On the site of Donemus a brochure by Hendrik Matthes can be downloaded (in PDF). The purpose of this page is to present and preserve its contents unaltered.
My life has been largely determined by chance.
Composer Simeon ten Holt was born in Bergen (in the Dutch province of North Holland) in 1923, as the son of painter Henri F. ten Holt (1884). Together with Nico Schuyt (1922-1992), among others, he studied piano and theory with the Bergen composer Jakob van Domselaer (1890-1960). Jakob van Domselaer's influence is initially considerable, as shows from his first compositions for piano (Kompositie I-IV, Suite and Sonate). He later joins a group of artists including Friso ten Holt, Gerrit Kouwenaar, Constant Nieuwenhuis and the young poet Jaap van Domselaer. They discuss art and philosophy.
In 1949 Ten Holt moves to France, where he remains for a number of years, taking lessons from Honegger and Milhaud at the Ecole Normale in Paris. In 1954 Ten Holt resettles in Bergen, this time taking up residence in a converted World War II bunker. It is here that he writes the important piano composition Bagatellen (1954). In reaction to the tonal influence of his teacher Van Domselaer Ten Holt develops his own method to come to terms with the concepts of tonality and atonality. He calls it the diagonal idea, the simultaneous use of complementary keys in a tritone relation-ship. This results in the compositions Diagonaalsuite (1957), Diagonaalsonate (1959) and Diagonaalmuziek (1956-1958).
Ten Holt's social engagement, his philosophical state of mind and his literary qualities show from a number of articles on music he published in the literary magazine Raster between 1968 and 1973.
In 1968 he founds the Werkgroep Bergen Hedendaagse Muziek [Working Group Contemporary Music Bergen] which still exists. For this working group he organizes concerts solely devoted to contemporary music, initially at the Arts Centre in Bergen, later at the Ruïnekerk [Ruin Church]. Ten Holt is also active as a pianist, performing his own works.
At the 1969 Holland Festival his percussion piece Tripticon (1956) is performed. At the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht and in his own home studio he works at some electronic compositions (Inferno I and II, I Am Sylvia but somebody else). During this period he is also a regular visitor to the Warsaw Autumn Festival and has contacts in New York.
Ten Holt taught contemporary music at the Academy for the Visual Arts in Arnhem from 1970-1987. Here he experimented with group improvisations that, in latter years, led to performances at Arnhem Festivals. (A form of total theatre in which the students under his charge were responsible for music, choreography and dramaturgy.)
A breakthrough is the performance of ..A/.TA-LON by the Asko Ensemble at the 1978 Holland Festival. In 1979 his composition Canto ostinato (1976-1979) for four keyboards is premiered. In 1985 this work is performed at the Gala of Dutch Music at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, giving Ten Holt national exposure.
During the eighties Ten Holt's music is frequently performed, not only in concert halls, but often in a wide variety of places, such as the concourses of railway stations, parks and squares. Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht plays an important role in the promotion of Ten Holt's music by organising concert series devoted to his evening-long compositions for keyboards. Various compact discs were recorded during these concerts.
Ten Holt's considerable oeuvre can be divided into periods. During the first period Ten Holt shapes his musical identity by struggling out of the influence of his teacher van Domselaer. The two works for piano Bagatellen and Cyclus aan de waanzin [Cycle to Madness] (1961-1962) are typical of this process. This is what Ten Holt has to say about the tonal and expressive Bagatellen:
A renaissance stage of life finds its expression in the Bagatellen in a style that can be situated somewhere between Chopin, Bartok and Janacek the late works of Van Domselaer.
By means of his own system of composing, the diagonal method, Ten Holt abandons tonality and finds his own way in the Cyclus aan de waanzin (1961-1961).
The tonal element drifts like a shadow through the Cyclus and presents, sometimes openly, sometimes in disguise, the bill of an unpaid debt.
