Ad. J. Odijk, "Ton Hartsuiker: een orthodoxe muziek-dominee," De Volkskrant, March 14, 1970.
60. "Oproep tot vergadering," reproduced in Peter Peters, "Geëmancipeerde arbeiders en dissonanten," Mens en Melodie 49 (November-December 1994): 610-17; 614.
61. "Zeven werkgroepen van musici," De Tijd, March 16, 1970.
62. Han van Dalen, cited in "Notenkraker in Brakke Grond," De Volkskrant, March 16, 1970.
63. "Twaalf uur lang muziek voor Noord-Vietnam," De Volkskrant, February 20, 1970.
64. Barend Wijtman, "Lekker muziek maken," De Groene Amsterdammer, June 6, 1970.
65. "Inklusief Konsert," press release, May 4, 1970 (IISG Notenkraker archive, folder 1).
66. See "Musici pakken vernieuwing muziekleven flink aan," De Tijd;
67. J. Reichenfeld, '"Inklusief Konsert' in Frascati opent grote mogelijkheden," Algemeen Handelsblad;
68. Barend Wijtman, "Lekker muziek maken." The Maagdenhuis in Amsterdam was the site of a large student occupation in May 1969.
69. "Enorme belangstelling voor 'inklusief konsert,'" De Waarheid, May 25, 1970.
70. "Verklaring Notenkraker in discussie met Concertgebouworkest," statement read at public meeting on April 22, 1970 (NMI Peter Schat archive, box 5041). Maurice Ferares spoke at the meeting in support of the composers.
71. This was reported in a letter to Geneco members from Lex van Delden, January 29, 1970 (NMI Geneco archive, file 3). Kunst later wrote a short article explaining the Notenkrakers' motives: "Noten kraken," Ouverture 4, no. 10 (June-July 1970): 275.
72. Marian van der Meer and Heleen Nottrot, De Matinee op de vrije zaterdag, 1961-1993 (Amsterdam: Boekmanstudies, 1994), 15; 20.
73. This program note and many other writings by Kunst are archived at http://www. joskunst.net. I am grateful to Jan Pieter Kunst for a copy of the score to One Way, which was formerly published by Peters Edition.
74. Kelly, Industrial Relations, 58ff.
75. Konrad Boehmer noted this syndicalist tendency in his report of the second BEVEM meeting, "De fluit zal het van de wapenstok winnen," Vrij Nederland, June 6, 1970.
76. In this regard, one can perceive in One Way the early signs of a conviction more forcefully present in the later works of both Kunst and his colleague Jan Vriend, namely that "thought can and must be shaped, reshaped" and that music's "formal language" could become "a really revolutionary motor" in this process. See the note to their jointly composed score Elements of Logic (1972), archived at http://www.joskunst. net.
77. I borrow the phrase from Eric Drott, "Ligeti in Fluxus," Journal of Musicology 21, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 201-40; 226.
78. Straesser, cited in Ernst Vermeulen, "Bestaat er een anti-autoritaire compositie-stijl?" De Groene Amsterdammer, April 3, 1971.
79. Vermeulen, "Bestaat er een anti-autoritaire compositie-stijl?"
80. Wouter Paap, "Democratisch musiceren," Mens en Melodie 26, no. 7 (1971): 193-95.
81. Louis Andriessen, "Brief history of De Volharding" (1972), in The Art of Stealing Time, ed. Mirjam Zegers, trans. Clare Yates (Todmorden, UK: Arc Music, 2002), 128-36; 128.
82. Andriessen is here describing the premiere performance of his Anachronie I (1967). Well-known instances of fraught encounters between orchestral musicians and avant-garde composers include the performances of Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis by the New York Philharmonic in 1964 [see David Revill, The Roaring Silence. John Cage: A Life (New York: Arcade, 1992), 205-08],
83. and a public protest by the BBC Symphony Orchestra against a new work by the German composer Ernst Helmuth Flammer (see the report in The Times, 2 December 1988).
84. (Flammer, pertinently enough, is also known as a scholar of politically engaged music: see his Politisch-engagierte Musik als kompositorisches Problem, dargestellt am Beispiel von Luigi Nona und Hans Werner Henze (Baden-Baden, Germany: Koerner, 1981).) Usually, however, such tensions are kept behind closed doors.
85. For a present-day perspective, see a 2006 "Virtual Discussion Panel" examining the "disconnect between orchestra musicians and composers" on the Polyphonic Orchestra Musician Forum page: http://www.polyphonic.org/panels. php?id=3&day=l.
86. See Hans Heg, "Werkgroepen gaan vernieuwing muziekleven bestuderen," Algemeen Handelsblad;
87. "De vernieuwing van het muziekleven," Muziekwereld 51, no. 5 (May 1970): n.p.
88. "Concept van plan voor ensembles," 5.
