In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: from noise around the Fonds Scheppende Toonkunst to laurel wreath for the Composer des Vaderlands
The adagissimo of mills
Like two bedraggled schoolboys, we sat In the meeting room opposite Reinbert de Leeuw, president of the Society of Dutch Composers (GeNeCo). We, Cas Smithuijsen and I, officials of the artists' federation. Later I did see Reinbert in his sometimes jovial, friendly and even cheerful guise, but here he was the regent's cultural administrator and he was angry.
The Federation of Artists' Associations had long been advocating the creation of funds for the arts. That included a composer fund: a fund for the creative tone arts. But it took and took. Administrative and political mills turned adagio to adagissimo. There was nothing the Federation could do about that either, but we, as the designated lobbyists, got it.
Perhaps Reinbert's predecessor, Konrad Boehmer, could have been a little more understanding. After all, a very different type who easily alternated his German 'gründlichkeit' and dogged, radical political stances with relativisation and joking. "Boehmer was the hardest proof against the prejudice that Germans are humourless. Whenever I saw him, I already shot into laughter." said Bas van Putten in an In Memoriam[^1].
By the way, Konrad Boehmer knew how to invest his political commitment the furthest: proudly he would return from North Korea with flags and writings on behalf of the Great Leader there. But he was thus also that activist chairman of the Dutch composers.
Sounding dissonant
The Dutch Parliament was finally able to approve the Framework Law on Creative Arts Funds in 1981 after all, and a year later the first two funds flowed from it: the Dutch Film Fund and the Creative Music Fund. "However, there was no reason for too much joy. Instead of the necessarily calculated 5 million guilders, the fund had to get by in 1982 with 1.2 million[^2]. For 1983, this amount was increased a fraction.”[^3]
Ten years after its inception, the fund's budget stood at 2.8 million guilders and a lot of experience had been gained with assessments and awards. Of course, the first controversies and criticisms also arose. For instance, from the composer Ed de Boer[^4] and the aforementioned Konrad Boehmer. Not to mention from the foundation Composers of Superfluous Music in Nieuw Scheemda[^5]. According to the critics, those composers warmed to the Fund best who were at the controls and thus closest to the fire.
Konrad Boehmer, who received a rejection on his application without any justification, won proceedings at the Council of State in 1993. Anecdote: the judge asked the fund representative for a description of the quality criteria used by the fund. The latter said he could not answer this on the spot. The judge: "If you can't name the criteria now, they don't exist.”
Critics felt that too much money was going to multi-year honoured composers (mostly from 'the familiar row') at the expense of occasional applicants. Among the repeated multi-year honoured composers: Louis Andriessen, Simeon ten Holt, Guus Janssen, Theo Loevendie, Misha Mengelberg, Peter Schat. Of these, Andriessen, Schat and Loevendie did enjoy the most public recognition and appreciation. Janssen, Mengelberg or Breuker were appreciated among connoisseurs, but were not particularly popular[^6].
A battle of directions also flared up between (little-honoured) 'traditionalists' like John Borstlap and 'innovators' including Theo Loevendie, chairman of the Fund Board. Borstlap: "The worldview (...) of modernism is now quite crumbling, not to say outdated."[^7] Nevertheless, 'innovation' in particular remained an important criterion.
Despite this emphasis on innovation, jazz and improvised music came off worst, according to critics. Was there actually any composition there? As the Fund Board explained to rejected jazz cellist Ernst Reijseger "In the jazz and improvised music sector, the distinction between composed work, i.e. music laid down in some form before it is brought to sound, and pure improvisation, i.e. musical language devised for performance that is not repeatable, in some cases difficult to apply."[^8] (BIM musicians such as Misha Mengelberg, Maarten Altena or Paul Thermos, by the way, did get multi-year honours).
Fund evaluation
Led by composer Gilius van Bergeijk, a working group from the GeNeCo therefore focused on a serious evaluation of the Fund. How was the money distributed among different categories and among various composers? Was the administrative structure in order? What about the advisory committees and criteria? And as it goes in the Netherlands: the ministry was involved substantively and financially, the minister made money available, an assignment went to a professional research agency, a research guidance committee was set up. I was allowed to chair it.
