Rita Verschuur

The Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt lived in relative isolation for decades, seeing very few people and giving few interviews. So far, he has refused to have his diaries published, although a selection appeared earlier this year (2023): Vleugels. Leven en werk van Simeon ten Holt by Arie Vuyk. Oddly, the title looks more like a biography, then, too, the selections from the diaries are annotated. Ten Holt published an autobiography Het woud en de citadel. Memoires van een componist in 2009. (I show more am currently reading these two books.)

Since fame came late to Simeon ten Holt and he spent most of his time with his wife during the final decades of his life in Bergen, a rustic artist colony that has no railway station, not much has been published about him.

Over Simeon. Een vriendschap met Simeon Ten Holt is another book about the composer with a deceptive title. It looks like a biography or a monograph, yet in fact it is a volume of correspondence. Even so, it is an odd publication. Firstly, it can hardly be called substantial. In fact, the author fell out of favour with the composer for a long time. There are very few letters altogether, and the letters are not very substantial either. One certainly gets the feeling that this publication is more about the vanity of its author. It surely doesn't add much to our understanding of Simeon ten Holt.

The author of this small book is Rita Verschuur (1935). She is a Dutch writer of Swedish descent, who has mainly worked as a translator, translating both from and into Swedisch and Dutch. Her writing style is very simple (almost dotty) which you might think fits a translator of children's book, or perhaps reflects her personality. I suppose as contemporaries they simply got along very well. Perhaps it was just a clever editor who conceived of this small publication. show less

Het Rijdes-gevoel. Barend Rijdes en het huis van A. Roland Holst is a short memoir of Rita Verschuur (1935) about her old high school teacher, Barend Rijdes. Verschuur is a translator of Swedish literature. She grew up in Overveen, and went to school in nearby Haarlem. She studied in Amsterdam and then lived in Sweden for many years, returning to the Netherlands in 1969.

In 2002, she discovers that the a writers in residency program is funded by the estate of her former high school teacher. show more She delves into his life and discovers that during the 1950s Barend Rijdes published a novel that was serialized in a newspaper. She also discovers and reads his published diaries, in which she finds very little about his work as a teacher. In the memoir she also describes a school trip to Deventer, at which the children were accompanied by Barend Rijdes as well as Anton Pieck, another teacher who is now a very famous Dutch painter.

This small booklet was published in the Bergen-Reeks. Bergen is an artists' colony near Alkmaar, home to numerous writers, painters, composers and other artists for more than a century, spanning several generations. It is located upon the coast, near the city of Alkmaar, about 40 kilometers north of both Haarlem and Amsterdam. Rita Verschuur also wrote a short memoir about Simeon ten Holt, a famous Dutch composer, who also lived and worked in Bergen. show less

Een bijzonder boekje over de vriendschap van Rita Verschuur met componist Simeon ten Holt, met name tijdens de laatste jaren van zijn leven. Het boek gaat vooral over hun ontmoetingen, gesprekken, brieven en emails.

An unusual story with very beautiful illustrations.