It was Spring of 1972 and I was about to graduate with a Masters Degree in Music from the University of Illinois, specializing in the violin. Now what was I going to do? It seemed that in spite of having worked very hard to master this difficult instrument, that more training was needed. Europe, particularly Vienna, beckoned. A visiting scholar from there, Eduard Melkus, had spent some time in Illinois. I liked the way he taught. I also surmised that he might be a conduit to employment in the musically active capitals of Europe. After all, the roots of our classical music came from those places and even in 1972 was highly appreciated there. R and I had saved diligently and we thought we could live for a year on what we had banked from her two years of employment as an engineer. My salary with the Memphis Symphony, income from many “run-out” concerts to places like Kankakee and Springfield and employment as a graduate assistant was how we paid our living expenses.
So I completed my graduate recital in Smith Music Hall, performing J. S. Bach, Leon Kirchner, César Franck and a work of my own entitled “Encore for Violin”. As a young married couple, the world was before us with all its possibilities for adventure. All we really needed was a bit of food and shelter and we were happy. We thought we’d move our stuff back to our parent’s home in California (along with our St Bernard, Gilda) and then see what we had to do to make our Europe plans work. Just before we were to leave Illinois, one of my professors alerted me to a job opportunity in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He said that they are looking for violinists to fill out their string section. So in the midst of packing our belongings and 135 pound dog, I mailed Jan Huckriede of the Amsterdam Philharmonic a tape of my graduate recital by way of audition.
A couple of weeks later, in California, we got a telegram. This was in the days before e-mail and low cost international phone service. The subsequent letter said in part, “Thank you very much for your long informative letter and for the tape you sent. We have carefully listened to it and consider your playing of such a standard that a live audition will not be necessary”. They offered me a position with the Amsterdams Philharmonisch Orkest at a salary “between Dfl. 16.000,- and Dfl. 22.000,- per annum”. Benefits included health insurance for R and me and a 6 ½ % extra holiday allowance for the six weeks summer holiday. In the final contract, the salary was set at f 18.780,- per annum. They also offered us a partially furnished flat at f 250,- per month. That was about $100 U.S. at the time and was about 2/3 of what our Illinois apartment cost.
So now I needed to learn Dutch. Fortunately, the University of California at Berkeley, my alma mater, allowed me to audit a six week intensive basic Dutch course during the summer. With six hours a day of immersion which included three hours in the classroom and the same time in the language lab, I learned the basics. I could pronounce and read some of the fundamentals. The finishing touches on Dutch would occur once I arrived.
The Dutch language is really pretty cool. My German studies in high school and college gave me a bit of a jump start on sentence structure, but I also had to forget a lot of the German. Spelling and pronunciation is quite different, with works like “hoek” pronounced “huke” and the German “sein” being spelled “zijn” in Dutch. Nevertheless, once you know the rules, Dutch is phonetic. So you can pronounce it when you see it written and you can spell it if you hear it pronounced. Some of the fine tuning of my Dutch wasn’t going to happen until I had more experience as illustrated by my first story when I arrived in Holland.
My first order of the day after I flew to Schiphol airport outside of Amsterdam was to find the orchestra office. There, they were to give me keys and directions to our flat. Somehow I found the office and met with Mijnheer (Mr.) Jan Huckriede. He must have been in his mid fifties, was bald on top, but had long dark hair flowing down around the back and sides of his head. Of course, I had spent time in Berkeley during the 1960’s so long hair on men “hippies” was not unusual. But to see a middle aged man with this style was different and unexpected.
Mijnheer Huckriede’s assistant, Mr. Gerbrand, was very cordial and spoke good English, which was a blessing, since I knew less Dutch than I perhaps should have. As we later found out, Amsterdam is very cosmopolitan and many residents, especially those connected with commerce, speak numerous languages. I had a map of Amsterdam and with my suitcase and violin, I started to find my way to our flat at Banstraat 1. On the way, I got confused, so I stopped a man on the street to ask for directions. “Weet U de weg naar het Banstraat” (Do you know the way to the Banstraat), I asked? Several times I had to repeat my request. It was clear I had a lot of Dutch to learn as he clearly did not understand my simple question. “Spreekt U Engels” (Do you speak English), was my next question. “Nee, mijnheer” (No Sir), he replied. Finally, I showed him 1 Banstraat on a piece of paper and he said with great clarity and understanding, “Ach, U betegend Banstraat” (Oh, you mean Banstraat). As it turns out, I had pronounced Banstraat with a long Baaanstraat, which the locals pronounce with a very short B’nstraat. Now that we understood each other, he was able to give me directions and I found my way to the flat.Banstraat een was a narrow building of three stories and an attic. There were four apartments, and I think we got the best one of them. The front door had a panel with an ornate cut glass pattern. On entering, you walked down a dark narrow hallway. Off the hallway to the right was an apartment. Beyond that was a steep winding stairway. At the end was a bathtub with a shower. The downstairs apartment looked out on a little garden (tuinje). Our flat was on the second level. In the original house, it would have been the living room, dining room and kitchen. The ceilings were about twelve feet high. Outside and down the hall was a room just large enough for a toilet which had a tank high on the wall with a pull chain. The narrow treaded stairs leading upstairs wound up from the landing near this bathroom. Since the house was owned (or perhaps leased) by the Orchestra, we were all musicians.