The second period covers music which is construed according to various theoretical principles in which the tonal material is determined by serialism. The important composition ..A/.TA-LON, dated 1966-1968, occupies itself with the relationship between language and music. In Interpolations for piano, from 1968, Ten Holt uses an aleatory composing technique. In the Five Pieces (1970-1972) the computer influences the compositional result. And finally Ten Holt writes a number of electronic compositions.
The aspect of so-called emotionality, exaggerated into an almost idolized institution, the certificate of sensitivity, evangelized as the bearer of the "message" is returned (not denied) to its rightful and democratic place, subservient as an equal partner in the realization process.
In the present and third period Ten Holt has returned to the instrument with which his life as a composer started: the piano. He himself speaks of a strong physical relationship to the sound of the instrument. This is what he writes:
My hands grasp at what my mind cannot "grasp": I believe in my hands (...) Because of them I am in the dark, grasping at a reality which I (being the embodiment) only experience as a nebula, as a sensation.
This results in the major composition of this period, Canto ostinato for keyboards, from 1976-1979. It took shape as a work in progress at the piano. The score is laid out as a route for the performers to take, using the so-called "drift parts" at will. The number of players is undetermined, as is the total length and the number of repetitions of the various sections on which the composition is built. The freedom left to the performers gives them a great responsibility towards the final result.
In these compositions, that border on repetitive music, Ten Holt develops his own unmistakable style in which tonality and repetition evoke a new sort of aesthetics
Tonality after the death of tonality.
Characteristic compositions in this style, besides Canto ostinato, are Lemniscaat (1983), Horizon (1985), Incantatie IV (1990) and Soloduiveldans [Solo Devil's Dance] II (1986) and III (1990).
With Palimpsest (1993) Ten Holt seems to be taking a new direction. After an exclusive devotion to the piano for years he wrote this composition for seven strings.
Kees Wieringa
(transl. Herman te Loo)
My compositions take shape without any predetermined plan and are, as it were, the reflection of a quest for an unknown goal. A great deal of time, patience and discipline are the prerequisites for making a (genetic) code productive, that eventually determines form, structure, length, instrumentation etc. Such a process is laborious, as the perception of this generating code is constantly being troubled by human short-comings and one's own will, and it is dependent on moments of clarity and vitality. And then, the sea washes and polishes, time crystallizes.
The only advantage of ageing may be that a development can be viewed in retrospect. And that, in spite of the zigzag movements and the apparently opposing directions, one is able to discern a logic in this development that hitherto had a function that was hidden and blocked from view. A road then seems to appear, which is oriented towards a goal shrouded in mystery, momentarily hardly gains in height and only advances in the curves. In this image the curves refer to so many turning points, not only as changes in the perception of the landscape, but mainly as changes with regards to the attitude to life and a revision of the conditions to pursue the road any further. The curves are like the articulation in a pattern of movement, end and beginning from one phase to another, and appear to coincide with biological periodicity, with intervals from seven to ten years. As far as I can see, my relationship, both figuratively and practically speaking, to the tonal centre and the problem of tonality, has been a determining factor in the development of the achievements in my creative career. This relation gradually shifted from an initial intuitive understanding to a more conscious issue later on. The role of the tonal centre, first as an undisputed factor, starts to move, loses its authority, submerges into chromaticism and the equality of all tones, and finally emerges in a shape that is chastened by death and katharsis. A large-scale history reproduces itself on a small scale.
I was very surprised to find myself in a steppe-like landscape one day, which was characterized by an immense horizon, by vastness, space and time, and, last but not least: by tonal centres and tonality (Canto ostinato). In spite of various speculations I have not been able to find an adequate explanation for this development yet and, just like before, I have no idea of the next port to which my compass is set.