89. See J. Reichenfeld, "Nachtconcert Frascati een slag in de lucht," NRC Handelsblad, October 31, 1970;
90. Mia Aleven-Franken, "Nachtconcert vrij gezapig," De Volkskrant, November 2, 1970;
91. Franz Straatman, "Zeldzaam hoogtij Nederlandse muziek," De Tijd, November 2, 1970.
92. See "BEVEM opgericht," Muziekwereld 51, no. 6 (June-July 1970): n.p.
93. Ferares, "Openbare discussie over orkestenbestel," Muziekwereld 51, no. 10 (October 1970): n.p.
94. Boehmer, "De fluit."
95. Ferares, "Openbare discussie."
96. Ferares, "De Orkesten," Muziekwereld 53, no. 5 (May 1972): 8; "Openbare discussie."
97. Ferares, "De Orkesten."
98. "Notulen van de ledenvergadering van het Geneco," October 24, 1970 (except where stated, these and other Geneco minutes and reports cited hereafter are deposited in the NMI Geneco archive, folder 1/2).
99. "Verslag van de zesde openbare componistenvergadering," May 17, 1971.
100. Konrad Boehmer, communication with the author, April 5, 2005.
101. Boehmer, reported in "Verslag van de openbare componistenvergadering," February 27, 1971.
102. "Notulen van de voorzetting van de algemene ledenvergadering d.d. 11.12.1971," January 8, 1972.
103. "Verslag van de achtste openbare componistenvergadering," June 7, 1971;
104. "Notulen van de jaarvergadering van Geneco," November 6, 1971.
105. Misha Mengelberg, reported in "Verslag van de tweede openbare componistenvergadering," March 29, 1971.
106. Nico Schuyt, "Jaarverslag van de secretaris over 1971," November 19, 1972 (NMI Geneco archive, folder 3).
107. Schat, reported in "Verslag van de derde openbare componistenvergadering," April 3, 1971.
108. "Verslag van de vierde openbare componistenvergadering," April 13, 1971.
109. "Ideologisch uitgangspunt."
110. Geraedts, letter for the composers' meeting of April 23, 1971 (NMI Geneco archive, folder 1/2).
111. George Kautzenbach, "Composer, Performer, and Marx," Perspectives of New Music 16, no. 1 (Autumn-Winter 1977): 197-204; 200; 198.
112. Kautzenbach, "Composer, Performer, and Marx," 198.
113. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1985), 40.
114. Attali, Noise, 40.
115. The title refers to a business efficiency technique aimed at eliminating factors compromising workers' productivity; and the composer describes each piece as mapping "an unfamiliar terrain demarcated by extreme demands made on the performers" (Ferneyhough, program note to Time and Motion Study III, Peters Edition website, http://www.editionpeters.com/pdf/time%20and%20motion%20 study%20iii.pdf). I am grateful to Dennis Leo for reminding me of the relevance of these pieces.
116. Maurice Ferares, "Crisis in de popmusic," Muziekwereld 51, no. 4 (April 1970): n.p.
117. "Ideologisch uitgangspunt."
118. "Rapport van de werkgroep muziekpraktijk," Geneco (April 1972), 1. A copy of the report is kept in the Boekmanstichting.
119. "Rapport," 4.
120. See "Muziek paradijsje voor de randstad maar de regio betaald," Anouk Nieuws 3, no. 4 (May 1972): 1, 4-5.
121. Richard Barrett, interview on NO with Veronika Lenz, viewed online at http:// furtlogic.com/no.html. Subsequent quotations in this paragraph are also from this source. This webpage also contains Barrett's program note for the work.
122. NO is the first part of a series of works subtitled "Resistance and Vision." This situation is especially piquant as Barrett has on other occasions shown himself sensitive to the "chain of command" often implied by the respective roles of composer and performer, and the way in which musical notation, when viewed simply as "a set of instruc-tions or demands," reflects society's "dehumanising economic/power relations" (see Richard Barrett, "Blattwerk: composition/ improvisation/collaboration," viewed online at http://www.furtlogic.com/ blattwerk.html).
123. Keith Potter, review of premiere of NO, The Independent, February 18, 2005, http://arts.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article11593.ece.
124. Andriessen in Lidy van Marissing, "Met het rooie orkestje van Andriessen de straat op," De Volkskrant, September 18, 1973.
125. Andriessen, in Marissing, "Met het rooie orkestje van Andriessen de straat op." On De Volharding's early years, see Rudy Koopmans, Tien jaar Volharding (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1982).
126. For more on De Volharding's philosophy of performance, see Robert Adlington, Louis Andriessen: De Staat (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004),
127. and Robert Adlington, "Louis Andriessen, Hanns Eisler and the Lehrstück," Journal of Musicology 21, no. 3 (1994): 381-417.
128. Quotation from Louis Andriessen, notes to De Staat, Il Duce, Il Principe and Hoketus, Key Notes, 6 (1977): 42-44.
129. Andriessen discusses two such occasions, involving performances of De Snelheid by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, in "De Snelheid," in The Art of Stealing Time, ed. Zegers, 175-86; 178.