On 17 November 1969 a landmark event occurred in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Netherlands' most prestigious concert hall: this was the date of the so-called Notenkrakersactie, or ‘notecrackers’ action', which would have lasting repercussions in Dutch musical life. The Notenkrakers (whose name derives from a pun on the Dutch word noten, which means both nuts and musical notes) were a group of conservatory students, composers, and other young musicians; they interrupted a concert of the Concertgebouw Orchestra with noisemakers and a megaphone, threw pamphlets at the audience, and unfurled a banner above the balcony.Footnote ¹ They were protesting against the Concertgebouw's conservative programming and its fossilized repertoire, its elitism and ‘undemocratic’ nature, and its exploitation for commercial purposes by capitalist conglomerates such as Philips and KLM airlines. As the country's most famous and visible ensemble, they argued, the Concertgebouw Orchestra should perform fewer classics by Mahler, Bruckner, and other late Romantic composers (the specialities of its then conductor Bernard Haitink) and more music by contemporary Dutch composers. By thus ‘cracking’ the Concertgebouw – for ‘kraken’ means ‘to crack’ but also refers to the practice of squatting in abandoned buildings – the Notenkrakers sought to reclaim the concert hall for the performance of new Dutch music.Footnote ² The audience, however, was not at all receptive to these demands: a near-riot ensued as the Notenkrakers were heckled by concert-goers and orchestra members alike, and the protestors had to be escorted from the auditorium by the police.

That the Notenkrakersactie should have attracted so much attention is surprising, given that it was but one of a series of protests against the conservative programming of Dutch orchestras that took place in 1969 and 1970. Indeed, similar anti-establishment ‘sit-ins’, ‘happenings’, and ‘Provo-cations’ – associated with the so-called Provo movement – had been going on since 1965.Footnote ³ The Provos, like the Notenkrakers, were non-violent protestors: like other contemporary youth movements in the Americas and Europe, they were anti-establishment, anti-war, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist, and they sought to challenge institutions and poke fun at authority figures in the Netherlands' staid and conservative post-war society. One of their most infamous acts was their disruption of the wedding of Princess Beatrix and Claus von Amsberg in 1966 by setting off smoke bombs, an event which was broadcast around the world. While the Provos had formally disbanded by 1967, their methods were emulated by other social activists. By the late 1960s many protests centred on the country's prominent, conservative – and heavily subsidized – arts institutions. In June 1969, just months before the Notenkrakersactie, a group of visual artists had occupied the Rijksmuseum's Nachtwachtzaal (Night Watch Gallery) in June 1969, and that October a group of drama students, young actors, and directors had led the Actie Tomaat (Tomato Action) – so named because of the objects hurled at the stage in the Amsterdamse Schouwburg and Nieuw Rotterdams Toneel theatres.

As for the Notenkrakers, they did not achieve their immediate goals: the performance carried on after their ejection from the Concertgebouw, and later discussions with the orchestra's administration did not lead to significant programming changes.Footnote ⁴ Nevertheless, the resultant aftermath of the protest has received significant attention in accounts of twentieth-century Dutch music, such as Leo Samama's 1986 monograph (rev. 2006) and the New Grove article on Amsterdam by Van der Veen and Giskes.Footnote ⁵ Indeed, as the critic Peter Peters put it, ‘The Notenkrakersactie grew in the past twenty-five years into the constituting myth of the Netherlands' musical life’.Footnote ⁶

In part, the legendary status of this event rests on the fame of its participants and supporters, notably a group of composers known as ‘The Five’: Louis Andriessen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Misha Mengelberg, Peter Schat, and Jan van Vlijmen.Footnote ⁷ All five were former students of Kees van Baaren, then director of the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague and also an early exponent of twelve-note music in the Netherlands. Several months earlier ‘The Five’ had collaborated on a controversial and eclectic opera, Reconstructie, which, because of its overtly political theme, had provoked a scandal at its première at the June 1969 Holland Festival: it depicted the recently murdered Che Guevara and implicitly criticized US involvement in Latin America.Footnote ⁸ Eventually ‘The Five’, particularly Misha Mengelberg and Louis Andriessen, largely rejected the symphony orchestra as a viable compositional medium and instead formed their own specialized ensembles to perform their music. As journalist Pay-Uun Hiu recently put it, ‘Many of the former Notenkrakers would be the pioneers and spiritual fathers’ of the so-called ‘ensemble culture’ that blossomed in the 1970s and 80s.Footnote ⁹ According to such mythological narratives, then, the Notenkrakers have been credited with transforming the Netherlands from a conservative musical backwater, where stodgy symphony orchestras rehashed the tired classics of German Romanticism, into a vibrant centre for contemporary composition, improvisation, and experimental jazz, with dozens of specialized, high-level ensembles performing new music.

