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Bob Chamberlin (USA) and his encounter with the Dutch 31-tone movement

On 29 April 2024 Robert (Bob) Chamberlin, emeritus professor of music at Webster University in St. Louis, sent an email to the Huygens-Fokker Foundation regarding a Fokker organ artefact. In the email exchanges that followed with Sander Germanus of the foundation, interesting details and trivia emerged about his visit to, among other places, the 31-tone organ (at the time) in Haarlem.

Bob Chamberlin: “During the summer of 1978, I was privileged to spend time learning how to play and compose the 31-tone per octave Fokker pipe organ which was housed in the Teyler’s Museum. Dr. Anton de Beer was my host during that visit. When it was time for me to go home to the US, Dr. de Beer presented me with a hand-drawn copy of the keyboard for the Fokker organ. He told me that it had been drawn by Dr. Fokker. What Dr. de Beer gave to me was not framed. It was rolled up simply and I believe it was drawn with crayons. Once I got home to St. Louis, Missouri, I had it framed by a professional art framing company so that it would be preserved better. It has stayed in my possession until this day. I am now retired and have no way to properly store this one-of-a-kind artifact. I would like to offer it as a donation to your organization.”

“About my visit to Haarlem in 1978. My wife, Jan, was with me on the trip. We spent the month of June in Haarlem and had a chance to meet other musicians. Most of the time, Anton de Beer provided us housing at his home. But, we were also hosted for a few days with Jeanne Vos and Bouw Lemckes and had a lovely time visiting with them in Utrecht. We also spent three days at the home of Mrs. Fokker. What a lovely, gracious lady and what a beautiful home. We spent the better part of one day visiting with Henk and Hetty Badings and got to meet their pet peacocks. It was an honor to meet Mr. Badings, since he had taught composition to Will Bottje, who was one of my instructors in graduate school.”

“In the meantime, I have shared our online conversations with my friend and colleague, Dr. Kendall Stallings. He and I worked together for many years at Webster University and together, we helped introduce microtonal music to the curriculum at Webster. The music department had been given an archifoon as a donation from the college president at the time, Dr. Leigh Gerdine. Dr. Stallings also spent time in Haarlem and had the opportunity to meet Prof. Fokker. He also knew Anton de Beer and the Lemkes.”

Nina Simone amazed by the neutral third of the 31-tone organ

Between 1965 and 1968 Nina Simone performed three times in the Netherlands. In one of these years she paid a visit to the 31-tone organ in the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. Frits van der Waa wrote about this in de Volkskrant of 11 December 1987: “Later (Adriaan) Fokker once took Nina Simone along to the banks of the Spaarne [Haarlem], and (Anton) De Beer demonstrated to her the playing principles of accuracy of intonation. The famous singer reacted astonished; for the first time in her life she heard real blues thirds on a Western keyboard instrument.” And his former colleague Roland de Beer wrote to us in 2024 about his father Anton de Beer (Fokker organist between about 1952 and 1989) the following: “Anton told me about a visit by Nina Simone to the 31-tone organ, also in the 1960s. The great singer and pianist was delighted that a ‘blue note’ could now simply be played by pressing a key, for example between A flat and A when you played music in F. And indeed: such a key was blue!”
Nina Simone, stage name of Eunice Kathleen Waymon (Tryon, 21 February 1933 – Carry-le-Rouet, 21 April 2003), was an American singer-songwriter, pianist and also civil rights activist. In her music, besides jazz, the influences of classical music, blues, reggae, soul and rhythm and blues can be heard. That is why Nina Simone was astonished by the pure neutral thirds on the 31-tone organ which she knew from the blues, but which she could not play on the piano due to the limitations of the 12-tone equal temperament. This musical encounter will have given her a wonderful memory of the Netherlands. The country where, incidentally, after disagreements with managers, record companies and the tax authorities (with whom she had a conflict because of the Vietnam War) and after years of wandering, she lived between 1988 and 1992, at the invitation of her good friend Gerrit de Bruin. First in Nijmegen and afterwards also in Amsterdam.

