Orchestra goes in search of Gatti evidence

John Borstlap says:

PS:

I think these passages are the more relevant to the questions:

“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 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 bible 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.”

This means that what there is in terms of serious music, has to struggle all the time in adverse circumstances – and more so than in other countries in Europe where there still is a chunk of traditional cultural awareness, in whatever form, to counter populism in our times.