Such an account is complicated, however, by the fact that the Notenkrakersactie also had profound implications for a parallel, yet seemingly paradoxical, development in the Netherlands: the burgeoning historical performance movement. From the 1960s, as Bernard Sherman put it, ‘The Netherlands became to Baroque performance what Switzerland is to chocolate, watches, and banks’;Footnote ¹⁰ its prominent performers – Gustav Leonhardt, Anner Bijlsma, Frans Brüggen, and Ton Koopman, all of whom emerged on the international music scene during this period – are frequently cited as leaders in the field of historical performance. Even though critics from Theodor AdornoFootnote ¹¹ to Robert MorganFootnote ¹² have attacked the Early Music movement as anti-progressive or representative of an anxiety-wrought identity crisis in contemporary musical culture, such criticism is belied by the fact that – in the Netherlands, at least – Early Musicians and New Musicians were strange companions in these 1960s protest movements.Footnote ¹³

A number of key musicians involved in both historical performance and contemporary music successfully mediated between the two worlds, in terms of both their choice of repertoire and their social activism. Chief among them was Frans Brüggen, one of the leaders of the recorder revival and also an outspoken supporter of the Notenkrakers and of new music.Footnote ¹⁴ He frequently performed the music of Andriessen and other members of ‘The Five’, and he was prominently featured in their opera Reconstructie, performing a solo on an amplified contrabass recorder. Although he was not himself present at the Notenkrakersactie, Brüggen nevertheless declared himself in solidarity with the protestors and threatened to break his contract for his upcoming January 1970 performance as soloist with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.Footnote ¹⁵ He was also involved in public discussions about the Netherlands' musical life, including a gathering in De Brakke Grond on 14 March of that year.Footnote ¹⁶ At this meeting plans for the Beweging voor de Vernieuwing van de Muziekpraktijk (BEVEM, or Movement for the Renewal of Musical Practice) were put into place; musicians were divided into seven committees to study such issues as the federal government's arts subsidization policies, music education at the primary, secondary, and conservatory levels, concert practice, and music in the media and broadcasting sectors.Footnote ¹⁷ At a later meeting between the Concertgebouw administration and the Notenkrakers, held on 22 April in Amsterdam's Krasnapolsky hotel, Brüggen, too, attacked the Orchestra – but this time from a perspective markedly different from that of his composer colleagues. He criticized the symphony's lack of familiarity with eighteenth-century performance practice, its (modern) instrumentarium, playing style, and conducting, and infamously declared that ‘Every note of Mozart and Beethoven that the Concertgebouw Orchestra plays is, musically speaking, a lie.’Footnote ¹⁸

Brüggen and other historical performers were, like the Notenkrakers, thus committed to the renewal of musical life in the Netherlands and to more socially engaged forms of music-making. The social function of the Early Music movement, particularly its strong amateur component and its political grounding in leftist political causes, made it appealing to young people.Footnote ¹⁹ As Ton Koopman recollected, at the first period-instrument performance of the St John Passion in the Netherlands a representative from Amnesty International, rather than a minister, was invited to speak between the two sections.Footnote ²⁰ Moreover, Early Music's leading practitioners also participated in Vietnam War protests, just as did Louis Andriessen's ensemble De Volharding.Footnote ²¹ One of the most important of these Vietnam-themed performances was the Musici voor Vietnam benefit concert, organized by Edith Neuman, ironically a cellist with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Held on 20 February 1970, this twelve-hour ‘musikale manifestatie in Frascati’ – Frascati was a theatre built from a converted tobacco warehouse – sought to raise funds for the Medical Committee Netherlands–Vietnam, which provided medical supplies to both sides of the conflict. However, the concert also had as its goal the bringing together of different kinds of music, appealing to different tastes, in a single performance event. The eclectic programme, heavily slanted towards twentieth-century music, included ‘classics’ by Second Viennese School composers, Bartók, and Stravinsky; recent compositions by Penderecki, Cage, and Berio, as well as by Notenkrakers Andriessen and Schat; sets by jazz and pop ensembles, and a few ‘mainstream’ classical works by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Chopin.Footnote ²² Among the 120 performers were Concertgebouw Orchestra musicians, Notenkraker Reinbert de Leeuw, Frans Brüggen, and many others. Remarkably, the period-instrument ensemble Quadro Hotteterre also appeared, performing a variety of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works, as did an ‘Amsterdams Bach-ensemble’, performing a trio sonata by J. S. Bach.Footnote ²³ Two other musicians on the programme, Stanley Hoogland and Anner Bijlsma, have also been associated with the Dutch Early Music movement (as a fortepianist and a Baroque cellist respectively), though they were not playing pre-1800 repertoire at this particular concert.