Godfried Bomans tells Wim Sonneveld about ‘the 31-tone key’

On a small record from 1962 containing an interview between the celebrated Dutch comedians Wim Sonneveld (the ignorant interviewer) and Godfried Bomans (the fictional arrogant composer), the 31-tone temperament suddenly and comically comes up (mistakenly called the “31-tone key”). On the sleeve of the record, in the text about this witty interview, the following is described by Willem Duys:

“It happened on a chilly winter’s day last July. […] To our surprise Bomans seated himself at the piano to demonstrate immediately his fine touch and sight-reading routine. Sonneveld (who had studied singing) raised his voice and one song followed another. And then Bomans suddenly said: ‘what if I take on the role of an unbearably pig-headed composer and you play a ridiculously stupid interviewer… wouldn’t that produce some funny results?’ Whereupon the question-and-answer game promptly began and I quietly switched on the tape recorder, so as not to lose anything of the wave of pure madness that now swept over us. There was a disquisition on the fictitious composer Spark (‘just think of the Willem Sparkweg!’), on a minuet for breakfast (‘menuet = small menu’)… on Bomans’ own works (‘38 symphonies, each 5 minutes, I seek it in concise explosions of force’)… on the grief without which one cannot create (‘OCW has had a special building erected near Uddel for composers, the so-called “House of Grief”, where sombre literature is available and where one can suffer intensively from 8 to 10’)… on new names: Willem Friedemann Sonneveld and Godfried Amadeus Bomans. Later, on 23 July, a small gathering of invitees was able to attend the improvised repetition of this nonsense in the Minerva Pavilion.”

About this memorable sketch Roland de Beer wrote the following in an email: “In 1962 a record appeared with the title Wim Sonneveld interviewt Godfried Bomans. Bomans plays the role of musical genius, Sonneveld is the questioner. At a certain moment the subject turns to a ‘motif or theme’. Bomans provides the little tune, while playing the piano, with an accompaniment that makes no sense at all. Bomans: ‘You think that was out of tune?’ (audience laughs). Now it comes. Bomans says: ‘But Mr Sonneveld, what I played was in…the 31-tone…key. So those are in-between notes.’ The funny thing for us, of course, lies in Bomans’ hesitation concerning the words ‘the’ and ‘key’. The witty wordsmith for a moment could not think of the words ‘temperament’ or ‘system’. The joke does, however, point to the fact that the phenomenon of 31-tone music (including ‘in-between notes’) was at that time well known to Haarlemmers of a certain erudition. Anton (de Beer) was enormously delighted with the record. He played it with great pleasure and often let others hear it.” 

The relevant “interview” can be listened to again on YouTube (from 5 min. 22 sec.) or below as a fragment (in Dutch): 

Pierre Boulez visits the Fokker organ (by Paul Christiaan van Westering)

From ‘De mens achter de musicus’ (1965) by Paul Christiaan van Westering:

“I told Boulez about the 31-tone organ in the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, which Prof. Fokker had commissioned from the Alkmaar organ builder Pels. This instrument contains 31 tones in the octave and is based on the theories of Christiaan Huygens. Boulez immediately suggested paying a visit there, and right away the next morning at 11 o’clock.
The composer appeared punctually on time. He had brought along a Parisian lady (Boulez is a bachelor), who also turned out to be particularly interested in the instrument. At the very first fifth that I divided into three (Balinese scale with 6/5 seconds) he was jumping with enthusiasm. He could not get enough of all the fine tone gradations, while he rejoiced at the pure thirds. He studied my technique and could not stop asking questions about the technical possibilities of the instrument. Finally he sat down himself at the complicated keyboard with its white, black and blue keys, and before long he was scattering his series around. On the auxiliary keyboard he played my variations on Merk toch hoe sterk straight off at sight, while at the same time making calculations aloud to check the harmonies. After that we were truly friends. We paid a visit together to the Frans Hals Museum and alternated between enjoying ourselves and making cheeky remarks. Boulez had promised me an elaborate dinner at Brinkmann on the Grote Markt and we were indeed ready for a bite to eat.” (spring 1960)