Simeon ten Holt
Bergen, June 1995
(transl. Herman te Loo)
Since the first performance of Canto ostinato for four keyboards on 25 April 1979 in Bergen (in the Dutch province of North Holland) it became evident that this music not only introduced a completely new way of composing, but also a new way of listening. Subsequently several other works of similar construction and size followed, such as Lemniscaat (1983), Horizon (1985), Incantatie IV (1990), Palimpsest (1994) and Schaduw noch prooi [Shadow nor Prey] (1995). All these compositions are characterized by a manifold, obstinate repetition, in a regular tempo, of a number of notes confined in several strata within a few bars, in a lengthy space of time which is essentially without beginning or end. With this musical concept Simeon ten Holt takes up a unique place in the Dutch world of music. His major work does not lend itself to programming in a normal concert, but needs separate performance, requiring a long preparation because of the multitude of options for playing.
In the sixties Ten Holt was composing according to serial principles, until he abandoned this method in favour of a new direction. He exhaustively explained his relation to serialism in an issue of the magazine Wolfsmond. In a positive sense the serial approach offered him an awareness of the musical material as a means of expression. The musical parameters are systematized in such a way that they can be employed as purely musical means. The radical democratization thus implemented gives equal rights to all dimensions and strips them of their historical meaning. The composer thereby avails himself of the freedom to apply the tones regardless of any unintended, non-musical functionality.
The serially formed material can only be understood as a unity in so far as it can be reduced to an imaginary construction in which the musical elements - the series applied - are in balance. In this way the concrete movement of the music is transformed into an idealistic, static representation. We do not become aware of time as an actual progress, but it is only a means to express the conceived model. For this rationally constructed music the image has been offered of an ashtray that is looked at from all angles (Webern) or of a turning crystal with many facets which is continuously lighted differently. The crystal as a whole remains equal to itself, but reflects an ever changing luminosity. In other words: what we perceive are the external, changing aspects of an imaginary, opaque construction whose shape we do not perceive.
This method of composing, by applying systematically attuned and internally balanced elements, can also be found in the piece Une musique blanche (1980-81), which Ten Holt wrote after having completed Canto ostinato. Although this music contains many elements of his new approach, the idea of attaining harmonic balance by means of mirroring still prevails.
We can see that, as far as the instrumental consonance is concerned, an upward interval is mirrored in the downward interval. The minuses and pluses come around to the (blank) zero line of the unison.
The series of compositions that starts with Canto ostinato (1977-79) is characterized by a radical break with the parameters that are subject to strict rules in serialism: pitch, duration, dynamics and timbre. He left the serial method which was carried to great lengths in his earlier work (for instance in ..A/.TA-LON from 1968) behind as a phase of creative research. He does, however, consider the abstract thought he gained from serialism vital to the use of tonal qualities as equal elements in the musical language. He once put it like this: just as tasty curly kale needs a good night's frost, tonality needs the frost of serialism.
It is from the understanding of the equivalence of all tones that Ten Holt's later work derives its freedom in having the composition originate directly from the musical elements. The connection between those elements is no longer obtained by applying a synthetic form or a serial scheme; it lies in the original equality of the differential elements themselves and is realised by means of the process of repetition.
In Ten Holt's later work pitch, duration, dynamics and timbre are fully independent and every dimension is specified from the beginning through the choice of a characteristic pattern (key, rhythm, stratification, volume, timbre etc.). In this way even the smallest change in the sound pattern propelling the music strikes one as a surprise.
The aim is, by making explicit implicit potencies, to set into motion a process in which unsuspected and unprescribable options offer themselves.
Thus the composition comes into being by means of a - from a positivist point of view irrational approach by having the differentiation of the musical material take, as it were, its own natural direction.
Ten Holt's music is no "minimal music" in the usual sense of the word, because the repetition principle he uses is not based upon a systematic application of certain motifs by way of a rational scheme, but on the consistent development of an elementary sonorous figure. Thus different and unpredictable combinations of tones can be heard with every single performance. Since the musical material contains accessible tonalities and rhythms and has a natural and appealing form, the musical discourse may contain fragments that are reminiscent of the work of classical composers, but these romantic sounding melodies are resolved in the ever continuing flow.