Several other less overtly political collaborations between contemporary music, Early Music, jazz, and pop musicians were also held during this period. One such event was the Uhificoco concert in Utrecht's Geertekerk, a historic church built in 1619. Concertgoers were invited to drop in and listen to a variety of types of music, including electronic music coordinated by Notenkraker Misha Mengelberg along with Dick Raaymakers, Baroque chamber music with harpsichord, and Renaissance choral singing; a historical cooking society provided an assortment of medieval foods for the musicians.Footnote ²⁴ The concert was organized by Frans de Ruiter, who would become an important figure in both the Dutch new music and Early Music scenes; he would later serve as one of the directors of the Holland Festival and of the Utrecht Early Music Festivals, and also as the head of the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague from 1985 to 2006.Footnote ²⁵

At another performance, the Eksperimusika concert of 26 February 1970, the Baroque ensemble Musica da Camera, the jazz combo Trio Louis van Dijk, and the pop group Ekseption collaborated on stage under a common theme of improvisation across musical boundaries. Although only the harpsichordist Ton Koopman was identified in subsequent articles in the press, Musica da Camera's members also included several prominent Dutch historical performers, among them Lucy van Dael (Baroque violin), Jaap ter Linden (Baroque cello), and Ku Ebbinge (Baroque oboe and recorder).Footnote ²⁶ Following Musica da Camera's ‘authentic’ performance of a trio sonata by the Dutch Baroque composer Willem de Fesch, each ensemble performed improvisations based upon the work's gigue. In this way, as the critic Wouter Paap wrote, ‘Early Music culture and modern underground came together like brothers.’Footnote ²⁷ On all these occasions Early Musicians, composers, and contemporary music specialists alike made a point of performing in unconventional concert venues and of dressing in casual clothing in order to visibly associate themselves with the youth counterculture – hence further distancing themselves from the conventional, tuxedo-clad symphony orchestra players.

In some respects, however, eclectic chamber ensembles and alternative performance venues were not at all new to Early Music performers. During Nazi occupation in World War II, for example, musicians involved in the country's fledgling historical performance movement were often forced to work outside official musical channels, because of Nazi control over the symphony orchestras, unions, and radio stations. They instead sought underground performance venues, such as informal house concerts (those hosted, for instance, by the pioneering Dutch harpsichordist Janny van Wering) or church performances, which were outside the scope of Nazi influence.Footnote ²⁸ Small Early Music ensembles, building upon this base, proliferated following the war in the 1950s. By contrast, there were very few ensembles specializing in contemporary music prior to 1969.Footnote ²⁹ Early Music groups were in a unique position to collaborate with contemporary ensembles and could take advantage of the spotlight the post-Notenkrakersactie performances put them in.

More striking than these collaborative concerts, however, is the fact that Early Musicians – alongside composers and new music groups – were the beneficiaries of reforms to government arts subsidy policies and the music education system: the ultimate outcome of the Notenkraker revolt. In this respect the Notenkrakersactie can be taken as a symbolic event, but it is not in and of itself an adequate explanation for the Dutch ‘ensemble culture’ which is said to have resulted in the 1970s and 80s. The Notenkrakers, together with the Early Music movement, need to be placed within the broader context of Dutch political and socioeconomic developments, the history of musical institutions such as orchestras and conservatories, the changing tastes of different social groups, market concerns, and government attitudes towards arts and culture. It was a combination of these factors that enabled historical performers to capitalize on the new funding and educational opportunities that developed following the Notenkrakersactie.