View the relevant pages with the above text in Paul van Westering’s book (in Dutch):
Paul van Westering talks with Pierre Boulez about the Fokker organ in the spring of 1960

Addition by Roland de Beer: “Remarkable is that by 1960 nothing had for years come any more from the composing or playing fingers of Van Westering in the field of 31-tone music. Anton de Beer had in fact since about 1952 been the regular player of the organ. And interesting is the timing of Pierre Boulez’s visit to Teylers. Boulez was in the Netherlands in February 1960 to make his conducting debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, as substitute for his ailing mentor Hans Rosbaud. On the programme were Le Chant du Rossignol by Igor Stravinsky and The Miraculous Mandarin by Béla Bartók, in combination with works by Haydn and Debussy, programmed by Marius Flothuis. Of a 31-tone composition which Boulez is said to have promised Van Westering, unfortunately nothing ever came.”

Nicolaas Kroese wants to improve the world with the 31-tone system

Nicolaas Kroese (1905-1971) was an Amsterdam hospitality entrepreneur, best known as the founder of the restaurant d’Vijff Vlieghen in 1939. He was known for his eccentric personality and creative publicity stunts, such as his trip to New York with a cage containing five copper flies to promote his restaurant. In the 1960s Kroese became involved in pseudoscientific ideas and strove for world peace and the solution of the world food problem. Kroese’s life reflected a combination of entrepreneurship, eccentricity and a striving for social improvement. In this latter role he also discovered the 31-tone tuning system, which for some time made him a recurring figure at the concerts around the Fokker organ in the auditorium of the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. Roland de Beer wrote the following about him:

“Nicolaas Kroese was a restaurant owner, kabbalist and prophet of world peace. Kroese died in 1971, but his restaurant d’Vijff Vlieghen still exists. Kroese was one of the colourful Amsterdammers of the 1950s. Tangentially linked to Provo, even before the movement was called that (he was a friend of Robert Jasper Grootveld). He apparently spent his restaurant profits on endless telegrams which he (by the hundreds) sent to heads of state and leading scientists of all countries. His plan was to banish hunger and wars from the world by spanning the globe with a network of gold or copper wire that, if I remember correctly, was supposed, among other things, to promote the growth of crops. The greatest danger to mankind lay – according to Kroese – in ‘31 destructive cosmic energies’. A new world-mathematics, based on prime numbers, was to be the answer. Once Kroese got wind of the existence of a 31-tone organ he was, of course, quick to seize the opportunity. He appeared at concerts in Teylers and was treated by Anton to a private performance. Without doubt Kroese tried to involve Adriaan Fokker in his theory that 31-tone music would have a beneficial effect on world peace. I suspect that Kroese had no success with this part of his campaign. I myself was too young to understand the significance of Nicolaas Kroese, and remember only the presence in Teylers (around 1960/1962) of an immensely fat visitor with curly grey hair, about whom people spoke somewhat mockingly.”
Read more on the website of Ons Amsterdam about Nicolaas Kroese (in Dutch).

