(Text of a lecture, held on the conference organized by the Royal
Dutch Society for Music History at the University of Amsterdam in
November 2010)
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Ladies and gentlemen,
In the European past, there was a tradition, a practice, where
composers formed a natural part of a network of interrelated exchange,
which was reflected in the various funding relationships with church,
royal courts and nobility. In those times, there was not much difference
between the aims of patrons and those of the composers. In the modern
world since the Enlightenment these ties gradually became looser, which
offered the opportunity to develop more individual and more daring
deviations from traditional practices, until in the last century the
composer got divorced from the central performance culture and created a
mental space all of his own which was, for musicians, audiences and
individual patrons, less easy to access. This gradual change in the
relationship between the individual composer and his audience had a
strong impact upon the funding of his work: as individual patrons became
more rare and more sceptical, eventually the state became the patron of new music,
and committees with experts were set-up to make the necessary
selections.
The development of modernism since the 2nd World War created the
situation, that the composer got financially dependent upon the state (via various institutions) and for performances, upon specialised ensembles. But the breach of new
music from the central performance culture had a great effect upon its
survival. It is important to realize, that both in France and Germany,
in spite of all the ravages of war, a cultural consciousness had
survived which lend importance to the creation of art as an important part of the
country’s cultural identity, which was supposed to have a benign
influence upon society as a whole, slowly dripping into the lower levels
of the cultural pyramid.
In the Netherlands however, a very different cultural climate had
developed. After the glories of 17th century painting, the arts
gradually moved towards the margins of the country’s cultural
consciousness; in spite of occasional individual achievements, the
overall climate can not be called to have been very stimulating for
artistic creation. But in the sixties of the last century, a sudden
surge of new music activity, born from the need among young composers to
find a connection with new movements in Germany and France, i.e. with
the then current musical modernism, led to a kind of revolution, with
demonstrations, provocative concerts, manifests, ideological pamflets
and articles, and a sharp critique of the central performance culture
where these new trends were not readily accepted. Also, campaigning for state
funding of new music led to the establishment of the national Fonds voor de
Scheppende Toonkunst, or the Fund for Creative Composition, which was
supposed to solve the problem that in Holland there never had been a
tradition of patronage for new music and thus, composers had to seek
employment in other jobs to pay their bills and try to compose in their
free time.
Now here, I would like to say something about cultural identity of
the Netherlands in relation to the arts and specifically, to music. Of
course it will be a generalization, but I can assure you that any
cultured man or woman, living for some years in Holland, will be able to
confirm its general outlines. The Netherlands were born from a
liberation war from a superpower, in this case Spain. Being a rich
territory and ideally situated at the crossroads of trade traffic
networks, it had enough of being bullied and exploited by much bigger
and much more ambitious countries, which sported all kinds of
ideological cults around monarchs, religions, power spheres and war
campaigns. These cults were, to a great extent, reflected in the arts of
which the churches and the courts were the main patrons. In the first
period of wealth and freedom of the Netherlands: the 17th century, the flowering of
painting is especially unusual in its subject matter: it is mostly daily
life, the real world, which the viewer could see framed and often
elevated to a higher level. Also religious scenes were furnished with
people and sights which could be recognized from real life experience,
as can be seen from the local Jewish types Rembrandt used for his biblical scenes, settled immigrants from Spain and Portugal, who kept to their
customs and dress codes. In other words: the subject matter of normal,
real life, and not the pretentious historical and allegorical traditions
of other European countries were popular, and this idea of the free,
wealthy burger, who kept to his real, physical world and who would not
be impressed by wild ideologies which only could make a mess of the
hard-won orderliness in the towns filled with small, individual houses
and canals, this became the fundament of how the Dutchman began to
understand himself. Being a young country, also the idea of youth as
something with a worth of its own, in contrast with the general notion
of youth as immaturity, as a stage to leave behind as soon as possible,
became part of Holland’s self-image; there are various travel diaries
from past centuries by foreigners who were utterly perplexed by the rude
and uncouth behavior of children and teenagers in these lands, jumping
around like chimpanzees and looked-upon by their parents with an
approving smile. This was not just a lack of civilization, it was an
expression of individualist freedom, a liberation from authoritarian
rules as were common in those pretentious, dangerous neighbouring
countries.
This self-image as a small, but free and individualist, materialist
and rather immature country was internalized and survived to this day.
Holland is not a country of phantasy, dreams, great passions and
ambitions, but of a small-scale, orderly life, where all you see is all
you get, where most of the creativity is channelled in organizational
skills and material cleverness, and where the inner life is kept
carefully indoors. To atone for the wealth, individualism and
materialism, the Calvinistic group cult of guilt, sobriety and
predestination formed a perfect balance so that one could have it both
ways. This group instinct went into modern state bureaucracy which is,
in the Netherlands, developed to a level of differentiation and
regulation which would have made Soviet-Regimes envious. For the
calvinistic mind, music, that is: art music as a high art, is a
seduction for not being under theological control, and therefore in the
churches only functioning as an accompaniment to the psalms or a
pleasant ornament to the service; for the tradesman, it cannot be
measured, weight, and produced and sold as spices, weapons and slaves
can. The absence of a court culture completes the picture of a kleinbürgerliche society where music is not a serious occupation.