In the 1970s, in the wake of the artistic and political turmoil of the 1960s, the Dutch welfare state expanded exponentially, and so too did spending on the arts and arts education. This was especially the case under the leadership of Prime Minister Joop den Uyl, who, as head of the Labour Party, held office from 1973 to 1977: his cabinet was the most socially progressive in Dutch political history. According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, overall federal spending on the arts increased astronomically during this period, from 28 million guilders in 1965 to 61.4 million guilders in 1970, and to a peak of 140.8 million guilders by 1975.Footnote ³⁰ Moreover, spending on arts and music education – at both the recreational and the post-secondary levels – likewise mushroomed. The number of muziekscholen, or community music schools, grew from 72 in 1965 to 165 by 1982, with some 310,000 students enrolled across the country.Footnote ³¹ As for professional music education, the number of conservatories grew from seven in 1959 to fifteen state-funded post-secondary institutions by 1986, a remarkable number for a tiny country of only 14.5 million people.Footnote ³² The number of arts students in post-secondary programmes overall doubled from about 9,500 to some 20,000 between 1970 and 1985; of these, roughly thirty per cent were music students.Footnote ³³

The government's rationale for this enormous growth in spending on arts institutions and education was a new post-war conception of the arts as welfare policy – a conception which connected, if indirectly, to Early Music's socially engaged music-making. By the late 1960s the government's attitude towards the arts and culture had become intimately linked with social welfare design: cultural policy was thus welfare policy, and the government asserted for itself a primary role in ensuring that all its citizens could participate equally in cultural activities. The role of the welfare state shifted from reducing the imbalances and socioeconomic disparities in Dutch society to preventing them from occurring in the first place: as such, cultural education was seen as a healthy and productive corrective, designed not only to foster ‘artistic enjoyment and free expression, but also personality development, the shaping of one's personal living situation, and the expansion of society's resistance and resilience.’Footnote ³⁴

With the creation of the Ministry of Culture, Recreation, and Social Work in 1965 music education was placed under its jurisdiction, and all post-secondary music institutions – not only the Royal Conservatory – received federal financing for the first time.Footnote ³⁵ While the Ministry of Education and Science eventually became responsible for the conservatories, the community music schools remained with the Ministry of Social Work: thus music education, which was shared between them, continued to be influenced by social welfare ideals. Chief among these were the principles of cultuurspreiding (a spreading of cultural groups and educational institutions from the big cities in the west to all areas of the Netherlands), participatie (participation), and democratisering (democratization). In other words, such cities as Leeuwarden (up north in Friesland) and Enschede (to the east near the German border), as well as the southern provinces of the Netherlands, were just as entitled to a rich concert life and a professional music conservatory as were The Hague and Amsterdam. Every child – regardless of talent or the ability to pay – had an equal right to music lessons. Eventually, by extension, this was even taken to mean that not only the traditional classical instruments such as the violin, the piano, and the flute, but rather every instrument should be taught at a professional level: thus, the instrumentarium was expanded in the music schools to include the accordion, the panflute, jazz and pop instruments, and (in the early 1970s) Baroque and other period instruments; by the early 1990s non-western instruments had been added as well. This policy of equal access to music education for all represented a rejection of elitism in the arts and culture, so typical of the traditional model of the European music conservatory.

In this context the recorder played a central role in the democratization process: it was inexpensive, relatively easy to learn, and had an extensive repertoire suitable for amateurs. The recorder's ever-growing popularity was fuelled by its social role in Dutch society: it was used, along with the viola da gamba and the lute, in huismuziek and socialist youth groups from the 1930s on,Footnote ³⁶ and it became ubiquitous in elementary school classrooms after World War II for general music instruction. Frans Brüggen himself also inspired musicians to take up the instrument: his movie-star good looks were heavily promoted by the record company Telefunken,Footnote ³⁷ and his rebellious, anti-establishment image made him popular among young people. The study of the recorder received government accreditation in 1955, first for education diplomas and then, in 1961, for the prestigious soloist's diploma: this granted it full equity with mainstream classical instruments.Footnote ³⁸ Enrolment in recorder programmes swelled, and by 1980 it was possible to study the recorder at thirteen different conservatories in the Netherlands;Footnote ³⁹ statistics from the 1977–8 school year show that it was the sixth most popular instrument, with 221 recorder students enrolled.Footnote ⁴⁰

The recorder was the foundation of the Dutch Early Music movement in the Netherlands along with the harpsichord (which had been taught in Amsterdam since 1928, after Wanda Landowska and her successful concert tours sparked interest in the instrument). By the late 1960s, however, Dutch musicians such as Ku Ebbinge, Lucy van Dael, and Anner Bijlsma were beginning to experiment with early woodwinds and Baroque bows; so, too, were the Kuijken brothers in Belgium. As a result, other historical instruments were soon added to the conservatories' programmes. Remarkably, the leader in Early Music education in the Netherlands was none other than the composer Jan van Vlijmen, one of the infamous ‘Five’, who became Director of the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague in 1971.

