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Bravade

Francis Colpron
Susie Napper
Hank Knox

The people of the Netherlands call the 17th century their Gouden Eeuw, or Golden Age, due as much to their prosperity as to their extraordinary advances in thought, science and the fine arts. In 1579, led by William of Orange-Nassau, the seven northern Calvinist provinces proclaimed their independence from Spain and became the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The southern Catholic provinces, then in the midst of economic decline, were left under the domination of the Habsburgs. Amsterdam was thriving and soon unseated Antwerp as the leading centre of maritime trade, her bank becoming the most powerful in Europe. Governed by the cultured bourgeois, the Dutch were the living example of modernity, tolerance and enterprise. The constitution of the new State, although officially Calvinist, established the right to freedom of religion for all her citizens, and welcomed Anabaptists, French Huguenots, Jews, libertines and free-thinkers.

The paintings from Holland (strictly speaking, this is but one of the Seven Provinces) are unique in the history of art, and preserve the most vivid images of life in that era: landscapes, seascapes, still-lifes, portraits of individuals and groups, and especially scenes of domestic life, which manifest a deeper “fondness for the truth” and “welcome reality” more than in any other time, to quote Eugene Fromentin. This genre painting is not only realist or anecdotal, it also raises questions of morality. Again in the words of Fromentin, these works concern “domestic virtues, transported from private life into the practice of fine art, inspiring decency and good painting.” Musical scenes are often depicted, or instruments which seem to await the hands to make them sing. Music is associated symbolically with love, togetherness, pleasure, absence, or the dangers of lust. “Music itself, medicine of the soul, as [one] of [the virginals painted by Vermeer] indicates, must suggest the harmony of thoughts as well as that of hearts,” as François Sabatier writes.

Beyond the ethics that the art of sound evokes, one might ask oneself what compositions bring life to these domestic scenes. What are these ladies playing on the virginal, harpsichord or guitar, painted by Jan Vermeer? Or the gambists, lutenists and flutists, whose images have been preserved for us by Gabriel Metsu or Gerard Ter Borch? Admittedly, when this extraordinary Dutch art was flourishing, a similar development in music did not follow. There was no great benefactor of the arts in the United Provinces. Neither the Stadholder court nor the Orange family showed a great interest in music, not to mention Calvinism, which only allowed the psalms to be sung a cappella by the faithful during services. There were many musical activities, nevertheless, and they were well organized. The organists at different churches, like Sweelinck at the beginning of the century, also practiced their art by giving recitals outside the liturgical setting, just as the other city musicians did. Groups of amateur and professional musicians gave private and semi-private concerts; city councils supported wind ensembles that played for public celebrations, banquets and receptions; and the art of the carillon was very popular and made significant progress throughout the century. Several publishers offered collections intended for domestic use of airs and lieder, either secular or spiritual, as well as variations on dance melodies and popular songs, or on more advanced compositions from Italy, France, Germany and England. A few composers’ names stand out in these publications.

Jacob van Eyck was born in about 1590, to a wealthy family in Heusden, a small city in Brabant. Blind since birth, he soon took an interest in the bells he heard around his hometown: in their installation, tuning and mechanics. In 1623, he moved to Utrecht and a year later, was named the master carillonneur at the Cathedral. He was soon responsible for the inspection of all the bells in the city and in 1632, became carillonneur of Jans Kerk.

His knowledge of the art of the carillon, recognized by Descartes and other learned men like Isaac Beeckman and Constantijn Huygens, led him to work with bellfounders François and Peter Pieter Hemony, who came from Alsace-Lorraine in 1641. With them, van Eyck modified the shape of the bell, improving its tone quality and refining a new method of tuning. His work would give the Dutch the most beautiful carillons in Europe. The musician seems to have based his expertise upon an uncommon sense of hearing and his epitaph reads as a testament to this: “What God took from his eyes, He gave to his ears.”

Van Eyck, like so many other musicians in their time, was called the Orpheus of Utrecht, and was also an amateur, that is to say, he doesn’t seem to have made a living from it. However, he did receive an increase in salary from the council of Jans Kerk for playing the flute for visitors who strolled nightly under the lindens and elms in the garden of the church. This was essentially a public park and very popular amongst the city’s high society, who went there to meet. The raise in his stipend undoubtedly served to recognize what he had already practiced for the last ten years, if we can rely on the poems of Regnerus Opperveldt and Johannes Regius, written in the early 1640’s, which recount the pleasures in the garden of Jans Kerk.

It is most likely the pieces heard in this setting that van Eyck assembled into three collections published in Amsterdam by Paulus Matthyszoon, starting in 1644. The first was entitled Euterpe oft Speel-goddinne (Euterpe, or The Goddess of Instrumental Music). The second, dating from 1646, Der Fluyten Lust-hof (The Flute’s Pleasure-Garden) bears the indication “second volume”. In 1649, the publisher reprinted the pieces of the first book, along with some others, under the same title of Der Fluyten Lust-hof, but indicating it as the “first volume”. This strange editorial logic explains why the second volume bears an earlier date than the first. So, these two collections, which were reprinted some years later, comprise the musician’s complete works. Highly regarded by his contemporaries who would honour his memory for a long time to come, van Eyck died on March 26, 1657.