When modernism was introduced in Holland in the sixties of the last
century, it was welcomed with open arms by young composers, since it
combined a couple of factors which perfectly fitted into the Dutch
internalized self-image: it was materialistic, without the romantic
idealism of things sublime and aspirational; it required organizational
skills; it cultivated the utmost individualism which answered a need to
break away from a suffocating social environment; it was strongly
anti-traditional and thus, anti-authoritarian. But it could not be
traded; and this led to much effort to convince the government that it
had a social responsibility to support these young contemporary
composers which were totally ignored by the central performance
culture. So, eventually in the early eighties the Fonds voor de
Scheppende Toonkunst was installed (Fund for the Creation of Music) and the constellation of Dutch new
music reached its completion: new Dutch music began to be paid for
generously so that it became totally independent from the performance
culture and could develop a performing circuit of its own in the form of
new music ensembles, also funded by the state so that low audience
attendance would not negatively influence performance and production.
The Dutch calvinistic longing for group control found excellent
expression in the structure of the fund: composers of modernist music
and programmers of modernist ensembles formed the selection committees,
so that the nature of new music could be carefully steered into the
direction of which the committee members were the main representatives.
There was not a specified artistic programme, or a stilistic guideline
laid down as in the former Soviet Union, but a consensus, quickly
forming within the new music circuit, made sure that the momentum of
musical progress was not lost, by selecting the 'right' composers to be
paid for their work.
From this period onwards, many composers developed a type of music in
which all the mentioned Dutch characteristics were explored, finding
its culmination in the works of Louis Andriessen. Of course there was a
certain variety within the subsidized new music, but the boundaries
could be detected where composers, who did not feel loyal to modernism
and Andriessen-like stilistic elements, were rejected by the selection
committees.
It must be said that the presence of a special government funding
system for new music is a great thing. It created a community where the
ideals of modern music could florisch undisturbed by an indifferent
world. But it also had unintended side effects which threw the problems
of new music in general, and especially its funding problems, in relief.
To be able to grasp this, we should have a closer look into the
structure of the system. The fund worked with 2 forms of funding. First,
there was the funding of commissions from music life, i.e. ensembles or
solo musicians who wanted a composer to specially write a piece for
them. Second, there was a system of stipends, ranging from short term
stipends to salaries for longer periods of a couple of years, for which
composing plans had to be provided for approval. For both forms of
funding, applications had to be assessed: not every application could be
honored, and a selection had to be made. For the stipends, only the
composer had to apply; for the commissions, the composer as well as a
performing body could apply, and in practice this type of application
was a combined one. The fund worked with 2 advisory boards of each 3
people, consisting of a composer, a musicologist or someone with
comparable qualifications like a music journalist or radio programmer,
and a performer related to one of the new music ensembles. Central in
the assessment procedure was the notion of artistic quality, which could
only be registered on the basis of former works by the composer
concerned, since the work relating to the application did not as yet
exist. Also factors of laboriousness and performance chances were
considered. If the committees advised positively, for assessing the
figure of the grant a sophisticated list of possible fees was used,
sporting various parameters like duration in minutes and instruments to
be used, and thus giving the impression of precise monitoring and
definition – although the factors of artistic quality and laboriousness
which are very vague and subjective, gave total freedom to the
evaluation process. For the long-term stipends, a detailed working plan
had to be provided by the applicant composer, which was supposed to make
sure that the money would indeed be invested in a correct structure of
creative realisation.
When an application got rejected, the applicant could enter an appeal
procedure, ask for the assessment details of the advisory board, and try
to argue against the advice. Since the general board of the fund, who
had to decide about appeals, in practice almost never saw any reason to
disagree with its advisory boards, the outcome would be in most cases
the same. The only option then open to a rejected composer was taking
the fund into court, which was generally shunned since a court of
justice only looked into the question whether the correct procedure has been
followed; in matters of artistic quality, courts correctly did not see themselves
sufficiently qualified. In practice, the fund had almost total power
over the funding of new music, also because of the absence of comparable
funding institutions or foundations.
We can conclude that this type of funding system, which was supposed
to free composers to dedicate their time and energies to the creation of
music, created something like a mental prison, where the bars consisted
of the unwritten norms of the consensus of the new music circuit as
represented by the members of the advisory boards. Instead of creating a
free space where inspiration could florish, which would have been the
original motivation, it created a kind of mild imitation of the former
Soviet Union who had its Central Committee to make sure that new music
would develop in certain directions. In the Soviet Union the guideline
of music for the people was an openly defined government policy; in
Holland it was the factor of artistic quality as used by the fund, which
could be filled-in according to the consensus of the new music circuit,
which determined the boundaries of what was supposed to be relevant and
what not. Both means of evaluation rested on flimsy and subjective
opinions in terms of personal taste, but they got a centrally-exercised
power over funding, and thus over how composers would realise their
musical ideas.
