Article in newspaper Trouw on January 24th by Peter van der Lint en Sander Becker
Composer Simeon ten Holt would have turned 100 years old on Tuesday. What makes his ‘Canto ostinato’ still so beloved? A violinist, a pianist, a composer and a choral conductor tell.
To mark the centenary of the birth of Simeon ten Holt (1923-2012), there are concerts of his music all over the country this year. And especially of his Canto ostinato, a 1976 composition for which hordes of people are falling like a log, even if they have never been to a classical concert before. Ten Holt himself was not at all happy with its popularity; he thought he had made much better compositions. Nevertheless, the Canto became for Ten Holt what the Bolero became for Ravel.
What is the attraction of this incantatory music that people like to listen to lying down? Does the repetitive rhythm of the five-part measure bring people into a trance, or is it that special melody that suddenly presents itself after a long wait? Some may find that melody kitschy, but for most it is almost life-changing. On this Simeon ten Holt day, four professionals from the music world – a violinist, a pianist, a composer and a choral conductor – will talk about how they relate to this special music.
“There is a certain magic surrounding the Canto ostinato. It starts already with that recognisable, five-part motif: páp-pap-páp-pap-pap-pap. In our version for string quartet, the cello plays it first. ‘Yes, there you have it!’, you think. When it comes up in a commercial or film, you also recognise it immediately.
“I used to dislike the piece. I thought it was a bit cheap. But once I started playing it myself, I was hooked. You have to completely surrender to it, otherwise it won’t work. The piece builds towards a simple melody that has something liberating about it. You feel it’s coming, but you never know exactly when. It is precisely this delayed expectation that makes it so exciting.
“Simeon ten Holt gives the musicians a lot of freedom. You can play with his thematic material to your heart’s content. Especially with the accents, you can vary. If I’m having an energetic day, it sounds very different from when I’m feeling calmer. Musicians can also inspire each other to play very exuberant or subdued, for instance, with broad notes or short pizzicati. You always have the choice: do I go along with it, or seek contrast? Interpersonal reactions are very important in this piece. You constantly have to keep all your sensors open.
“The piece consists of different blocks that you can repeat as you see fit. The composer didn’t want us to agree on that, because then the spontaneity disappears. The music has to emerge in the moment. That requires an entirely different interplay than with Haydn or Mozart. There you agree on everything, from articulation to dynamics. With Canto ostinato, everything is free. The only thing that is fixed is the five-part cadence: once it is in place, everything else has to follow it. Sometimes that makes it almost more like playing in a pop band than in a string quartet. That’s what makes it so interesting for us.
“The audience often reacts to it frenziedly. After a Schumann concert, people often say something like, ‘Very nicely played, but of course I don’t know anything about it.’ But after the Canto ostinato, you experience the craziest things. The other day in Amstelveen, in the foyer, a complete stranger flew around my neck: ‘Fantastic’, she cried, ‘what great music!’ Just like that, without any reserve. That’s what this music releases in people. It has a liberating effect.
“The piece will definitely stay in our repertoire. We put it on CD and have been playing it since 2017. By now, I really feel that it is ours.”
“I think the Canto ostinato is so popular because the piece has a universal value. This music appeals to many people, especially if they are not yet so introduced to classical music. I think this is due to its repetitive nature: that five-part measure repeated continuously, for a very long time in a row. In our hurried society, where everyone feels the pressure of having to do more in less time, this music is a liberation. Time comes to a standstill, as it were. As a listener, you wonder: what are we actually doing?
“The Canto ostinato is a voyage of discovery, an opening into unknown territory. When I play the piece, a lot of young people always come to listen. Often it’s the first time they visit a concert hall. That gives me hope as a fifty-year-old: classical music does have a future after all. Normally, at a classical concert there is a strict etiquette for when you can or cannot clap. Canto ostinato breaks that: you only clap at the beginning and at the end. Very simple and approachable.
“What also makes the piece beloved is that it offers a reflection on how wonderful the world is. With those sweet, harmonious sounds, the composer is actually saying: there is an awful lot of destruction around us, but now we look for a moment just at all the beauty, which is also there.
“It is tonal music, composed at a time when atonal was the norm. Simeon ten Holt therefore composed the piece in secret and waited ten years before daring to bring it out. Some colleagues thought it was kitsch, but audiences always enjoyed it.
