An event that occurred years before birth can determine the course of a person’s life. Composer and choir conductor Gerben van der Veen was inspired by such an incident. It was a rendition of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in the middle of the war, in 1942, by the village choir De Eendracht from Abbega. That place just below Sneek had barely two hundred inhabitants at the time, half of whom were refugees and in hiding.
Many of them participated in the ‘insane’ Matthäusplan by newcomer Jeanne Gerretsen, a violinist from The Hague. A young couple, inland fisherman Feite van der Veen and Klaaske Bergstra, who would later form a family, sang in this Abbegaaster choir. This first version of the Matthäus in Friesland, which later became an annual tradition in Bolsward, grew into a pillar of that family’s history.
Fourteen years after this Matthäus Gerben was born, the youngest of four children, all of whom were put behind the harmonium by their father – who, in addition to being an inland fisherman, was also a church organist in Heeg – around the age of five. Bach would always remain Gerben’s great musical passion. In his workspace, which he called “the note shelter,” the bust of the German composer watches from the windowsill. The harmonium from the church in Abbega, on which the organist played that legendary song in 1942, still stands against the wall. Matthäus guided.
About eighteen years ago, poet Eppie Dam adapted the Dutch one Matthäustranslation by Jan Rot into a Frisian version and submitted it to Van der Veen. “While reading he cried tears over the kale,” Dam emails. After a trip with the Frisian Matthäus as far away as Northern Germany, Van der Veen suggested that it might be time for his own passion. Poet Dam “raised his hand.” It delivered during corona times In surroundings in Jerusalem on.
Close family bond
Brother Sjoerd remembers young Gerben as a child overflowing with imagination. “We grew up in Osingahuizen, between the farms. And then early in the morning – before we went to school – I heard the creaking of Gerben’s little wheelbarrow. He would, Gerben said, ‘treat the cows’. I don’t know what he meant by it. Maybe he was going to feed them. He fantasized stories to act out with his two comrades. In one of them they had to sing a song and Gerben was the conductor.”
Their father died young, in his mid-fifties, when Gerben was fifteen. He took his place as church organist in Heeg. “The death of heat It hit me hard,” says Sjoerd. “It made the family even closer. We came from a warm family and always went with everyone – mother, sisters Jaike and Nannie, cousin Germ and I – to Gerben’s concerts, and there were quite a few. I sang in the choir myself. In surroundings in Jerusalem.”
Both brothers studied at the Music Pedagogical Academy in Leeuwarden. They then continued their path in music education. Gerben initiated choir festivals in the north, conducted many choirs, including his own Capella ’92, and from the late 1970s also taught piano and organ for thirty years at the Center for the Arts A7 in Heerenveen. The bankruptcy of that school around 2010 affected him deeply, but afterwards it also offered him the opportunity to focus more on conducting and – especially – composing. With his wife Janke he founded his own foundation: Collegium Vocale Fryslân. They housed his music and their own choirs there, such as Hortus Vocalis. They formed project choirs from a pool of about six hundred singers and the foundation provided education.
A few weeks before his unexpected death he completed his Friesland Symphony in eleven parts for large orchestra, large choir, children’s choir and soprano
From that moment on, Van der Veen became an even more decisive figure in the Frisian choir world: not only as a performer, but also in a creative sense. He composed monumental works. A few weeks before his unexpected death he completed his Friesland Symphony in eleven parts for large orchestra, large choir, children’s choir and soprano. Again with Eppie Dam as lyricist. “This work is, among other things, about what is lost,” Dam emails. “The voice of the mysterious bird the bittern – of our conscience – is heard and addressed less and less. Gerben realized this and told his choir members at a first meeting that we humans often lack care for others and the world. A harsh message, but he delivered it in his own mild and playful way.”
His death leaves “a deep crater” in the northern choir world, says Maarten Snel, chairman of the Collegium Vocale Fryslân foundation, who sang in his choirs. “He was an inspiring conductor who could lift us up. And he had those beautiful mantras. We singers all knew his eleventh commandment: ‘You shall not make haste’.”
“He floated above the material,” says Jan de Jong, whose publishing house Intrada publishes Van der Veens compositions. Their friendship started half a century ago at the Music Pedagogical Academy. “My teacher there always said: ‘You have instructors and conductors.’ The first say what they want, the last show it. And Gerben was a real conductor with enormous appeal, with a clear sound image in mind and with a gentle, humorous and inspiring approach. Everyone wanted to sing for him.”
Painting of Gerben van der Veen by Joop Bouma.
Image Joop Bouma
Sacred moments
“When Gerben conducted,” says his wife Janke van der Veen, “he entered a different world. As a choir member you simply had to sing, his charisma, peace and clarity were so all-consuming.”
The two were in class together at primary school. He already harbored a secret crush then. But it wasn’t until they were nineteen that the spark flew. They had two sons and a daughter.
“We could share everything as soul mates,” says Janke. “When we came home in the evening from a rehearsal or concert, Gerben would pour himself a beer and I would pour a glass of wine and we would philosophize about life and sometimes about death. He called those our sacred moments.”
She describes him as religious, but not religious. “He had his own thoughts. Gerben could not cope with the ‘Agnus Dei’, that image of one man, the Lamb of God, who bears all the sins of the world. In the requiem for his parents Luceat requirement he composed that part in an unruly style, on staccato notes and in a restless rhythm. He believed that man must seek God, the good, within himself. For me, Gerben was the embodiment of that.”
Poet Eppie Dam came full circle after Van der Veen’s death by honoring him with a Frisian text on the chorale ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’ from Bach’s Matthäus. He added a cry from the heart to those words: “Death is sometimes a cruel spoilsport that abruptly interrupts us, just when we want to say something. Fortunately, people who leave something behind do not simply stop talking. Anchored words in far-reaching melodies do not have to evaporate forever. Gerben, we still hear you.”
Gerben van der Veen died on March 25 of cardiac arrest in his hometown of Haskerdijken.