This new manner of composing was not something Ten Holt was consciously after. It originated in a state of mind which subconsciously grew whilst he was working on his serial compositions. It "passed under him", as he once put it himself. He sees it as his task to find and to put into practice a (genetic) code which eventually determines form, structure, length, instrumentation etc. Instead of drawing up series in order to put them together in a formal scheme, he has the musical material speak for itself from the smallest unit. The starting point is a sound pattern consisting of a number of short notes and containing a clear tonal centre and rhythm, comprising one or more bars ("sections"). It moves spontaneously in time, as it were, in a number of strata which are added and subtracted one by one, repeating itself - in the same tempo - in varying combinations, without beginning or end.
This sound pattern, which Ten Holt calls "musical object" or "thing", has been released from any melodic relationship and has a life of its own. It is an implicit musical idea, an intuition, which cannot be traced to a structure that can be described in rational terms, but has a purely virtual reality. For the listener it will only become a transparent, concrete reality in so far as it adopts more and more divergent shapes over the course of time. In every section we directly perceive the musical thing itself, without being forced to perceive the sections as parts of a whole that is to be imagined. Just like a bamboo in Japanese ink painting (sumi-e) comes out of one single breath, as it were, none of the separate strokes of a leaf being seen in relation to the whole, the multiplicity of the musical object in Ten Holt's work comes to life in one continuous movement.
The sections that make up his music and in which the musical thing is made explicit are, as it were, repetitions of something that has already passed and which will return, just like the links in a chain recurring in itself. The same things are continually differentiated in new ways. All bars, all sections, have the same tension: they do not refer back to anything nor do they refer forward. The composition contains no thematic development, no middle and no climax. The sections are not to be viewed as the reflecting facets of a massive crystal which in itself remains hidden from the senses. Each section itself presents the musical thing aiming at becoming increasingly clearer.
In his introduction to Canto ostinato Ten Holt himself states that there is
no repetition per se. The repetition procedure aims at achieving a situation in which the musical object confirms its independence and can search for the most favourable position with respect to the light, and become transparent. Time becomes the space in which the musical object starts to float.
The performers are required to add their part to this process. They have great freedom in their choice of the sound strata and in the way they play them.
The character of the musical profiles changes through the shifting of accents and the addition of dynamic contrasts. One revolves and turns the musical thing that hovers in time-space and looks for the various positions with regard to the light.
This image clearly shows the difference with looking at a crystalline construction, where we see the consecutive views as facets of one and the same structure, as is the case when we listen to music that is composed on the basis of a preconceived and rational model.
Listening to a Ten Holt piece may be compared to the sensation of travelling at an equal speed through a landscape, during which the eye is fixed for some time at a virtual point on the horizon. One sees the elements of the landscape passing by as if they are revolving around the chosen point of view. If one gears oneself to this, one gets the feeling that the figurations in each observed segment have one's own point of view as their centre, while oneself seems to be in rest. The listener who surrenders to the continuous movement of the passing sections knows himself to be one with the calm of the central point at which the changing material sound strata of the floating musical thing are focussed. Knowing, says Ten Holt, is transformed into being known. Time is no longer a means of hearing sounds as consecutive aspects of an imaginary, static object. On the contrary, the dynamic actualisation of the musical object makes us immediately aware of the movement of time in relation to ourselves as a fixed point of rest. Everyday, measurable time as a succession of now-moments has been forgotten.
A work by Simeon ten Holt is only complete when it is performed. Whereas the basic figure seems to be very simple, the implicit complexity only becomes apparent during the performance which invites both performers and listeners on a voyage of discovery. This music is no longer concerned with achieving an ideal goal, set by the composer, but with the reality of listening itself, in which
the purposive process (not the movement) is halted in the repetition.
Hendrik Matthes
(transl. Herman te Loo)