“The highlight is the Chopin-like melody that emerges after a while. People often say, ‘Hey, I know that melody!’ And that’s right, because they have already spent an hour listening to snippets of it. The whole piece is a slow build-up to that moment when everything comes together. That also has a liberating effect.
“Tonight in the Concertgebouw I’m performing the piece for about the four hundredth time. Yet it remains exciting. No two performances are the same. You have so much freedom. You can repeat bars as many times as you like. You can leave out notes and shift accents. You can divide the five-part measure into 2-3 or 3-2. You can do the same or something else with your left and right hand. And if you play the piece with four pianists, like tonight, the variation possibilities are absolutely endless. This music never gets boring.”
Maria van Nieukerken
“With PA’dam, we often sing pieces that are not meant to be vocal. Like Bach’s Goldberg Variations. With Canto ostinato, it was especially exciting whether we could get it singable. And whether we could translate the trance effect of the music to the human voice. A voice, for instance, can resonate longer than a depressed piano key. We thought long and hard about whether we should do it entirely vocal, but eventually decided to add a marimba, a vibraphone, a harp and a double bass.
“Benno Bonke did the arrangement. The arrangement is for 16 voices in the usual subdivision of soprano, alto, tenor and bass. I really did wonder if it could be done, this arrangement, and of course we consulted with the Ten Holt heirs. They liked it, but we were absolutely not allowed to add text to the notes. Words can give singers something to hold on to, reminders of the musical progress. That was not possible now, so we had to resort to colouring the vowels. Only the i sound does not appear in it because it is difficult for the human voice.
“We wanted to approach the music in a human way with movement on stage. But singers cannot perform a whole choreography while standing and singing. We pre-recorded movements of the singers, show that slowed down and combine that with live footage. The emphasis is on the fingers and hands, as a reference to the hands and fingers of pianists, for whom the music was originally intended.
“The theme, the famous melody is obviously very important. We can prepare its arrival through movement. It should not be too early, but not too late either. With singers, you can only sustain this for a maximum of five quarters of an hour, and so you have to time that melody well.
“The trance effect in the music also works in the vocal version, I think. I hope the singers themselves don’t go into a trance, because then they lose their way. This music requires a lot of technique and concentration. At rehearsals, it was already apparent that the singers are mentally exhausted afterwards.”
“I was asked in 2015 to create a version of Canto ostinato for the Residentie Orkest. I was surprised that there was no orchestral version of it yet. Because all those little voices on four pianos, they remain a bit black and white. With all those different instruments in an orchestra, you can colour in much more. When I heard the orchestral version live for the first time, it was quite special. Like suddenly seeing a black-and-white film in full colour.
“I had a lot of help from Jeroen van Veen in composing. After all, he is pretty much Mister Canto in the Netherlands. I first heard the version for four pianos when I was still working at Donemus. I listened to all kinds of things there, but Canto ostinato came in immediately. In those days, contemporary music was mainly very intellectual, music that was good for the head, less for the heart. Anything that sounded a bit ‘nice’ was quickly dismissed as kitsch. But I often gave that first Donemus recording as a gift to friends, who were very happy with it.
“Live, I first heard the music in Uffelt in a factory hall. How long it lasted I don’t remember, nor whether we were standing, sitting or lying down. I do remember watching the sun slowly set and time completely disappear. A special experience, although it wasn’t necessarily spiritual.
“At Donemus, Ten Holt sometimes came to visit. Then he told them he was not so happy with the popularity of his Canto. But there was nothing to be done about it – it became Ten Holt’s Bolero, Ravel’s popular piece. The latter didn’t like that at all either. I myself, however, would love to write such a work, a piece that comes in like that. Secretly, I think he was proud of it anyway, especially the five-part time signature, which actually produces a kind of waltz.
“Of course, the freedom in the composition doesn’t hold when eighty musicians are playing. You can’t give every player their own freedom. In theory it is a beautifully democratic composition, but in practice you still have to make arrangements. I decided to make a fixed version in which only the number of repeats is free.
“I had the theme, the melody, played wonderfully grandly by the whole orchestra. The Canto, for me anyway, is about longing for a horizon that cannot be reached. Until that melody comes. Of course, if you already know the piece, the surprise of that moment is gone. When you hear it for the first time, the surprise is that you think you already know the melody. Ten Holt very cleverly managed this by subtly giving away building blocks of that melody in all those bars beforehand. It is actually a very simple folk song. I like to call it sensual minimalism.”
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