In the first
half of 2014, I wrote - commissioned
by the ZeelandNazomer Festival -
the music for The Writer, his
Wife, her Mistress, a theaterproduction about the triangular between Martinus & Netty Nijhoff and Marlow
Moss.
The poet and translator Martinus Nijhoff was
long married to NettyNijhoff, herself a
writer. Together they had a son, but they lived
separated soon. Netty mostly resided
abroad and had relationships with women. Marlow
Moss, an English visual artist who
painted inthe abstract
style of Mondrian, was
her great love.
Zeeland, the south-west part of the
Netherlands had a great appeal to artists
and Martinus Nijhoff was
no exception. In the early Thirties Nijhoff commissioned the building of a holiday residence Huize Antoinette, nicely
situated at the bottom ofthe dunes. During World War
II Netty and Marlow
Moss lived for some time in this house.
In The Writer, his Wife, her Mistress, play-writer Anna Maria Verslootdescribes a fictional meeting between Martinus, Netty and Marlow. Suppose that these three artists had spent a summer together in Zeeland in the house down the dunes and near the sea. What kind of'unwritten masterpieces' would have been the result for the Nijhoffsand how would inspire this Marlow Moss as a painter?
In The Writer, his Wife, her Mistress, play-writer Anna Maria Verslootdescribes a fictional meeting between Martinus, Netty and Marlow. Suppose that these three artists had spent a summer together in Zeeland in the house down the dunes and near the sea. What kind of'unwritten masterpieces' would have been the result for the Nijhoffsand how would inspire this Marlow Moss as a painter?
I wrote the music for
singers and saxophonequartet, performed bythe Aurelia Saxophone
Quartet. Vincent van den Elshout - who
previously directed Sitting Girl, a play about Charley Toorop for the
Festival - worked for this play with three talented singer-actors, ElsMondelaers as Netty Nijhoff, Simone Milsdochter as Marlow Mossand Stefaan
de Gandt as Martinus Nijhoff. An
unspoilt landscape of dunes formed the natural
scenery.
