It's taken a little while but this old chuffer has just pulled into the station. Just bear with me whilst I tap the wheels and check the clinkers have been cleared...

Pim - yes, correct!
 I was going to use Sir AB's photo but in later years he got to look a little like W.C.Fields (grog blossom extraordinaire) and I preferred to use EJM's phizzog as he remains my favoured English composer. Elswhere I am known as Bax-of-Delights so I was really stuck between two incomparable boozers. All designed to cause utter confusion...

OK - I could see I would be getting endless messages saying "you got the picture wrong" so I've changed it to  a rather dreamy Bax from the 20's.

On that earlier picture he reminded me also a bit of Albert Finney.

Moeran wrote beautiful music but nobody knows that in the Netherlands, naturally. English composer have always been ignored in this country. I heard a panel of musical nitwits from the Dutch musical establishment talking about new CDs once on the Dutch national radio. When Moeran's beautiful Sinfonietta was played they were all astonished about this music of a composer they all didn't know.

I seem to remember another occasion on which the name of Moeran was mentioned on Dutch radio. It was in a radio programme of Mr Han Reiziger (see the topic Chaplin's Music on this MB for more on him). He had a man in the programme that knew a lot about English music and also about Sibelius, a composer who also never really made it in the Netherlands. A friend of mine is taking care of the archives of a Dutch composer and musicologist who wrote one of the first Dutch books on Sibelius. The great composer wrote a thankful letter to this man.

Oh my, I'm talking too much...

Many thanks, Bax!

I'm always surprised that people in Britain are so actively involved in the arts. For every composer, writer, painter or architect there seems to be a society or trust or sometimes even a museum. In the Netherlands, we do that only with famous painters and in the case of Vincent van Gogh, most of the money for it was collected in Japan. I feel a bit ashamed now... Only for the writers Multatuli and Louis Couperus there is a museum in the Netherlands. There is not a single museum for a composer. I believe there isn't even a museum about music in general!

There are Dutch classical pieces that I really like, but I can't say that the Netherlands have produced many great composers. But for someone like me, who is interested in minor composers, there is a lot to enjoy in Dutch music.

BoD,

Welcome.  Hope you have fun here.

Tommo