I identify closely with my mother's North German background. She comes from an area of Germany where they still spoke Plattdeutsch (Low German) when she was a kid. Low German is on the same close continuum as Dutch, Frisian and English to varying degrees and I realized I could read Dutch at an early age with far less effort than I could other foreign languages. The Netherlands struck me, the first time I went to Amsterdam, as familiar somehow. Not quite, but kind of. The spoken language has more guttural sounds than decent people ought to be allowed to utter, but other than that, it felt like I was visiting distant relatives for the first time. People whom I didn't know, but could understand and connect with.
When I went to live in Saudi Arabia, I thought it would be a great opportunity to see the Middle East - I would go to Lebanon, to Egypt, maybe to Yemen and other Arab countries. But I found living in Jeddah so oppressive that as soon as I got some time off, I headed for Amsterdam instead. It was like dying and going to heaven. I opened a savings account and wired money into it from time to time, having decided I'd find a way to settle there at some future point. That never came to be, and in later visits, I got bored with Amsterdam and put off by its open brothels and marijuana smoke everywhere, ironically - all too free, too libertarian somehow - and decided I had to admit I prefer places with some exotic features to keep me going. Probably why I took to Japan so readily. I have a masochistic streak a mile wild. I need something to push against.
So it's as if the Netherlands and I dated for a while but could never get past the feeling of being like brother and sister with no sexual attraction. The Dutch and I parted ways.
That is until this wonderful time of isolation and solitude when I found myself listening to hour after hour of music, perhaps especially the excitement of discovering the Jussen Brothers, these two extremely talented and cute-as-hell youngsters (they are now 25 and 28, but I'm 80 - so "youngsters") who are now at the top of my list of favorites to listen to over and over again.
Most of the Dutch are not Christian anymore. Polls show over half the population has left the church behind, and now only 23.6% still identify as Catholic and 14.9% as Protestant. 5% are Muslims, 1% are Hindus. The Nazis succeeded in wiping out most of the Jews - there are only about 45,000 left today, less than half the number that existed before the German invasion.
That said, I have a biased image of the Netherlands as a Protestant country. It's their secularism, not their Calvinism, that makes them somewhat stark and no-nonsense, I think - remember I'm talking impressions here, not facts grounded in evidence - but that's how I continue to see them.
And I see the Royal Concertgebouw as a Calvinist church, rather than a concert hall. It's got organ pipes up front, as many of the sternly rationalistic Protestant churches often do, rather than an altar, the way the more ritual-centered Catholics and Lutherans and Anglicans construct their churches. Kind of ugly. Clunky. Boxy. The focus is on its excellent acoustics, the practical side of things, rather than on elegance. People have to enter the stage via a long long flight of stairs, where I can imagine somebody could easily trip and fall. Nobody seems to be too concerned about that possibility, but when the Jussen boys comes running down the stairs to perform I freeze up. "Careful! Careful!" I hear myself saying.
All terribly irrational. But that's the way it is.
Let me move on to the music I want to share here.
Two wonderful pieces, one by the romantic composer Robert Schumann. Just a gorgeous piece of music. Wonder how much his talent was tied to his manic depressive disorder - he died insane, diagnosed with "psychotic melancholia" (if you've got to be insane, might as well have a diagnosis as romantic sounding as that one...) Schumann wasn't Catholic - more pagan than anything else - but he's on the catholic/schwarmy/romantic side of the spectrum compared to Bach, Mr. Lutheranism himself. (I'm blending the Lutherans and the Calvinists together, another inexcusable liberty, I know, but...)
So Concertgebouw - pronounced in that wonderful Dutch way - con - tsert - kkkkkkkkhhhhhhe - bow (as in bow wow), when combined with Bach, leaves me feeling all hot for the Protestant Church. Except that when I begin sitting back and listening to it, it sounds so light, so happy, so much fun, that I find myself retreating from thinking of Bach as a stern cold-blooded Protestant. What have I been thinking all these years?
I had an experience sometime earlier of rethinking Beethoven as far more "musical" than I have in years. Now I'm getting turned on to Bach in a new way.
All thanks to these marvelous, beautiful 25- and 28-year-old Dutch boys.
What a strange and wonderful time this lockdown is turning out to be.
Here are the two pieces:
Schumann's Abendlied (Evening song): https://www.youtube.
Bach's Concerto for Two Keyboards in C-major, BWV 1061, Movement 1: https://www.youtube.com/
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