Sunday 29 July 2012

Delft


Amsterdam may be considered the epitome of a Dutch city with its canals, but I think Delft beats Amsterdam. I admit it is not half as big, but that may be part of its charm. There are many canals, and in summer big white lilies float on the water. Water traffic is limited, so the water lilies can thrive and blossom. On Saturdays there is an extensive market along the canals, as well as a special antiques market in the summer months. There is the regular bric-a-brac, but there are also some interesting finds, as well as antiquarian books, old maps and - it being Delft - , hand painted Dutch tiles, not just the Delft blue ones. 
bric-brac-along the canals
There are cafes and restaurants galore, a flower market, and a market with fresh produce. The stalls line the canals, in front of book stores and kitchenware shops. The latter have luxury articles for sale from Scandinavia. Scandinavian design as an antidote or contrast to the Delft blue perhaps? Among the real hand painted Delftware are many works of art, but those are far too expensive to take back as a souvenir.
Behind the New Church
 

Saturday afternoon I enjoyed just roaming around, exploring shops, canals and alleys which I hadn't seen before. Along some of the canals one finds imposing former merchant houses and warehouses. Nowadays the big houses are used for student housing or as offices, and hardly privately owned. The centre is dotted with cafes and restaurants, not just in the wide market square with its ancient Town Hall (where one of my brothers got married long ago) and its imposing New Church which houses the graves of the Royal family, the House of Orange. There are cafes in the old "Waag" the weighing house, along the canals, and in squares, sometimes on barges used as floating terraces, and in the square next to the Old Church with its tower slanting like the tower of Pisa. Both churches have beautiful, big and famous pipe organs and there are regular organ  recitals. I just missed a lunchtime recital in the New Church.
Bikes, stalls, and a canal
Delft was home to the famous painter Johannes Vermeer, whose grave can be found in the Old Church. Don't mix Delft up with the town pictured in the film "Girl with a Pearl Earring". The film was shot in Belgium, and not in Delft, as it was much easier to find a medieval town centre in what used to be the Southern Netherlands. In Belgium they have not meddled so much with their heritage as we have in the Netherlands where we seem to replace historic buildings by new ones – or by parking lots and ring roads.
A door of one of the bigger houses



Saturday 28 July 2012

Katwijk; Organ recital


On Friday night I went to an organ recital in Katwijk. When I entered the church – and I was rather late – the organist was still tuning the pipes. This is most unusual. However, organ pipes, and especially the reeds, are very sensitive to weather changes and sudden changes in temperature. Friday was a peculiar day. It was very hot in the morning, around 30 degrees centigrade, no wind, sun, in fact summer! Around 3 o'clock in the afternoon the weather changed dramatically. It started raining and the temperature dropped 10-14 degrees in two hours time. So very quickly the organ was totally out of tune. As the music required the use of reeds, the recital could not start till the reeds had been tuned! This is Holland for you!
         The church boasts a big pipe organ, suitable for French organ music of composers such as Pierne, Vierne (who incidentally died at the console of the organ of the Notre Dame and fell off the bench at the end of an organ recital), Saint-Saëns, Widor. Most of those composers cum organists lived in Paris and wrote their compositions for the big churches there, the Notre Dame, the St. Sulpice, the Saint Clotilde, the Madeleine. They have the acoustics needed for those compositions, which often require the plenum, the full organ stops. The organ in Katwijk, which has all the required stops for those French organ compositions, is far too big for the Nieuwe Kerk which it was built for. The church, built as a protestant church, is almost a square, like a hall. It hasn't got a nave, choir and aisles, nor a place for an altar. The performing organist, Ben van Oosten, chose an exclusively French programme:

Louis Marchand (1669-1732),
Grand dialogue in C major from Troisième Livre d'Orgue (1696)
Louis Vierne (1870-1937),
Fifth Symphony in a minor, opus 47 (1923/24) (five movements)
        

Ben Oosten is very well-known, and although he tried to adapt his choice of stops to the available space, the sound seemed to burst through the walls and blow up the roof. I have heard such music in the dark and cavernous St. Sulpice in Paris, and there it sounded wonderful as the pillars, the vaults and the space in general soaked up the sound and gave it a mysterious quality. Not so in Katwijk! I thought it would burst my ear drums. But there is a snag. The loss of hearing in one of my ears due to a virus infection, has left me virtually with mono sound. I still hear the very high and the very low bass sounds, but the mid-register has gone. This means that I have a loss of depth. You could compare it to the inability to see depth if one is blind in one eye. Just after I partially lost my hearing, I could only listen to soft and very melodious music. Loud music was just noise, and all the pleasure had gone out of it. It couldn't move me. Gradually this has improved a bit. Interestingly the other day I reread  Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain, by Oliver Sachs. He describes several case of musicians and music lovers, who lost hearing in one ear. They were absolutely shattered and appalled by the effect this had on their enjoyment of music. Composers doubted if they would ever be able again to compose anything. Conductors doubted if they could hear the subtleties they are supposed to hear and so might no longer be able to do their job properly. It generally is a loss which fills people who are affected with sadness and sometimes despair. This was quite a consolation to me. I thought I had just imagined it. Another phenomenon is that it is no longer possible to hear from which direction the sound comes. So having just one functioning ear has many implications. The latter was also noted by Oliver Sachs as a big handicap. However, the brain is amazing, for in most cases the brain compensates gradually for the disfunctional ear and somehow or other brings back this enjoyment of music and fills in the scale of sounds one has lost. As far as the ability to judge the direction the sound comes from, that can't be repaired. However, turning one's head quickly around seems to help and people seem to do this almost automatically.
         Sachs also has very interesting things to say about perfect pitch. Apparently a very high percentage of people born with poor vision or born blind, seems to have perfect pitch. Unfortunately I am not one of them, although I have always compensated my poor eyesight with my sharp ears! It was quite a shock to lose part of my hearing as well, especially as music and singing forms an important part of my life. 