Van Vlijmen, perhaps the most moderate of the Notenkraker associates – he had reluctantly supported the protest but did not himself take part in it – had a strong interest in Early Music and in historical performance. He composed, for example, his own Omaggio a Gesualdo in 1971. As Conservatorium director he quickly established a reputation as a mover and shaker. Building upon his involvement as chairman of the BEVEM's working group on the conservatories, whose foundational manifestos called for a complete overhaul of the ‘elite’ and ‘sterile’ Dutch conservatory system,Footnote ⁴¹ Van Vlijmen brought about not only major reforms to the theory and composition curriculum but also the establishment of an electronics studio and the founding of a ballet academy. He also greatly expanded the Conservatorium's Early Music offerings beyond the recorder (then taught by Frans Brüggen) and the harpsichord, because of greater student interest in historical instruments. As he observed in a 1972 interview, ‘What is striking is that most of the impulse regarding early music performance comes from the students themselves.’Footnote ⁴² The Baroque violin was the first instrument to be added to the Conservatorium's roster when Sigiswald Kuijken joined the faculty in 1971; Lucy van Dael arrived shortly thereafter. Both were among the pioneering violinists to experiment with Baroque bows and instruments without shoulder or chin rests. With some fifteen students enrolled from the beginning, the Conservatorium soon developed a contingent of period-instrument string players. The following year Van Vlijmen invited Nikolaus Harnoncourt to lead a Monteverdi project, which was successful and influential; Harnoncourt returned to The Hague in 1975 to direct a Bach project. His lectures to Conservatorium students later formed the basis of his well-known essay collections Baroque Music Today: Music as Speech and The Musical Dialogue. Many other musicians who had assisted with these projects, such as Wieland and Barthold Kuijken (viola da gamba and traverso, respectively) and Marius van Altena (voice), were added to the faculty soon afterwards. By 1976 lessons were also available on the Baroque cello, the Baroque oboe, the Baroque trumpet, and the lute, in addition to medieval instruments, and plans were being made to add the fortepiano as well.Footnote ⁴³ The Early Music Department had become a reality.

The impact of the Conservatorium's Monteverdi and Bach projects extended far beyond the Early Music world, however. Van Vlijmen, who saw the advantages of having students focus on a particular topic for a discrete period of time, later applied the same system to other areas of the conservatory, including new music. Composers and contemporary music specialists, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Notenkraker Reinbert de Leeuw, led workshops for students. Even more radical was Van Vlijmen's reorganization of the Conservatorium's symphony orchestra, long the pillar of this institution: twice-weekly rehearsals were eliminated, and instead guest conductors were invited to lead orchestral projects several times a year. This would have broad implications for the way all future Dutch music students would receive their training in orchestral performance, because the system was adopted by most of the other conservatories. Even professional orchestras – both modern- and period-instrument – often work in this manner because it saves on rehearsal costs and allows for a greater flexibility of repertoire and personnel.

In terms of the federal government's amateur and professional education programmes, Early Music benefited from the expansion of both community music schools and conservatories. The teaching of historical performance at the post-secondary level was not exclusive to The Hague but extended to most of the major Dutch conservatories, especially Amsterdam (where Gustav Leonhardt was a central figure until his retirement in 1988) and Utrecht, with its large recorder programme, but even at some of the more remote schools like Zwolle, Enschede, and Arnhem. By the mid-1970s the Dutch conservatories became the place to study historical performance, and young musicians flocked to them from around the world.Footnote ⁴⁴ The investment of Van Vlijmen and the federal government in higher education for musicians paid off: by 2004 between eighty-five and ninety-one per cent of the Early Music students in Amsterdam and The Hague were foreigners, compared to twenty-nine per cent of the general conservatory population.Footnote ⁴⁵ Because international students make up such a significant component of the conservatories' student body, and because non-EU students tend to pay higher fees, it has been in the government's interest to attract them to the Netherlands.

