Caught in a web of silence Composers in Dutch music history 1920-1955 and the impact of World War II

This dissertation researches composers living and working in the Netherlands and persecuted by the Nazis. Their music was banned and they themselves were isolated, deported and murdered. Although the ban was lifted when the Netherlands was liberated, their music was seldom heard in the first decades after the war and most of them are not mentioned Dutch music historiography. With the help of a cultural history perspective, including biographical research and a network approach, this dissertation tells the stories of these persecuted composers in order to uncover aspects of the history of composing in the Netherlands that have received little attention so far. I applied Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s theory on silencing in historiography by looking at performing opportunities, source production and narratives, and added network analysis. Following theories on canonisation by Joseph Kerman, Austin Caswell and Marcia Citron, this research is also an attempt at documentary recuperation to provide a basis for opening up the canon of composing in the Netherlands.
The first section deals with the interwar period of the twentieth century and the factors that blocked access to music historiography. The second section deals with the impact of Nazi rulings on performing opportunities, source production, networks and narratives. The third section addresses how performance opportunities were influenced by a national narrative on victory and resistance, causing victims of the Holocaust to be largely excluded from commemoration.