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Supporting Resources stories for teachers & students 2013
Dutch Lives in the World
stories by winthrop professor susan broomhall
Passions in the Music
Like today’s contemporary music, in the eighteenth century there
were distinct preferences in musical taste, with the different
European nations focusing on different kinds of contests,
instrumentation and musical forms. Contrast was a means of
structuring the music: fast-slow; a large ensemble - a smaller
ensemble; clean lines - heavily ornamented musical lines. All
shared in the aim to create accurate musical depictions of
emotions. Indeed, we know that musicians at the time were
praised when they were able to perform the right emotions of the
music to arouse corresponding feelings in listeners. Thus, the
music was said to ‘stir the passions of the soul’. Descriptions of
performances by the Italian composer Corelli indicate reactions
by the audience that we would expect to find in a contemporary
pop concert - fans fainting and screaming!
COUNT UNICO WILHELM VAN WASSENAER (1692-1766)
This Dutch composer led a somewhat hidden musical life.
He was a diplomat by profession who came from an illustrious
family which had served the Dutch state in times of war and
peace. Van Wassenaer studied law and his musical life was
unknown to scholars for a long time because, as a member of
the Dutch elite, he preferred not to publish his music under his
own name. Indeed, he was uncertain about the musical worth
of his creations, writing in a manuscript copy of his Concerti
Armonici ‘Some of them are tolerable, some middling, others
wretched. Had they not been published, I would perhaps have
corrected the mistakes in them, but other business has left me
no leisure to amuse myself with them’. This had led to some of
his compositions being mistakenly attributed to Italians, because
van Wassenaer chose to write in that fashionable style.
SYBRANT VAN NOORDT (1660-1705)
Van Noordt was employed as an organist at the Oude Kerk in
Amsterdam and at Sint Bavo church in Haarlem. By contrast to
van Wassenaer, he was born to a family of well-connected
Amsterdam artists, including his grandfather, also named Sybrant,
who was a schoolmaster, organist and paid by the city to maintain
its bell towers. His uncle Jan was a portrait painter, and his uncle
Antonie and father Jacobus were both composers and prominent
musicians at Amsterdam churches. Van Noordt’s Sonate was
published by Etienne Roger around 1700 in Amsterdam, one of the
main centres of music publishing at the time.
WILLEM DE FESCH (1687-1761)
De Fesch was a violone player and composer whose musical
career took him across European states of opposing political and
religious beliefs. A pupil of the Vice-Kapellmeister of Bonn, de
Fesch married his teacher’s daughter, Maria Anna Rosier. He
worked in Amsterdam before moving to Antwerp Cathedral for a
position as Kapellmeister, and then to London where he played
with the hugely popular German, Händel.
62 FAR FROM HOME: ADVENTURES, TREKS, EXILES & MIGRATION