In the professional sphere it is more difficult to quantify how Early Music ensembles were affected by the influx of federal funds to the arts, as funding was dispersed through federal, provincial, and municipal levels. Nevertheless, increased funding for chamber music in the wake of the Notenkrakersactie unquestionably worked in their favour. In this regard the Nederlands Impresariaat, a federally funded government agency established shortly after World War II (1947) to subsidize concert venues, suddenly took on a more prominent role in the 1970s. The Impresariaat capitalized on one of the most striking aspects of Dutch demographics from this period: the phenomenon that Dutch cultural historians have called ‘deconfessionalization’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Church attendance declined from about sixty per cent of the population in 1968 to less than twenty-five per cent in 1998; there were especially steep drops in attendance among the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk) and the second largest Protestant body, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerk), between 1968 and 1971.Footnote ⁴⁷ Not surprisingly, this resulted in many empty churches, but the Impresariaat gave them a new social – and musical – function. It devised a highly successful new format called the koffieconcert, which consisted of a short sixty- to ninety-minute casual and ‘relaxing’ programme of chamber music held on Sunday mornings.Footnote ⁴⁸ The number of chamber music concerts more than doubled between 1969 and 1986, and because music from the Renaissance and the Baroque fitted nicely into this format, the programming of Early Music ensembles increased dramatically.Footnote ⁴⁹ New music programming, however, did not, and as a result contemporary ensembles had to obtain a separate funding initiative from the Ministry of Culture, Recreation, and Social Work to implement their own concert series.Footnote ⁵⁰ The Notenkrakers and their supporters in the BEVEM workgroups had complained in 1970 that the symphony orchestras were receiving a disproportionate share of the federal arts subsidy budget, while chamber music received less than one per cent of the funds.Footnote ⁵¹ Ironically, however, the expansion of that governmental purse and the reforms to the funding of ensembles that ensued were having unintended consequences for new music.

In any event, it was already becoming clear by the end of the 1970s that the government could no longer sustain its enormous expenditures on education and culture, given the soaring deficit, rising unemployment, and the sagging economy. Under Minister of Education and Science Arie Pais (1977–81) the conservatories faced a budgetary squeeze from the federal government, forcing a series of school closures and mergers.Footnote ⁵² Still, most of the Early Music departments survived, and their popularity with students attracted much-needed tuition funds. When faculty hours were reduced, for example, Early Music teachers adapted by using group instruction instead of individual, weekly lessons: as many as twenty-five to thirty students could be accommodated in a week of master classes, held once a month. This so-called Block System was pioneered in Amsterdam by recorder teacher Walter van Hauwe and later adopted by teachers of harpsichord, Baroque violin and oboe, and eventually some mainstream teachers of classical instruments as well.Footnote ⁵³ In this manner Van Vlijmen's project system was also extended to instrumental instruction, allowing historical performance programmes to persist despite financial constraints.

Nevertheless the trend of welfare retrenchment, begun in earnest in 1982 with the election of Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, entailed a radical restructuring of the federal government: civil service jobs were cut, salaries were frozen, and the government's external advisory agencies were streamlined.Footnote ⁵⁴ Likewise, Elco Brinkman, the Minister of Welfare, Health, and Cultural Affairs,Footnote ⁵⁵ set about similar reforms to the cultural sector by reining in spending and increasing artists' accountability to the public and the government funding agencies. Ironically, it was during this very same period of fiscal restraint in the early 1980s that Dutch Early Music groups were simultaneously undergoing a period of expansion: Ton Koopman's Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra was established in 1979, Frans Brüggen's Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century was founded in 1981, the first Utrecht Early Music Festival was held in 1982, and the Nederlandse Bachvereniging was reorganized into a period-instrument ensemble in 1983. How does one account for this seeming contradiction?

Once again, historical performers were able to adapt to new government spending priorities in three key ways. Unlike conventional orchestras and, to a certain extent, contemporary music ensembles, Early Music groups could demonstrate fiscal restraint and commercial success – in line with Brinkman's agenda – while also maintaining a clear social function. Firstly, the ability of historical performers to make do with limited funds impressed the Ministry. Administrators, including Koopman, Lucy van Dael (former leader of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century), and Jan Nuchelmans (former director of the Utrecht Festival), were quick to point out in personal interviews that they survived for years on shoestring budgets and that the musicians were often poorly paid or involved themselves in the administration to keep costs down.Footnote ⁵⁶ Koopman also noted that Dutch Early Musicians tended to work on a freelance basis, and they usually did not belong to unions, which saved money on salaries and benefits and lowered operating costs.