Now, we may ask, why would a government install such an
elaborate and utterly bureaucratic system for the funding of new music,
instead of opting for the obvious, much more practical and simple
solution of giving earmarked budgets for commissions and
composer-in-residencies to orchestras and ensembles? After all, the
creation of music can only florish in a climate of freedom. An answer
can be found in the aesthetic position of most new music: it is on the
defence, it operates in a more or less seclused circuit, surrounded by
indifference. Therefore, a central bullwark defending new music seemed
the best way of ensuring its survival. But this solution has also been
its weakness. By creating a separate new music circuit, where audience
attendance is rather minor and did not play a role in the quality assessments, new music in Holland made itself vulnerable
to government considerations in which cultural awareness plays no part.
From the outside, both from the political sphere and from the position
of the central performance culture, new music seems to be – for
different reasons – of no importance. And the entwining of vested interests by
placing composers and programmers of new music in the advisory boards,
undermined the credibility of the system. In the present climate of
government cuts in the Netherlands, art, and especially new art and
music, offer an easy prey to the axe, in spite of the relative small
figures which are involved – in relation to the national budget.
The installment, in the early eighties, of government funding, was not motivated by an interest in new music but by social considerations,
carried by the political left-wing climate of the seventies and later
by the general wealth which could easily afford this marginal luxury.
Both the indifference of the government to see music as a factor defining
cultural identity of the nation, and the indifference within the
broader, traditional performance practice, added to a general
indifference of the broader population to art music, fits in with the
typical cultural climate in the Netherlands as it had developed over the
centuries.
A tragedy is thus currently unfolding. In its utopian idealism, the
funding system had isolated itself from the broader musical world;
instead of providing something like a safe haven, it has created a
separate, interrelated network of vested interests, in which music could be
funded independently from the hard and often cruel filter of the central performance practice; and in its isolation, where composers
felt that they had to conform to the artistic consensus of the Dutch new
music circuit, it has lost contact with current issues in new music,
one of which is a revival of tonal idioms and even more traditional styles, also reflected in new
figurative painting and new, classically-orientated architecture. If the
Netherlands will continue to turn inward and show their back towards
the European integration process, new music will die in this country. If
a broader outlook will prevail, the typical Dutch situation for new
music will also disappear.
State patronage in the Netherlands of new music will eventually
appear to have been a short period of luxury, producing a certain type
of typically Dutch music, after which only a European orientation will
be an option open to composers in the Netherlands to explore.
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Addendum July 2026:
Meanwhile the Fund for the Creation of Music has been abolished as an independent organisation, and its subsidy channel has been absorbed into a wider national fund, the Performing Arts Fund. The funding of new music has been watered-down and a majority of new works that are being performed, are written by younger generations of composers who see in Philip Glass and pop music their greatest inspirations. The typical 'fund music' representing Dutch national musical identity has died-out. But whether the replacement can be seen as qualitative progress is very questionable - it is like some inedible, grinding food has been replaced by a weak and lukewarm soup that does not readily invite for another helping.
Composers can apply for a
stipend (‘to develop their ideas’), institutions (orchestras, ensembles,
venues, project foundations) can apply for a commission. The selection at the
fund is still done by ‘entirely independent comitee members’ who assess the
still to be written musical work in terms of ‘importance for the performing
arts in the Netherlands’. These people must be geniusses to know exactly what
is important and what not, entirely independently from testing in terms of
performance, and about works that may not even exist as an idea in the mind of
the composer concerned. It is enlightening to see what the intention of the Fund
for the Performing Arts is for the stipend for individual composers:
‘The development stipend
for composers is intended for composers who want to invest in their
professional artistic development. The aim is that the stipend leads to new works
which deepen and broaden the musical practice of the applicant artistically. Next
to this, the result should contribute to an enrichment of the broader field of
music.’
So, the comitee members
know in advance which still not existing work will improve the composer’s
development and will contribute to an enrichtment of music life. The
unprofessionality and naïve ignorance concerning musical practice is shocking
for a national institution in which millions of tax money is pumped. The fund
receives – in the period 2025 / 2028 – an annual sum of 9,6 million euros.
So, the Soviet system is
still intact, till new government budget cuts will ax the funding system for
the arts, including new music. The increasing influene of extreme-rightwing
political parties, who see new art as a mere ’hobby of leftwingers’, will surely
have an effect in the longer run.
Last but not least: the
building in which the Fund for the Performing Arts is housed, unintentionally
expresses correctly the nature of what is going-on inside:
https://fondspodiumkunsten.nl/over-het-fonds