Bureau Driessen -'Social Scientific Research and Advice' prepared a comprehensive questionnaire and distributed it to 845 Dutch composers; some 450 completed the survey. The survey itself was again the cause of controversy. Bas van Putten wrote in Vrij Nederland that the survey ('interrogation of composers'did not deal with the working methods of the fund, but with the functioning of composers.[^9] Both the researcher and the supervisory committee (writer ditto) responded. "An evaluation of the fund cannot be done without an up-to-date picture of professional practice” “The survey is "necessary homework. Not an interrogation ."[^10]
Based partly on the final research report[^11], the GeNeCo came up with recommendations for renewing fund policy. And things were actually going to change. In particular, the number of multi-year awards was drastically reduced. These and other adjustments were, in turn, considered unfair by 'established' composers.
Bas van Putten, who had once again written a critical review in Vrij Nederland, got wind of these composers, including Louis Andriessen, Otto Ketting and Martijn Padding.[^12] Vrij Nederland was able to devote two pages of Vrije Tribune to the polemic between Van Putten and various stakeholders.
Eventually, the group of composers who felt attacked by the criticism of professional brethren even quit the GeNeCo. They started their own union: Composers '96. Eighteen years later, in 2014, parties found each other again in the New GeNeCo[^13]. The more than 110-year-old society thus became one effective advocate again, just at a time when that was also urgently needed.
Composer Monitor
The 2012 culture cuts, the abolition of the Work and Income for Artists Act (WWIK), discussions on self-employment policy in the Netherlands and reports on the culture and creative industry labour market[^14], it was clear that composers needed to be alert. The New Geneco commissioned renewed research into the position of composers in the Netherlands. Based on this research, Bureau Berenschot wrote a 'sector picture', the 2017 Composer Monitor[^15].
Compared to Bureau Driessen's report, shifts were visible. The male-female ratio among composers changed from 92/8 per cent to 80/20 per cent in 15 years (there is still a way to go), but curiously, the average age rose from 44 to 52. Remarkably, far more commissions and income than thought came from private sources rather than government grants. That still few composers could make a living purely from creating music was no surprise. Incidentally, by now there was no longer a Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst. That merged into the Performing Arts Fund in 2007.
Trends and paradoxes
Bas van Putten (music journalist, but also - this between the brackets emphatically placed here - someone I greatly admire for his literary-level car reviews In NRC) provides a nice thread in this story. In the Groene Amsterdammer of 13 June 2024, he wrote a reflection on the Day of the Composer 2024,[^16] a balanced picture of positive and negative trends and paradoxes that also got me thinking.
Just as, in the world of cabaret or Dutch literature, there has long since ceased to be 'the big three' (Wim Kan plus, WF Hermans plus), but rather a vastly differentiated range of quality, you can now name a large number of composers in the Netherlands who matter, who are each distinctive, who practise a variety of genres and take different positions in relation to politics and society.
Nowadays, we have a Composer of the Year: Anne Maartje Lemereis, who also advocates music education and amateur composers. Last season, she wrote a competition for amateurs in Podium Klassiek. She has been the fifth national composer since 2014. There are now also eight city composers. The Netherlands Wind Ensemble has a fine tradition of inviting young people to write their own composition for its New Year's concert. There is increasing attention to film music, including Dutch composers. Someone like Loek Dikker, who celebrated his 80th birthday with a dazzling concert at the BIM House on 28 June 2024, by the way, was perhaps better known in Hollywood than in the Netherlands.
Bas van Putten outlines an opportunity paradox. Orchestras tend to programme established names; ageing audiences demand it and are often allergic to new music that is quickly (wrongly) associated with the 'squeak crackle boom' movement of the past. However, precisely because orchestras need to find young audiences - not 'traumatised' by this music movement, not familiar with many of the top classical works and open to the unknown - they should resume contemporary programming. Especially now that there is such a plurality of content.
Artistic relationships with refugee issues or climate issues also do well; many musicians enter into such a relationship. Esther Gottschalk, director of New Geneco: "that gives me hope. I believe in a new renaissance.”
Less favourably, then, is the cultural policy scant wind that seems to be blowing up. There are also question marks: does the Performing Arts Fund provide enough effective support for contemporary compositions? Guus Janssen, in the aforementioned De Groene article of June 2024, doubts this. As far as I know, these doubts are not widely shared, but is it perhaps time for another evaluation study anyway?
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