Secondly, Early Music groups were able to demonstrate financial independence from the government by achieving significant commercial and audience success. In particular, they benefited enormously from the recording industry boom of the early 1980s, prompted by the change in format from LP to CD. The Dutch electronics company Philips, inventor of the compact disc, played a key role in promoting Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Gustav Leonhardt, and Brüggen and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century for many years. As Koopman noted, Early Music ensembles proved less expensive to record than mainstream symphony orchestras because their operating costs were so much lower. Moreover, the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century produced CDs inexpensively by selling its live recordings to Philips, who then manufactured and distributed the discs.Footnote ⁵⁷ This favourable relationship with recording companies, coupled with excellent ticket sales and support from corporate sponsors – in other words, a diversification of funding sources – made it possible for Dutch Early Music groups to be less reliant on federal subsidies than mainstream orchestras, opera companies, and new music ensembles. Even Brüggen's shift from performing contemporary recorder music to his conducting of a Baroque and Classical orchestra may be taken as an indication of Early Music's greater commercial success.Footnote ⁵⁸

Thirdly, the arts organizations specifically targeted by Brinkman and his successors were the mainstream symphony orchestras – just as had been the case a dozen years earlier with the Notenkrakers. Ironically, this time the symphony orchestras were at odds with the federal government over the arts budget, rather than with composers or Early Music specialists at the margins of the Netherlands' musical life. The orchestras' generous subsidies (amounting to about eighty per cent of the entire music budget in 1966) and their large number (which had swelled from sixteen in 1955 to twenty-one by 1976, under the aforementioned policy of ‘cultural spreading’) made them once again a convenient scapegoat.Footnote ⁵⁹ Under Brinkman the subsidies for five provincial orchestras were revoked in 1983. Two years later he eliminated the koppelsubsidies (coupled federal and provincial subsidies) to arts organizations; the vast majority of these had gone to the orchestras. Both new music groups and Baroque orchestras were the beneficiaries of this freed-up funding (some seven million guilders), and Brinkman declared them innovative leaders in the music field in his 1987 policy statement: ‘As examples for the music of the Baroque and early Classical periods, one can name the Orchestra of the 18th Century and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra at the forefront, and for the music of this century, the Schönberg Ensemble and the Asko-ensemble.’Footnote ⁶⁰ The grouping together of contemporary and Early Music at the ‘forefront’ of Dutch musical life is telling: the Schönberg Ensemble had been founded by Notenkraker Reinbert de Leeuw in 1974, and the Asko Ensemble has frequently performed and recorded the works of Louis Andriessen and other prominent Dutch (and international) composers. More importantly, however, Brinkman set a precedent here for providing structural funding to the Baroque orchestras of Koopman and Brüggen, which had previously received only modest grants for special projects.

The granting of structural funding from the federal government meant that Early Music and new music were now accorded ‘mainstream’ status, or at least the stamp of ministerial approval. What is remarkable is that historical performers have maintained this status for the most part, despite changes in administration, ministerial reorganization, and government funding priorities. Over the next fifteen years, the Ministry of Culture was repeatedly impressed with four aspects of the Early Music groups' success: the close links between professional musicians and the amateur sector; the high reputation of Dutch Baroque ensembles abroad; their commercial success with audiences and recording companies; and, above all, their economic efficiency. In these respects Early Music ensembles have diverged somewhat from the goals of contemporary music groups and composers. By playing up their strength in these areas they further consolidated their position in Dutch musical life and maintained or increased their support from the federal government.

Early Music groups received generally positive evaluations in the cultural policy statement of Brinkman's successor, Hedy D'Ancona, for the 1993–6 funding period, for example.Footnote ⁶¹ Four of the five groups that applied for funding received modest subsidies; the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century's grant doubled over the 1988–92 amount, and the Utrecht Festival's subsidy reflected a 115 per cent increase over this same period. D'Ancona specifically praised the Utrecht Festival for encouraging active cultural participation by its audience members: she cited a study indicating that some fifty per cent of Festival-goers were amateur musicians.Footnote ⁶² Thus the emphasis on Early Music's strong amateur audience base – which placed it at an advantage over contemporary music ensembles – corresponded with the Labour Party's continued prioritization of socially engaged art.

