The Century of Simeon ten Holt; in cinemas

He owes his fame among the general public to the Golden Record he received in 2001 for the more than 15 thousand copies sold of his classic Canto Ostinato, performed by Kees Wieringa and Polo de Haas. The ‘Canto cult’ has not yet run out of steam: another performance is scheduled at the Concertgebouw this month (January 2025).

Documentary filmmaker Paul Hegeman, a fellow-villager of Ten Holt, who lived in Bergen, North Holland, during his lifetime, is therefore right at the door: his posthumous portrait of the composer and his work begins with that Canto: a spatial piece for two or four grand pianos with an ‘open scenario’. That is, the pianists decide how long a sequence lasts and where to place accents. Each performance is a social process in which the grand pianos become one: often a performance spans over an hour, but it can also quietly last four hours. The undulating, repetitive motifs of basically five notes in which small changes gradually seep through have a transcendental effect on players and listeners.

With his daughter, Ten Holt’s Bergen bunker is visited: the workplace without gas, light or water where he worked and lived for over a decade. In addition, the women in Ten Holt’s life tell about the person behind the composer. A loner pur sang with a duality in his character – serene and amicable – that also says something about how he related to his music: that is where he put his passion. His second wife’s reaction to the fact that he dedicated the ‘sad’ Canto to her: ‘I would have preferred you to be a bit nicer to me.’

Hegeman begins and ends his portrait by characterising the man, who himself occasionally turns up in archive material. Visually, the film is rather bare recording. More interesting is what speaks from the music: Wieringa in particular proves to be an inspired narrator and illustrator of the tension that makes Ten Holt’s compositions so virtuosic. Although Hegeman may not directly touch that deep chord with his sometimes somewhat gratuitous collection of testimonies, the viewer can also set his own accents here and make music out of it.