The composer dedicated the Fluyten Lust-hof to Constantijn Huygens, a distant cousin. Huygens was secretary to the Prince of Orange, a humanist, savant, musician and traveller, friend to the greatest musicians in Europe at the time, and father of Christiaan Huygens, renowned for his work in mathematics and physics. The volumes include almost one hundred and fifty pieces for flute solo, consisting of variations and diminutions on dance tunes and popular songs, as well as melodies from the Huguenot psalter. From England, we find anonymous airs like Doen Daphne d’over schoone Maeght (When Daphne, the most beautiful maid), the dance Bravade, Laura and Excusemoy, which is none other than Can she excuse by John Dowland. Van Eyck borrows the refrain of the song Lanterlu from the French, and his adaptation of Jean Boyer’s Maintenant que le Printemps, is entitled Stemme nova (New Tune). The theme of Wat zalmen op den Avond doen (What shall we do this evening?) is of German origin, and Boffons is built upon the bass, which isn’t played, but implied, of the passamezzo moderno.

Born in northern Germany around 1590, Johann Schop was a chapel musician at the court of Wolfenbüttel, and went on to work in Copenhagen until driven out by the plague in 1619. Two years later, he reappeared in Hamburg where he would remain, first as a city musician and then as director of the chapel of the city council, until his death in the summer of 1667. Schop was one of the first German virtuosi of the violin and also played the viol, the lute, the cornett and the trombone. A few religious compositions, spiritual lieder and sacred pieces are attributed to him, as well as dances and series of variations. His link to the Netherlands? What remains of his instrumental music, a little under twenty pieces for one or two instruments with continuo, is contained in the first volume of ‘t Uitnement Kabinet (the Excellent Cabinet), published in 1646 by Matthyszoon. As was the custom, he built his variations on melodies that were popular at the time, like Dowland’s Lachrimæ pavanes or Nasce la pena mia, the madrigal by Alessandro Striggio.

Sybrand van Noordt II is the last of a dynasty of musicians settled in Amsterdam in the 17th century. Sybrand van Noordt the senior, who died in 1654, was the city’s chief carillonneur. Jacob van Noordt succeeded the Sweelincks, father and son, in the organ loft of the Oude Kerk in 1652 and held this post until a little before his death in 1680. Organist at the Nieuwe Kerk, his brother Anthoni van Noordt, who died in 1675, authored a Tabulatuur-boeck van psalmen en fantasyen, in which he demonstrates an exceptional contrapuntal ability. Born in 1660 and the nephew of these latter two, Sybrand van Noordt II was the carillonneur and organist at the Oude Kerk from 1679 to 1692, then at Saint Bavo in Haarlem for the next three years. He died in February 1705, at the age of forty-four.

He has left us but one book of sonatas, entitled Sonate per il cembalo appropriate al Flauto & Violino, published by Hendrick Anders in Amsterdam in 1690. It was reprinted twenty years later by Etienne Roger with a more specific title: Mélange italien ou Sonates à une Flûte & Basse continue, à un Violon & Basse continue, à 2 Violons sans Basse & à un clavessin seul. The fourth and last work of the collection is probably the very first sonata ever written for the harpsichord. It is written with figured bass, indicating it could also be played by a treble instrument with continuo. François Sabatier describes its continuous movements as follows: “The Sonata in G minor by Sybrand II, conceived in a language well beyond that of the beginning of the century, resembles what Buxtehude was writing in the same period: a cleanly divided and baroque piece, which involves two parts in an Italian fugue style (the first on a canzona subject in repeated notes) to which respond an exordium, an interlude and a peroration, in a declamatory manner.”

If, during the Gouden Eeuw, the Dutch lagged behind the musical currents of other countries—their works far from obtaining the quality and originality found in those of their European neighbours—the art of music was nonetheless very present in their daily life. Even today, it is possible to hear the beautiful music, suggested in calm, domestic scenes, which their paintings faithfully send echoing through the ages.

“When the musician finished, Roberto went over to him, wondering if he should give him something; not looking into Roberto’s face, the man thanked him for his praise, and Roberto realized he was blind. He was master of the bells (le carillonneur), but it was also part of his job to delight with the sound of his flute the faithful who lingered at evening in the yard and the cemetery beside the church. He knew many melodies, and on each he developed two, three, sometimes even five variations of increasing complexity, nor was it necessary for him to read notes: born blind, he could move in that handsome luminous space of his church, seeing, as he said, the sun with his skin. He explained how his instrument was so much a living thing, that it reacted to the seasons, and to the temperature of morning and sunset, but in the church there was always a sort of diffuse warmth that guaranteed the wood a steady perfection. The musician played for him the first melody twice more, and said it was entitled Doen Daphne d’over schoone Maeght. He refused any offering, touched Roberto’s face and said, or at least Roberto understood him to say, that Daphne was something sweet, which would accompany Roberto all of his life.” - Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before, 1995.

— © François Filiatrault, 2000
Translation: Lynn Selwood