Under State Secretary of CultureFootnote ⁶³ Aad Nuis Early Music ensembles did not fare nearly as well for the 1997–2000 subsidy period. Ministerial emphasis on multiculturalism and world and pop musics meant that historical and contemporary ‘art’ musics were at a disadvantage. New Early Music applicants were rejected, for example, and the Baroque orchestras and the Utrecht Festival had their subsidies frozen, but the Council for Culture (which advisesthe ministry on grant applications) praised the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century's high playing standards and international reputations.Footnote ⁶⁴

However, by the following subsidy period (1998–2002) Early Music ensembles were once again in the Culture Ministry's favour, given that the State Secretary of Culture, Rick van der Ploeg, was an economist. Once again the symphony orchestras were targeted: cuts and mergers – affecting especially the radio orchestras – meant that their number would be reduced to ten. By contrast, Van der Ploeg specifically praised the Baroque orchestras as models of ‘cultural entrepreneurs’, for whom ‘subsidy is given for the last, relatively modest amount needed to complete the budget for concerts’.Footnote ⁶⁵ Indeed, the Ministry's survey of four state-funded Baroque orchestras found that their operating budgets had by far the most impressive ratio of ticket sales to subsidy (82:18) compared to the symphony orchestras (24:76) and the music sector at large (28:72).Footnote ⁶⁶ Figures from 2002 were similar: the Baroque orchestras had a subsidy-to-ticket sales ratio of eighteen per cent, compared to seventy-nine per cent for the conventional symphony orchestras, sixty-three per cent for ‘jazz’ ensembles (including Orkest De Volharding, an ensemble founded by Notenkraker Louis Andriessen), and sixty-one per cent for miscellaneous (overige) ensembles (including such new music groups as the Asko Ensemble, the Schönberg Ensemble, the Nieuw Ensemble, and the Ives Ensemble).Footnote ⁶⁷ Here Early Music had a distinct economic advantage over contemporary ensembles: as such, four new Early Music ensembles received subsidies during this period, and most of the groups that had previously been funded received modest increases.

Under the 2005–8 funding period State Secretary of Culture Medy van der Laan continued the trend of retrenchment in government spending on the arts and culture, meaning that all groups faced the kaasschaaf (i.e., a ‘slice of cheese’ was being scraped off the top of their grants).Footnote ⁶⁸ Most significantly targeted has been the public broadcasting system, which faced a €19 million reduction in 2005 and was forced to disband the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra. However, because the most prominent Early and contemporary music groups, including the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, and the Asko and Schönberg Ensembles, now occupied a larger institutional category, their subsidies were actually reduced by two and a half per cent overall in accordance with new economization measures.

While it is too early to determine the full impact of major reforms to the federal arts subsidy system undertaken in 2007, it appears that historical performance and contemporary music ensembles have both been affected. Under the new policy the Council for Culture was to report directly to the Minister of Education, Culture, and Science, who would provide four-year subsidies only to large ‘basic national infrastructure’ organizations, arts funds, and festivals.Footnote ⁶⁹ For example, the Organisatie Oude Muziek, which runs the Utrecht Early Music Festival and its associated year-round concert series, was recommended for a modest increase in funds for 2009–12, while the Holland Festival, which primarily showcases contemporary music, saw its subsidy increase substantially.Footnote ⁷⁰ Rather than applying directly to the Council for Culture, however, ensembles must now request funding from the Nederlands Fonds voor Podiumkunsten (NFPK, or Fund for Music, Theatre, and Dance), which may grant four- or two-year subsidies, or funds for special projects.Footnote ⁷¹ The federal government has thus delegated more of the subsidy decision-making process to funds and councils, further distancing arts funding from an overarching social welfare policy. Under the new guidelines some of the most established ensembles in the historical performance and contemporary music worlds have lost their funding: among the NFPK's more controversial decisions for 2009–12 was the elimination of subsidies for the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Orkest De Volharding, and the Ives Ensemble.Footnote ⁷² Once again both historical performers and contemporary musicians now find themselves in the same boat, and at odds with the government over federal subsidy policy – but this time because of their status as ‘mainstreamers’, rather than as outsiders.

Forty years after the Notenkrakersactie the ultimate results of this anti-symphony orchestra action have been mixed. The symphony orchestras themselves have been reduced in number from twenty-one to ten, and they no longer have a monopoly on Dutch musical life. Their programming, however, still tends to focus on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century repertoire, while specialized ensembles perform Early Music and contemporary music. As cultural historian Roel Pots has observed, composers are now relatively isolated in their own networks, concert series and festivals (the Ijsbreker, the Holland Festival), and granting (Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst) and supporting agencies (Donemus, STEIM), leading to a fragmentation of Dutch concert life.Footnote ⁷³ This is now just as problematic for Early Music as it is for new music: the ageing concert-going population, increasing multiculturalism, a competitive marketplace (fifteen state conservatories produced a substantial number of professional musicians!), and the marked decline in the global recording industry – coupled with the decreased state support for culture – mean that both groups will have to struggle to attract new audiences and to maintain their relevance to Dutch society.