'So, it's hanging again,' the alto Aafje Heynis is said to have exclaimed after a performance of the St Matthew Passion of Bach. The statement is probably apocryphal and is also sometimes attributed to the soprano Jo Vincent, but fits perfectly with her typical Dutch down-to-earthness,* which was at odds with her lived performances of very diverse music. In 1983, to everyone's surprise, she stopped singing, but continued to teach hereafter. On Wednesday evening, 16 December, she died in a care home in Huizen, aged 91.
Aafje Heynis (Krommenie, 1924-Huizen 2015) is best known today as vocal pedagogue to Dutch soprano Charlotte Margiono, but she also had a respectable career herself. She performed all over the world, with famous orchestras under conductors such as Eduard van Beinum, Otto Klemperer, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Eugen Jochum. When she decided to give up her concert practice in 1983, at fifty-nine, many were overwhelmed by this decision. Yet years earlier, she had announced her intention to stop "when I am still at the top of the mountain. There will be no audience at the descent'.
Aafje Heynis began her singing career as a member of the Krommenie children's choir. There she stood out with her role as duchess in Rapunzel. Shortly after the war, on 6 May 1945, someone in Krommenie dragged out a piano to celebrate the liberation from the Germans and, as a matter of course, the twenty-four-year-old Heynis was asked to sing a song. She did so only after some hesitation - modesty was an essential characteristic of her character - but she eventually sang Handel's appropriate 'Dank sei Dir, Herr'.
From Krommenie children's choir to Concertgebouw Amsterdam
She sang for singing teacher Jo Immink in Amsterdam with an arrangement of the Pilgrim's Chorus from Wagner's Tannhäuser. Through this route, she ended up with the renowned, then already 77-year-old singer Aaltje Noordewier-Reddingius, with whom she studied from 1946 to 1949. Noordewier-Reddingius instructed her to stop her many performances in the Zaan region immediately to work on her vocal development. During this period, Heynis also joined the choir of the Dutch Bach Society, where Anthon van der Horst taught her the necessary literature. Roy Henderson, Kathleen Ferrier's teacher, predicted a great future for her because of her recognisable, accomplished voice.
Simple personality
Initially, Heynis mainly sang oratorios by Handel and Bach, but she performed British folk songs with equal love, even though she did not master English. In 1958, she finally broke through to the concert stage with her introspective but understated rendition of the Altrapsody of Johannes Brahms with the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Eduard van Beinum. Philips had already offered her a recording contract and a year of opera studies in Italy. She passed up the latter opportunity, afraid as she was of blundering abroad because of her poor language skills. However, her simple personality made her very popular at home.
In an interview with Vrij Nederland, Aafje Heynis once said: 'Everything you experience should be directly related to the emotions that music evokes in you. In the evening, while you are busy with something completely different, you suddenly realise that you should have taken that tempo in a random aria a little faster than you thought. That thought should never leave you, so much so that you are actually studying again. We singers regard our voice as an individual. For me, the voice is a conduit to eternity.'
Last Wednesday, Aafje Heynis left the netherworld for good for the kingdom of heaven, where she was no doubt welcomed with open arms.
* Postscript: baritone Pieter Vis studied with Aafje Heynis and reports: "It was the renowned bass Herman Schey who blurted that out like that. I got singing lessons from him too!"
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