Downstairs was oboist Wim van Hartingsveld. 
Upstairs was trumpeter Ad Klink and his wife Els (who worked for IBM) and in the attic apartment was violist Jan van Muenster. Much of the time, one or all of us would be making music. We mostly either heard Ad on the trumpet, or Wim on oboe or sometimes
piano (which he was painstakingly trying to learn).
When I arrived in Amsterdam, R was still in California working for an engineering firm in the Bay Area. Our charter airplane tickets to Europe had been ordered before I knew I had a job. Rehearsals started before the scheduled flight. Our tickets were not refundable, so it made sense for us to only forfeit one ticket and have R follow. So I became a bachelor again for nearly a month. During that time I acquainted myself with the orchestra schedule, practiced the violin, explored the nearby markets, and found my way to our rehearsal & concert halls. Wim, Ad and Jan were helpful during this time. We also wrote airmail letters to each other which are now treasures in our scrapbooks. Among other things, they remind us of our young passion for each other. R joined me in September, just in time for the orchestra tour to the Soviet Union. That adventure will be chronicled in another musing, so I’ll skip over that for now.
Once R arrived, we got into the routine of the orchestra schedule. Eight services a week included four rehearsals and four concerts, sometimes in neighboring communities, but most often in the Concertgebouw, the primary concert hall in Amsterdam. I could walk to rehearsals held in a hall on the Kaisersgracht (Kaiser’s canal) where Franz Joseph Haydn had conducted concerts. The walk was about twenty minutes. I could also take the tram, but saw no reason to, as the walk was pleasant. We lived about two blocks from Vondel Park and part of the most direct way was through the park. In the Fall and Spring, men would be fishing in the canals. Vondel park was also a gathering point for drug vendors, but we didn’t pay attention to them in the very tolerant and liberal Dutch culture where “anything” goes as long as it doesn’t bother someone else. We enjoyed the change of seasons as the air became brisk in the Winter and then warmed to the crocus and tulips in the Spring. My walking partner was Jan van Muenster who lived in the attic apartment. Jan may have been eighteen or nineteen at the time. He enjoyed practicing his English. I enjoyed practicing my Dutch, so it worked out well to have the time together.
At rehearsals, and during the breaks, the orchestra was very fond of strong coffee served with cream. “Kaffe met room” or simply “kafferoom” is what they called it. Like sweetened condensed milk, it was quite delicious. Rehearsals were conducted in Dutch, except for our visiting conductors who sometimes used English or German. I had more language training than my American stand-mate, so often I could help him find our place to start each time the conductor would stop to explain something. Often it was referring to a letter in the score such as, “Even op leter ‘A’ begin” (Literally: Just at letter ‘A’ begin). It is amazing how universal the musical suggestions are in any language. Of course, Italian terms such as pianissimo, accelerando, ritardando, sforzando and so forth are commonly used in American orchestras as well.
Our domestic life was kept interesting as R learned where she could shop. The refrigerator in the apartment did not work, so she went shopping daily for fresh food, milk, etc. However, when it got colder and rainy, that was not so convenient. One day we found out that there was a truckload of refrigerators which had been damaged in an accident. They worked, but had some damaged (slightly bent) heat exchange fins. They could not be sold as new, so they were being auctioned to the highest bidder. What fun! Let’s go see if my Dutch was good enough to understand when to bid and when not to bid! We went and bid on a half size refrigerator in our price range and won! However, you had to take delivery of the merchandise immediately. That meant that we had to carry the refrigerator across town, as we had no other means of conveying it from the auction house to our flat. Being young, we thought, let’s just carry it. So we started out block by block carrying what turned out to be heavier and farther than we thought. At one intersection, we set it down, waiting for the light to change so we could cross a particularly wide street. A fellow in a small van saw our plight and stopped to offer us a lift. What a God-send! Indeed, we loaded the refrigerator in the back and crammed into the front seat. He asked us where we were going and we replied 1 Banstraat. We started to give him directions. But we had only walked the route, so we didn’t know the traffic patterns. At one point, we tried to direct him the wrong way up a one-way street. We did get home finally, and were very relieved to only have to haul it up the narrow stairs. To be continued…
©Frank Bliss 2007 All rights reserved
April , 2008
