Tag: Belgium

A Flemish Folksong

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The Wedding Dance, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1566

I like to think that the revelers in Bruegel’s wedding scene are dancing to the popular Flemish tune T’andernaken. Originally a folksong, the piece was arranged for instruments by many 15th and 16th century composers including Jacob Obrecht, and Ludwig Senfl, There is even a setting by Henry VIII who somehow found time between marriages and beheadings to compose some admirable music.

I have heard the tune performed several times over the years by the Medieval and Renaissance music group The Folger Consort, usually as an instrumental but twice the sung folksong. In 2012 it was included in the program City of Ladies: The Musical World of 15th Century Burgundy. It was a lovely surprise to hear a song in Flemish, the language that surrounded me in my childhood. Many of the Folger concerts include songs in Latin, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, but it was a special treat to hear Flemish. The moment occurred again this Valentine’s Day in the concert Love Songs of the 15th Century. The program promised two instrumental settings of T’andernaken, the earliest, by Tyting,, and another by Antoine Brunel. But apparently tenor Jason McStoots could not resist the opportunity to sing the folksong and gave us a lively impromptu performance.

From The Folger Consort’s program notes by Consort director Robert Eisenstein:

T’andernacken is a Flemish folksong that became for some reason the basis for some of the earliest, purely instrumental pieces in the 15th-century repertoire… Composers vied with each other in fashioning more and more virtuosic settings of the tune, and it was popular well into the 16th century.  

T’andernaken was first published in The Antwerp Songbook in 1544. As a love song it is far different in tone from the Courtly Love tradition of the period. It is in the folk tradition of songs that tell a story of ordinary people, their heartaches and misadventures in love. It is a cautionary tale that women across the ages can recognize and to me it has a distinctly Flemish sensibility; the hard knocks of life met with earthy humor, unvarnished realism, and determination to enjoy life despite all.

The story is narrated by a man who reports on a conversation he overheard between two young women in the town of Andernach:

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The Bells of Belgium… and Frederick, MD

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Dear Readers: I was SCOOPED by The Washington Post! I had almost finished writing this when I opened the paper one morning and saw an article on the front page of the Metro section about the carillon tower in Baker Park, Frederick. Quite a coincidence! But I wrote mostly about Belgium so I just decided not to go on at length about the Frederick tower and refer you to the Post instead. It is a great article, though it omits the Belgian connection.

Bells in the Ghent Belfry

In 1626 Francesco Belli, traveling with Italian Ambassador Giorgio, wrote home from Flanders:

The bells in these countries serve for music; their timbre is so sweet and their harmony so complete that they express and include all the notes of the voice.

Two hundred and fifty years later Robert Louis Stevenson and a friend traveled through Belgium by canoe following the rivers and canals from town to town. In his account of the journey, An Inland Voyage, he recalled their starting point in Antwerp:

On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a belfry showed among the foliage; thence some inspired bell ringer made the afternoon musical on a chime of bells. There was something very sweet and taking in the air he played and we thought we had never heard bells speak so intelligently or sing so melodiously as these.

These are just two of the awed travelers who recorded their impressions of Flemish bell towers in diaries, letters, memoirs, and travel books from medieval times to our own day. One dubbed the region “The Land of Singing Towers,” another described journeying through Belgium as following “a chain of melody.”

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In Vlaamse Velden (In Flanders Fields)

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By happenstance this month I watched a Flemish TV series about a family in World War I and read a book by a Flemish author who discovered his house was occupied by an SS officer in World War II. Both were set in Ghent, my mother’s home town, where I spent many happy childhood times and have visited often throughout my life. Both offered a fuller context to the stories passed down to me about my own family’s experiences in the World Wars.

I watched the ten episodes of In Vlaamse Velden on PBS Passport, in Flemish with English subtitles. It was lovely to hear Flemish, a language that surrounded me in my childhood. I felt good when I was able to pick up familiar words and expressions, even some entire sentences, but I did need the subtitles. The series tells the story of Dr. Boesman, a gynecologist, his wife Virginie, sons Vincent and Guillaume, and daughter Marie. Each experiences the war in a different way, illustrating the complex and divided loyalties of the Flemish people during German occupation.

