References to the Dutch Golden Age conjure images of splendor. Paintings arranged throughout the ornate halls of the Rijksmuseum depict oysters and peeled lemons lying amongst glistening silverware and chalices, with others boasting the maritime prowess of the Dutch Republic’s fleets of ships and global reach. Legendary philosophers and writers like John Locke and Baruch Spinoza found haven amongst Amsterdam’s canals and liberal printing policy during the seventeenth century, and buildings built as monuments to the grandeur of the Golden Age still proudly border the former trade mecca of Dam Square.
The Netherlands takes its Golden Age art seriously, with the legends of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and P.C. Hooft alive vicariously through museums and monuments. Even today, centuries after the end of the Dutch Golden Age, the Netherlands features many of the world’s most revered museums and artistic sites. Even possibly the most internationally respected orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw, calls Amsterdam its own.
Despite the Netherlands’ strong artistic heritage, one thing sets the country apart from its European counterparts. A glance at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s programming makes this apparent: Dutch classical music is almost non-existent.
Spanning from about 1600–1700, the Dutch Golden Age was a time of immense prosperity for the newly formed Dutch Republic. The East India Company helped establish the Netherlands as the leading maritime power of the age, and the Dutch economy experienced an unprecedented boom as a result. With this boom came an influx of Dutch art and literature, and after suffering for years under oppressive Spanish rule, the Netherlands emerged as the decisive economic and artistic center of the universe.
As the Dutch Republic flourished, so did classical music. The end of the 16th century saw significant shifts in musical composition, as the Renaissance period yielded to the Baroque. These changes echoed throughout classical music, with composers from across Western Europe embracing and defining the new sounds.
A quick google search of the period’s composers reveals the geographic diversity of the movement. Baroque.org organizes the influential composers of the Baroque period by country of origin. Italy, France, Germany, and England each receive headlines with countless composers listed. The Netherlands, however, is not mentioned once despite the presence of all its closest neighbors on all sides.
Briticanna’s list of influential artists and architects of the 17th century tells a very different story. It also organizes its list by country. This time, the Netherlands is mentioned first on the list with twenty-four artists and architects of its own. Second is Italy with eighteen.
The Dutch Republic was in no way a victim of a lack of artistic expression. Its music, however, appears to have either been non-existent or completely forgotten. While the Netherlands lacks the classical music fame of its neighbors, the idea that it did not play a significant role in seventeenth-century life is fundamentally flawed.
When the Spanish left the Netherlands after the Dutch Revolt, Reformed Calvinism filled its spot as the official state religion. Rejecting the extravagance of Catholicism, Calvinism stripped the church of anything deemed distracting. This included church-commissioned art and sculpture, and of course, most traditional religious music.
Calvinism turned over art forms formerly associated with the church to common people. The secularization of art yielded a boom in the realm of painting that produced golden-age artists like Vermeer and Rembrandt. A highly competitive art market forced painters to innovate and specialize for the sake of product differentiation, resulting in a vast landscape of new genres and art styles.
It would make sense for Dutch music to have experienced a similar revitalization, but without a competitive music market, composers were not forced to innovate in the same way as painters. Instead, Dutch musicians perfected what already existed. There was not the same demand for new classical music as there was for paintings, as music could not be hung on the wall to decorate and display status in the same way as art. Its purpose did shift from religious to entertainment, but there was little innovation to show for it.
Though less lucrative than in other Catholic countries, classical music was still very alive in the Netherlands. Despite the barriers in place, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck carved out a place for himself in music history at the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age. Though the Calvinist church forbade the use of the organ during services, the city of Amsterdam commissioned Sweelinck to hold recitals detached from church services on the impressive organ at the Oude Kerk.
Sweelinck performed at Amsterdam’s most famous church on the church’s organ, but the performance itself was detached from religion. Instead, Sweelinck’s job was to host organ recitals to keep the people of the city out of pubs and taverns after Sunday services.
Sweelinck’s mastery of the keyboard allowed him to take on pupils from across Europe and the Netherlands. He also composed an abundance of music for keyboard instruments during his lifetime, earning a reputation as one of the most important Dutch composers of all time.
Jacob van Eyck’s story is similar. Raised as a bell expert, he earned a position as director of the Utrecht bell works in 1628. Like Sweelinck, van Eyck was paid by the city to entertain its residents rather than churchgoers. Also a virtuoso recorder player, van Eyck’s composition Der Fluyten Lust-hof remains the largest collection of music ever written for a single instrument.
Sweelinck and van Eyck were by no means the only composers operating in the Netherlands during the seventeenth century, but they are two of the era’s most famous. Despite the mastery of their respective instruments and their expansive compositions, Sweelinck and van Eyck are seldom mentioned among the classical music greats. Their abilities were impressive, but their compositions lacked the period-defining qualities of their more famous peers operating at the same time in other countries.
Their instruments of choice also failed to fit neatly into the Baroque movement, again, due to a lack of innovation. “The style period known as Baroque … was not assimilated into the Dutch Republic until about the mid-seventeenth century. Composers like Jan Pietersz. Sweelinck, Cornelis Schuyt, Jacob van Eyck and to a certain extent Cornelis Padbrué still followed the Renaissance tradition” (Grijp 63). Had they composed orchestral music for wind and string instruments instead of organs and bells, Sweelinck and van Eyck’s place in Baroque history might be looked upon differently today.
As is apparent from the nature of Sweelinck and van Eyck’s work, classical music during the Dutch Golden Age served primarily as a form of entertainment for common, working people.
For evidence, one needs to look no further than another form of Dutch Golden Age art, the genre painting. These paintings depicted working-class Dutch people going about their daily lives in a relatable manner. It is nearly impossible to find a painting of a large group without a reference to music. These references, however, are seldom orchestral. Instead, it seems Dutch people preferred violins and violas, flutes, and lutes in communal settings.
“Music making took place in the privacy of the home … Young people from the wealthy upper class spent their leisure time chatting and playing music in their homes. But the lower and peasant class took advantage of every occasion — weddings, seasonal feasts, etc. — to gather and make music” (Rech).
This suggests a tradition of folk music, which could also explain the lack of demand for classical composers. This is supported by a substantial volume of Dutch songbooks from the seventeenth century, featuring brash music fit for taverns and celebrations rather than classical symphonies.
There is not a single explanation for the Netherlands’ absence in the pages of classical music history. Though the country might have produced fewer renowned composers than its neighbors, music still played a vital role in the Dutch Republic. Musical culture is well documented through other forms of art, and many Dutch Golden Age compositions are still heralded as important today.
If the lack of composers from the Netherlands included in the classical music canon still feels like an injustice — which it might be — Dutch classical music fans can find some solace in perhaps the most famous composer of all time, Ludwig van Beethoven. Though German, there is a reason his name reads ‘van’ rather than ‘von.’ His grandfather was Dutch.
Written for course titled Dutch Culture and Society, University of Amsterdam
