Music had always played an important role for me. At age 5 my father had bought an old-fashioned record player (of the type on the logo of His Master's Voice). First I got acquainted to the easy sounding ballet music Giselle of the composer Adam. Later my father came home with several records (turning 78 times a minute) containing Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, probably at the advice of his friend Nol Prager, an excellent violinist. I told my father that I did not like the Rite of Spring. He told me to listen a couple of times to the music after which I probably would like it. Being obedient I so did and after a while started to like Stravinsky. It was only many years later that I learned to appreciate for example Mozart and Bach. Indeed, at the home of Nol Prager--who lived until 1952 in Amsterdam and since then for the rest of his long life in Firenze, Italy--I asked if he would play the violin for me. He did not want to do it, but when I kept insisting finally Nol gave in. Then he did play the famous Chaconne for violin solo by Bach. Although feeling that I had to listen quietly through the 15 minute piece, I did not understand the music at all.
My uncle Kees Koopman did play long nights Chopin after returning from work. During summer holidays I often stayed at his farm near Zierikzee and laying in bed I enjoyed his playing. Inspired by this I started at age 10 to take piano lessons from a young woman Marion, who studied at one of the Amsterdam advanced music schools and rented a room in our house. Her teaching to play the piano required a 100% devotion. Only after mastering a piece I was allowed to start with the next one9. I think it was she or perhaps her fiancee Brian Pollard who advised me to audit for the Amsterdam youth orchestra. As my talent was limited and the piano was not needed in the orchestra, at the suggestion of the conductor Bram Heijmans I started to play percussion and later the timpani. Playing timpani in orchestras remained a lifelong hobby. Often being bored at school or later at academic work10, music was a real challenge. Also it was a natural way to get to know people.
The main reason to mention these autobiographical details is to indicate the influence of music on our state of mind. I went to a concert for children (a so-called `youth concert') at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, just one block away from where I lived. At was one of the last concerts conducted by Eduard van Beinum, who died later that year. The orchestra played the Daphnis and Chloé suite of Ravel and after the brake the Rite of Spring. The music was overwhelming. In Daphnis Ravel is describing in a very minute detail the experience of orgasms11, notably female12 ones. At the principal one, not long after the beginning of the second movement that starts with a sun-rise scene, the powerful experience of the music can compete with the actual sexual experience itself. Some people claim that one should not listen to music because of the experiences it evokes, but only to enjoy the musical structure. Well, I disagree and this is one of the musical examples why. But then they may mean something different. Music can describe mental experiences mindfully. Joy in music is not joy in daily life. It is as-if joy or for that matter as-if angriness (often present in Beethoven) or as-if orgasms (Ravel). That is art.
As mentioned the Rite of Spring was performed after the brake. By the time I went to the concert it was a somewhat familiar piece to me. Then the music arrived at the passage `Cortège du Sage' in the first movement. The structure there becomes highly complex: 14 different rhythms13 are being played simultaneously. Hearing and seeing the musicians of the orchestra play this passage was too much to canalize. The orchestra was working hard, concentrated and as-if obsessed by the music and the ritual it depicted. Then something happened: I lost ordinary consciousness, but kept another one, hithertoo unkown. All this could be seen from a distance and yet in full clarity14. It was not long after this concert that I had the first time experience A.