Appeltern


Appeltern is a village I had never been to. I did not even know where to locate it. But it is well-known for its show gardens and as I won a free ticket, I went there for the day on Thursday, together with one of my neighbours who loves special plants and gardening.  We were lucky as it was a beautiful and very warm summer day, one of the few we have had so far this summer. The area is rural and very quiet. It was surprising not to hear any traffic or see a motorway in the distance. There are some 200 gardens in beautiful parkland with old trees, a restaurant, a shop or where one can buy the most beautiful and special plants, and all this in a large area along the river Maas. We had a wonderful day.


As a finishing touch we found a nice restaurant, Moeke Mooren a bit further along the river with a view of a recreational lake connected with the river, which used to be a sand pit.

Sunday 8 July 2012

A day in Workum, Friesland


An organ recital was a good excuse to drive to Friesland on a pleasant and sunny Saturday in July. The drive along the Afsluitdijk is rather boring, but at least the speed limit is now 130 km an hour, which helps!
Once in rural Friesland, the world is different. Big horizons, green pastureland dotted with cows, copses around old  farmhouses, windmills and many ditches and canals, it is all there. Just as tiny hamlets, always with a church surrounded by a churchyard, however small the village. Immediately after crossing the Afsluitdijk, I took an unclassified road along the dike of the IJsselmeer, the former Zuiderzee which is now a lake. Unfortunately the sheep and cows on the dike had a better view of the IJsselmeer than any car drivers or cyclists, as the road is below the dike and not on top. So I got out occasionally to have a look at the beautiful skies with the amazing towering cumulus clouds, reflecting in the water.


The first stop was Makkum, a very Dutch town in miniature, popular with sailors but also known for its hand painted ceramics, too expensive to be tempted to buy anything at all.
To my surprise there was an international egg throwing festival, which sounded too odd to be true. But it was true. One part of the contest was a sort of Russian roulette with raw and hardboiled eggs which had to be cracked on one's forehead. I did not get the rules, but two people sat opposite each other with caps on their heads and the loser got its face more or less covered in dripping raw egg. Then there was an egg throwing contest and a relay race. The spectators had to be careful not to be hit by the flying contents of the cracked and broken eggs! I never even knew this was part of the local folklore. It seemed rather medieval and wasteful as well.The centre of this small but delightful yachting town was closed off for traffic for the occasion.
Tichelaar Ceramics Works
Instead of a front garden, Makkum


I stopped at Gaast, a tiny hamlet, to have a look at the graves in the churchyard, the texts on the stones often in the Frisian language, more related to English than to Dutch.
Gaast
On to Workum, a slightly bigger town also with harbours, formerly of course for freight sailing ships, now just for pleasure boats. It had open access to the IJsselmeer. There are a few sluices, but access is relatively easy. The town is rather narrow, and long, originally built along the banks of a river which is now the main street. With its raised sidewalks it is clear that once here was water. The houses have beautiful gables and fronts and it looks as if once the town was  prosperous, because of the fishermen and the traders, goods being transported via the open sea. 


There is a Roman Catholic church, and a protestant one, before the reformation also Catholic of course, the St. Gertrudis, dating back to the end of the fifteenth century, the late Gothic period. Because of lack of funds the church was never fully completed on the west side, and so the tower which dates from 1420, is not attached to the church. There is pulpit which is beautifully carved and dates from 1718. 


But most spectacular is the collection of painted biers which belonged to the different guilds. There is one for the builders, another for the bakers, one for the pharmacists , the carpenters, the sailors and silversmiths. Most moving are two smaller biers for children.
I enjoyed exploring the town, the old shipbuilding yard, the different harbours and drawbridges, the imposing gabled houses and the tiny ones, but most of all the church, the biers and the organ

My friend was due to give an organ recital that evening, the main reason for my trip. Just too bad that the attendance was so low. The organ dates back to the 17th century and although not too big, the sound is clear and beautiful. The programme was varied, and included two of my favourite pieces. The first one Larghetto and Allegro from Concerto nr. 13 in F by Georg Fr. Handel, Cuckoo and Nightingale.


