Background on the new edition, published by Donemus…
In 1906, Rembrandt’s three hundredth birthday was celebrated in Leiden and Amsterdam with exhibitions, performances, costumed parades, even a flower parade and fireworks. The building on Jodenbreestraat 4-6, where Rembrandt had long lived and worked, was bought. A commemorative plaque was erected on Rozengracht on the spot where he died. At the unveiling of the memorial plaque on Rembrandt’s grave in the Westerkerk, Bede voor het vaderland was played.
At the opening of the Rijksmuseum’s new Night Watch Gallery, Prince Hendrik uttered the words: ‘Happy fatherland, which has produced great men; happy fatherland, which knows how to honour its great men.’Â That was on 16 July, a day after Rembrandt’s birthday. That day, there was a special festive evening at the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam, with readings of poems, plays and music specially composed for the occasion.
The party night at the theatre was to be an evening when everything would be Rembrandtesque. For this, genres were mixed up. The evening began with Saskia by the then famous composer Bernard Zweers (1854-1924), whose patriotic feelings were strongly developed. The guests then saw the third act of Joost van den Vondel’s Joseph in Dotan. After a Hymn to Rembrandt, etchings by Rembrandt were on display with accompanying music by Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951), the leader of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. The finale was a symphonic tone poem by Johan Wagenaar (1862-1941), inspired by Rembrandt’s famous painting Saul and David.
Mengelberg had composed music to nineteen biblical etchings by Rembrandt: Improvisationen über eine Original-Melodie zu Radierungen von Rembrandt. That these were Rembrandt’s biblical etchings was no coincidence: after all, Neêrland’s greatest artist was a misunderstood genius and in this only comparable to Jesus Christ. And indeed Rembrandt was written and spoken about in religious terms. In the Hymn to Rembrandt, for example: ‘Though no cross was thy bitter reward / No crown of thorns / Who of them all saw in thee the King / The God-sent of the highest beauty?’
Mengelberg’s Mahler-influenced composition was performed, while glass slide etchings were projected onto a large white canvas, following an idea by painter, writer and graphic artist Jan Veth. Accompanying The Prodigal Son and Christ Healing the Sick is music meant to illustrate death as comfort in life, and is a variation on an excerpt from the second movement of Mahler’s First Symphony. It was by no means a masterpiece, which was not surprising, as Mengelberg had put the twenty-part composition together in just two weeks.
Not even twenty years had the Nachtwacht hung in the specially designed construction; by then the views on the right lighting had changed. And Mengelberg was then conducting mainly in New York. His Etchings by Rembrandt remained unperformed until the 1990s.
Concert on March 10 and 11…
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention