Paul Seelig, composer from Bandung, Java

Paul Seelig (Funkenberg,Germany, 1876 – Batavia, 1945) lived most of his life in Bandung on the island of Java. Inspired by Javanese gamelan, kroncong, Comedy Stamboel and Malay pantun poetry, he composed a small but interesting oeuvre. He was quite successful abroad: in Siam, Austria, Australia and America. In Siam he was awarded the Order of the White Elephant, in Vienna he was called an Oriental Master, in Australia his Malaysian songs had great s...

Constant van de Wall, a European-Javanese composer

Constant van de Wall (Surabaya, 1871 – Nice, 1945) occupies a prominent place in the list of Indisch composers because of a number of uniquely European-Javanese compositions: songs, pieces for piano and for orchestra, chamber music, and the opera Attima. From this it is evident that his eyes and ears were open to the country where he was born and raised: the nature, Javanese antiquities, the shadow play, the Malay pantun, Javanese dance, g...

TROPENJAZZ gaat over jazz in Nederlands-Indië, vanaf de Fidgety Feet Jazz gespeeld in 1919 tot serieuze luisterjazzconcerten eind jaren dertig. TROPENJAZZ tovert de lezer een uitbundige wereld voor van vrolijke jazz, gespeeld door orkesten in alle soorten en maten: scheepsorkesten van de grote ocean liners, topensembles van overzee, bioscooporkesten, Manilla-jazz, schoolbandjes, Indo-Europese jazzorkesten en inheemse bands. Een regen van afbeeldingen, advertenties en zeldzame foto’s illust...

Two introductions to the life of composer Linda Bandara are presented in this booklet. The first one is written in by Dutch pianist Henk Mak van Dijk.

The second one is based on an article by the late Klaus Kuiper: ‘Linda Bandara and the gamelan. A musical soul between East and West’.

Linda Bandara (artist name for Linda Leber-Hofland) was an outstanding composer who succeeded in building a bridge between European and Javanese music. Not only did she study gamelan extensively, she was al...

This booklet gives an overview of Dutch composers in connection with the Dutch East Indies who have left a modest Indisch oeuvre or who have occasionally written an Indisch composition. It is a colourful collection, which is difficult to classify: the composers were either born in the Dutch East Indies or elsewhere, they lived in the east for a shorter or longer period of time or were just inspired in Holland by exotic art, stories and poetry. (photo cover: conductor/ composer Dirk Fock)

Indisch Classical Music

When in 2004, in collaboration with the National Music Institute in The Hague, Henk Mak van Dijk started researching the lives and works of Dutch composers with close links to the Netherlands Indies, he had no idea that so much unknown, yet extraordinary music was to be uncovered. Here were compositions in which a western, romantic or impressionistic idiom would to a greater or lesser extent be mixed with elements of the music indigenous to the then Netherlands Indies:...

The Indo-European composer, violinist, and band leader Fred Belloni (1891-1969) occupies a special place in the line of composers from the Dutch East Indies, because he was the only one who was extensively involved in kroncong music. Belloni was almost self-taught and wrote in a style very similar to kroncong: usually simple, melodic, melancholic, easily appealing music for ensemble or orchestra, and ditto songs about Mooi-Indië (‘the beautiful archipelago’), sung in Malay, Dutch, French...