 It took me back to my childhood when my father took on the back seat of his bicycle to the Lutheran church in The Hague for my first organ recital. Feike Asma was the organist and when he played this piece in the semi dark church I was struck as if by lightning. It was absolutely wonderful and I decided then and there that I wanted to learn to play the organ as well. It was also the piece played during the private organ recital which our organist friend played as part of the celebrations for my parents' 60th wedding anniversary, in their local church. So all those memories came flooding back during the recital in Workum.
The other piece was the Suite Gothique by Leon Boellmann (1862-1897)
Here played on the formidable organ of the St. Sulpice in Paris


The organ in Workum is of course not comparable to the grand Cavaillé-Coll organ in Paris and it needed some juggling to play the piece well. The organ has a will all of its own and doesn't take kindly to weather changes, changes in humidity and temperature. So halfway the organist had to stop to adjust the system combining the two manuals, resulting in a loud and disconcerting bang! I thought he had become unwell and fallen from his bench. Fortunately that wasn't the case. Once done, he continued playing.
After the recital we – the organist, the assistant and I – were invited for coffee at the verger's house, which was nice. On my drive back the weather broke and I drove through heavy downpours for the last 30 minutes or so. Home after midnight.


Monday 2 July 2012

Choral Evensong


A busy weekend, with a choir party and a bring and share meal on Saturday, the last church service for our choir on Sunday before the summer break, followed by a birthday lunch in a Pancake restaurant in The Hague and Choral Evensong in the Hooglandse Kerk in Leyden on Sunday evening.
Worth mentioning is the Choral Evensong. There was a guest choir, well versed in the Anglican tradition. Here is the musical order of service:
Introit: Ave Verum by William Byrd (1543-1623)
Preces and Responses: William Smith (1603-1645)
Psalm 66, Jubilate Deo, on a triple chant by R. J. Ashfield, a modern composer.
Canticles: Charles Wood (1866-1926)
Anthem: Psalm 100 by John Rutter

Byrd, beautifully sung by the Tallis Scholars

All was well sung, but also spiritually uplifting. Very often Choral Evensongs in Holland, in non-Anglican churches, are too stylized and spiritually just empty shells. For me Choral Evensong is a beautiful and very meaningful form of worship, not a concert. It need not be flawless, although of course the aim is to give our best in worship to God, but it should be meaningful, a way to open our hearts to God.
The hymns were traditional and joyful, and I loved joining in.
NEH 178, 't Is Good Lord to be here
NEH 374, How Sweet the name of Jesus sounds, with its beautiful melody
NEH 427, O Praise ye the Lord, and
NEH 368, Guide me , O thou great Redeemer
Although I had to hurry to get there in time and so had no time to cycle but had to take the car and pay for a parking ticket, it was well worth going and it filled me with happiness. It was the perfect end to a Sunday. And an antidote to the morning service, which lasted for almost two hours, twice as long as Evensong. But - for me at least - not twice as uplifting. On the contrary...! 

Rutter; A sharp contrast with Byrd and the Tallis singers!

A walk on the beach


Thursday,June 28th 
A warm day and so I decided to go for a walk along the beach. To my surprise there were very few people around. I could even park in the small free car park, only a short walk through the dunes to the beach. The abundance of flowering shrubs and plants amazed me. Dunes are just sand hills, no fertile or rich soil. But the path on both sides was laced with fragrant roses, a special species which so far I have only found in the dunes. In contrast to garden roses which need to be pampered, watered and fertilised, these roses seem to need next to nothing and flower all summer. They have a single row of petals, saffron yellow hearts, and are either white or pink in colour. Together with the porcelain blue flowers of the  Echium Vulgare (in Dutch: Slangenkruid, Blueweed in English ), and the yellow flowering Jacobeae Vulgaris or Ragwort they provided   a feast of subtle colour to the usual silvergrey shades of this coastal landscape. Probably our wet spring had something to do with it.


It was warm, but overcast and very humid. The beach had this mysterious air, the villages to the north and the south hardly visible through the haze. The weather forecast was for thunderstorms in the afternoon, high winds, hailstones and rain.  So I set off in the morning.  Fortunately, as the tide was just going out, I could walk on very firm sand, as yet totally untouched: no footprints at all, except for the webbed prints of seagulls which forage on the edge of the water looking for mussels and clams or other small sea food. Once walking away from the Wassenaar, I hardly met anybody. The water was clean and crystal clear, but still very cold, only 13 degrees I was told, for me just about right to dip my toes in and cool my feet. 



It was exhilarating, the feeling of having this vast empty space with a wide horizon all to myself. The sound of the breaking waves and the cries of the sea birds made thinking impossible and chased away any anxieties or nagging thoughts. It was an added joy to find a perfectly formed and undamaged shell, a very rare find on the beaches along this coast. I have always lived on the North sea coast, but this was the first time I found a shell like that. There might be more, for when after a brisk walk of an hour I retraced my steps, a tractor with a net attached to it was scooping up banks of shells out of the water and placing them on the hard sand in ever growing heaps. They were loaded into a truck later, so I don't know what hidden treasures, if any, were carted off among that load of common shells.

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