Music • Images
in holland staat een huis
Catharina Haverkamp as Ria Reuverkamp, director of Het Tranendal
Bastiaan Brans as Heintje and Eric Velthuis as the teacher
On set, from left to right: John Appel, me, and Catharina Haverkamp
In 1990, my colleague and friend Eric Velthuis (who would go on to become a gifted researcher and documentary filmmaker) and I wrote and directed our first children’s television series for the Dutch broadcaster KRO-tv: ‘In Holland Staat Een Huis’.
Five stories based on old Dutch nursery rhymes, cruel, moralistic little tales warning children about all sorts of terrible things. If you were a telltale, for instance, you might grow a very long tongue. Swallow a cherry stone, and a tree might just grow out of your mouth. And so on. And so on.
But what if those things had actually happened to these children? And what if we could talk to them? Well, we can!
Welcome to the fictional home ‘Het Tranendal’ (The Valley of Tears).
1. Heintje Klikkespaan
Alongside writing the script and co-directing, I also wrote the music for the series, taking a little something from Kurt Weill and his contemporaries.
But no musicologist should hold me to that. :-)
Not sure, but I guess this was still in my late-'90s Atari period.
By then, though, I had made some real progress in the equipment department: a Roland W30 sampler. Things were getting serious! Ehm, well, for those days. I produced the mixes together with my friend Bernard Jongstra, who later became a well-known jewellery designer at The Gem Kingdom.When I bought EastWest Symphonic Orchestra VST about ten years ago, I couldn't resist going back to this track and adding some brass and percussion.
Almost like a painter returning to an old painting years later and painting over parts of it. The song was sung by my co-director Eric. Eric knew, to be honest, that he wasn't exactly an experienced singer, but somehow that worked really well for that little Weill vibe. It was great fun during the recording sessions in Bernard's bedroom!
Jon van Eerd as Hein
2. Miepje en het Mes
This little rhyme is very clear in its message: don't cut through gingerbread!
We came up with the idea that, back in those days, the surgeons had put her legs back on the wrong way around after Miepje had cut them off herself.
So now we see old Miep sitting rather strangely on her chair in Tranendal.
With a limited budget and no After Effects or modern CGI at our disposal, we simply had to improvise. With some measuring and fitting, we strategically placed a couple of mannequin legs behind the chair.
Actress Fiet Dekker really went at it with the big knives during the shoot.
A memorable day on set :-)
In the song, I did the backing vocals, while Eric handles the parlando parts.
Anne te Lindert as young Miepje
Fiet Dekker as Miep
3. De Kersentaart
This is another one straight from the old days.
The Cherry Pie comes from the tradition of 19th-century Dutch nursery rhymes and already appeared in the 1859 picture book Prenten en Rijmen.
Our lyrics are an adaptation of an older version we came across at some point. And yes, it’s another typically old-fashioned rhyme that makes you wonder how normal people thought this was for children.
Even more so, when I ask AI to improve some screenshots from clips of the series, it gets blocked! Very different times. 😄
In De Kersentaart, I do the singing myself, while Eric once again takes care of the parlando. Underneath this, you can hear me singing some virtually impossible high notes, which caused quite a bit of laughter at the time.
Janneke Schaap as young Klaartje
Vibeke Helder, Marieke Speklé & Leonie van de Pol
4. Klaartje en haar kanarie
Of course, the songs that came before this one were already pretty bizarre and utterly merciless towards small children’s minds, but then we went and added a poem filled with deep sorrow over a dead canary. And as the final blow, there are the words:
“Little bird, you will teach me, yes, it is certain and true, how fleeting upon this earth all joy and life can be.”
Nighty-night, little one! 😄
And how nice to have that grinding final chord at the end of the song.
Oh, and that children’s choir in the background? That’s me, Eric and Bernard. We recorded our voices several times, singing as high as we could, and then -if I remember correctly- sped them up in the W30. We were already singing pretty high, but we recorded it at a slower tempo and sped it up afterwards. With today’s technology, you could simply pitch the whole thing up while keeping the tempo unchanged. Back then, it was just the three of us, a sampler, and whatever we could get away with.
I only realize now what a bizarre, and actually rather special, children’s TV series we made back then. A mockumentary, and slow as molasses at that. Try getting away with that nowadays.
Coby Timp as old Klaartje
Coby Timp as old Klaartje
5. De Boog
This is the first song with piano only.
It has a strong cabaret feel, which I’m still a little ambivalent about whenever I hear it.
On the one hand, it’s clear and works well, but on the other, it feels a little ‘ordinary’. I think I lost sight of the idiom and style of the other songs here. The cabaret character mainly comes from the very strict, staccato delivery and the doubling of the vocals: the lead in the normal register and the backing an octave lower.
Of course, I couldn’t resist imitating the little bird again, quite literally, perhaps a little too literally, with the trills here and there on the piano.
My lame excuse: but it was for children too, you know? Hahaha.
A beautiful transition into ‘blinkende oogjes’…
In hindsight, and actually even at the time, I had no idea how I had made this. As I wrote earlier, this piece almost wrote itself, and I was just standing there, giving it a little direction. A very strange phenomenon, one that still haunts me to this day.
Such a shame I didn’t have a decent piano sound back then.
Having about ten piano samples of 0.8 seconds spread across the entire W30-keyboard was already something to be very happy about in those days!
On the other hand, isn’t it said that a good piece of music should sound good even on a bad instrument?
Joost Ooyke Bosland as little boy & Bart Oomen as father
Jaap Maarleveld as Mr. De Brink
Lunch with the crew. Apparently, I'm saying something important... 😉
Me, looking particularly stupid.