Chris Swithinbank

Last night, Richard Ri­jn­vos was awarded the Matthijs Ver­meulen Award, a bi­en­nial prize for a Dutch com­poser con­sid­ered to have ‘com­posed an im­por­tant piece in the field of con­tem­po­rary music’. As you can hear below, his ac­cep­tance speech was a fiery af­fair, at­tack­ing the cur­rent Dutch gov­ern­ment’s pol­icy of swinge­ing cuts to arts and music fund­ing in the coun­try. For non-Dutch speak­ers I have trans­lated the text of his speech below. (You can find the orig­i­nal as a PDF here.)

While you’re here, the Muziek Cen­trum Ned­er­land, which I think is prob­a­bly the best music in­for­ma­tion cen­tre in the world, faces 100% cuts to its gov­ern­ment fund­ing. They are run­ning a pe­ti­tion ask­ing for sup­port against the cuts that I would urge you to sign.

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Ac­cep­tance Speech Richard Ri­jn­vos

Upon re­ceipt of the Matthijs Ver­meulen Prize, awarded dur­ing Toonzetters on 22 June 2011 in the Muziekge­bouw aan ’t IJ.

The or­gan­is­ers have po­litely asked me not to speak for longer than three min­utes. I’ll just start my stop­watch. (Starts stop­watch) So!

It is — I think — fairly ob­vi­ous when I say that I am de­lighted to re­ceive the Matthijs Ver­meulen Prize. It is — I think — fairly ob­vi­ous when I say that I am de­lighted to re­ceive the Matthijs Ver­meulen Prize for the the sec­ond time.

Some of you will know that for a while now I have been liv­ing and work­ing in Durham; Durham, a small pic­turesque town in the shadow of New­cas­tle in the North of Eng­land.

We know Eng­land as the coun­try of good man­ners, as the coun­try where tra­di­tions are held in high re­gard, and where na­tion­al­ism is not a dirty word. I usu­ally keep my dis­tance from any kind of sen­ti­men­tal chau­vin­ism, but in light of the dis­as­trous de­ci­sions re­gard­ing art and cul­ture pol­icy of the cur­rent [Dutch] gov­ern­ment, I will gladly make an ex­cep­tion here:

I am proud of this award. I am proud of every note that sounds in Die Kam­mersängerin. I am proud of Mar­ije van Stralen and the Ives En­sem­ble who bring my song cycle to life with as much en­thu­si­asm as ultra pro­fes­sional pre­ci­sion. I am proud of the fact that I am an artist.

Yes, ladies and gen­tle­men, you heard me right: I am proud of my­self. Why? Be­cause the gov­ern­ment isn’t but should be. Don’t get me wrong: the arts are also hav­ing their fund­ing cut in Great Britain, but not with the cyn­i­cal, vin­dic­tive, hate­ful un­der­tones that are cur­rently em­ployed by many a politi­cian in the Hague, un­doubt­edly dri­ven by the ap­par­ently in­erad­i­ca­ble ap­a­thy that the Nether­lands loves so much.

We, artists, have re­cently been suc­ces­sively por­trayed as left-wing hob­by­ists, sub­sidy-spongers, and re­cently politi­cians can’t re­sist tak­ing an­other shot, mak­ing artists look like sub­sidy-en­slaved id­iots. We are junkies. It seems as if the po­lit­i­cal lords and ladies have no in­ter­est in good man­ners. And no in­ter­est in cul­tural tra­di­tions. And also have no shred of cul­tural chau­vin­ism.

I am proud of my­self. Why? Be­cause the gov­ern­ment isn’t. But it should be.

Rita Ver­donk once thought the time right for yet an­other pop­ulist party. T.O.N. Trots op Ned­er­land [Proud of the Nether­lands].

It is high time for a new po­lit­i­cal party: T.O.N.K. Trots op Ned­er­landse Kun­ste­naars [Proud of Dutch Artists].

(looks at stop­watch) My time is up. Thank you for your at­ten­tion.