Dr. Boesman believes the Germans will win and that he may at last gain a professorship at the University of Ghent, till now denied to Flemish speakers. The class divide between Flemish and French speaking Belgians is exploited by the Germans who claim a cultural kinship with the Flemish Independence movement. The language divide also compromises the effectiveness of the Belgian Army. The officer class are French-speaking while most of the enlisted men are Flemish and cannot understand their orders. Vincent Boesman plays a crucial role in his unit, translating for the officers and winning promotion. A scene where Vincent’s unit travels towards the front on bicycles underscores the inadequacy of the Belgian forces. Meanwhile free-spirited younger brother Guillaume deserts the army, but is captured by the French and pressed into service. His war experiences will profoundly change him.

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Ghent – A Harmony of Old and New

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The three towers of Ghent seen from the castle, St. Baaf’s Cathedral, the Belfry, and St. Nicholas Church.

One summer afternoon in 2005 my husband and I strolled along the Graslei, the east bank of the river Leie in the historic heart of Ghent. To our right were the old medieval warehouse buildings with their distinctive stepped gables. Behind them the three famous towers of Ghent stood sentry over the city – St. Baaf’s Cathedral, the Belfry, and St. Nicholas Church. Directly ahead loomed the grim Gravensteen, the Castle of the Counts of Flanders. But across the river on the Korenlei was an incongruous sight, an enormous construction crane towering over the historic buildings of the old grain port. We learned from my cousins who live in Ghent that a Marriott hotel was under construction there. Not Continue reading “Ghent – A Harmony of Old and New” →

The Darkest Hour, The Suspect V

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I finally got to watch the much lauded film The Darkest Hour last weekend. Gary Oldman’s performance as Winston Churchill certainly deserved the Oscar Award for Best Actor. Equally deserving were the creative group who won the Oscar for Makeup. In real life Oldman looks nothing at all like Churchill, but with an inspired combination of acting skill and makeup bravura he pulls off the seemingly impossible. Director Joe Wright brings a suspenseful “you are there” quality to the story of Churchill’s first days in office in 1940, battling with political rivals who favored a pact with Hitler and strategizing to save the British army trapped in Dunkirk. It is a “warts and all” portrait including Churchill’s excessive drinking and his controversial decision to sacrifice the garrison at Calais to buy time to evacuate the troops from Dunkirk. So far, so historical. But then came a scene I knew was an anachronism. Churchill giving his famous V sign for Victory. But that couldn’t have happened in 1940 for the V campaign didn’t start until Continue reading “The Darkest Hour, The Suspect V” →

The Message in the Laundry

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Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F001163-0012,_Köln,_Textilfabrik_Bierbaum-Proenen

One day in 1944 my future existence hung by a tenuous thread. If a message secreted in a batch of laundry had not reached its intended recipient I would never have been born. On such tiny twists of fate and happenstance do our lives depend, though we rarely hear about them. But my mother often told this story in her dramatic continental style, and in my father’s papers I found his solemn account of the affair. Continue reading “The Message in the Laundry” →

How St. Nicholas Became Santa

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Russian Orthodox Icon

When I was a small child growing up in England we didn’t have Santa Claus and we didn’t hang up stockings or set out cookies on Christmas Eve. Instead, following the tradition of my mother’s Flemish homeland, my sister and I put a pair of wooden clogs by the fireside with carrots in them for St. Nicholas’s donkey. In later years as my mother absorbed English culture we abandoned St. Nicholas in favor of the very English Father Christmas. Our celebrations were complete with Continue reading “How St. Nicholas Became Santa” →

Please, Not in the Cathedral!

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Connections

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by Galia Amsel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looked like an enormous vacuum cleaner part – a black plastic tube emerging from the stone archway of an upper gallery, coiled into a knot in midair, and dangling just above our heads. A cluster of clear claw-like objects protruded from the open end of the tube. I stood in the transept of Salisbury Cathedral puzzling over the purpose of this contraption. They must be involved in some kind of cleaning or restoration project, I thought. Perhaps the tube was a chute for removing debris from the upper gallery. Or perhaps when it was uncoiled the tube reached to the ground and the claws became a tool for cleaning the stone floors. Neither idea was very convincing. At this point I turned to see my husband chatting to a cathedral docent,  Continue reading “Please, Not in the Cathedral!” →