Albert Einstein and Adriaan Fokker: a fruitful collaboration

What few people know is that Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Adriaan Fokker (1887-1972), the later advocate of 31-tone music, wrote together an extensive scientific article which was published in paperback form under the title: Die Nordströmsche Gravitationstheorie vom Standpunkt des absoluten Differentialkalküls. On the cover it further states “Überreicht von den Verfassern” (presented by the authors) and “Separat-Abdrück den Annalen der Physik” (separate print of the Annalen der Physik). The publication originates from the fourth issue of volume 44 of this physics journal and was published in Leipzig in 1914. In this article we find the so-called Fokker-Einstein relation which indicates the connection between the mobility of particles and their diffusion constants (these quantities are proportional; the constant that links them is the product of the ‘Boltzmann constant’ and the temperature). But Fokker did not only collaborate with Albert Einstein in writing. In the winter semester of 1913-1914 he stayed in Zurich where (after obtaining his doctorate) he worked with Einstein on research, before travelling in the summer of 1914 to England for studies in Manchester and Leeds. During this semester the publication on the Fokker-Einstein relation by both scientists came into being. That Fokker and Einstein had the same interests within physics is evident. Fokker wrote two books and countless articles on the special and general theory of relativity, which turned out to be important contributions. The titles of these books, which he wrote after this period, are Relativiteitstheorie (1929) and Tijd en Ruimte, Traagheid en Zwaarte (1960). Fokker’s greatest interest lay in the problems of the theory of relativity, although he preferred to speak of “chronogeometry”. In 1927 Adriaan Fokker even provided a solution for the problem of the definition of the centre of gravity of a system of two free particles in the theory of relativity. His much later work Chronogeometrische inleiding tot Einstein’s theorie from 1960 was, however, a more philosophical study of this famous theory of Einstein.

Whether Fokker (second from the right in the photo) and Einstein (far right in the photo) also connected outside physics, for example in their love of music, cannot be said with certainty. What is certain, however, is that Albert Einstein played the violin with merit and had a great passion for it, as well as for the piano. Fokker too could play the piano quite well and after 1950 regularly took his place behind the keys of “his” 31-tone organ in the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. These interests seem logical, since many mathematicians and physicists are intrigued by music, as the same principles as in physics can be found in it. Apart from the fact that there were many shared interests between the gentlemen, it remains unclear how Adriaan Fokker came into contact with Einstein. It seems logical that this contact at the time arose through Fokker’s professors. Albert Einstein, however, came to Leiden for the first time in 1911 at the invitation of the faculty of philosophy students. Together with his wife Mileva Marić he stayed at the house of the Leiden physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928), who lived on the Hooigracht. At that time Adriaan Fokker studied physics at Leiden University (1906-1913), where with Hendrik Lorentz as his supervisor he obtained his doctorate on 24 October 1913 with his dissertation Over Brown’sche bewegingen in het stralingsveld, en waarschijnlijkheids-beschouwingen in de stralingstheorie. Fokker therefore came into contact with Einstein for the first time already in 1911, when according to Fokker he gave a lecture on “Brownian motion” in a small auditorium.

From 1920 the Leiden University Fund created a special chair for Einstein and he came each year as visiting professor for a month to Leiden, to give lectures among other things, away from turbulent Berlin at the time. Here he met his colleagues and friends, among them Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Hendrik Lorentz and the Austrian-Dutch physicist Paul Ehrenfest (to the left of Fokker in the photo), who was a close friend of Einstein and with whom he often stayed in the Witte Rozenstraat. With them he conducted profound discussions about his ideas and theories. Albert Einstein enjoyed coming to Leiden, not least because he was a great admirer of Nobel Prize winner (1902) Hendrik Lorentz, who belongs among the greatest scientists in Dutch history and whose best student around that time was Adriaan Daniël Fokker, as evidenced by the fact that in 1927 Lorentz appointed him as his successor as curator of the physics cabinet in the Teylers Museum and that in 1928, after Lorentz’s death, Fokker succeeded him as special professor of physics at Leiden University. Einstein later described the city of Leiden as “that delightful little spot on this barren earth”, which clearly showed his love for Leiden and the Netherlands.

Returning to 1913-1914 and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH) at Rämistrasse 101 to be precise, where Adriaan Fokker studied with Einstein just before the First World War, as is mentioned in his biographies. In this period Albert Einstein was already working intensively on his general theory of relativity. But to what extent during this “study” was there a teacher-student relationship? Or did the activities have more the character of a research internship and were Einstein and Fokker actually more colleagues? In age they differed by only a little less than 8.5 years and so belonged almost to the same generation. They also carried out joint research in an equal way, from which in 1914 among other things the publication Die Nordströmsche Gravitationstheorie vom Standpunkt des absoluten Differentialkalküls resulted, and with it the Fokker-Einstein relation. Incidentally, earlier that year Adriaan Fokker had already delivered an important publication to conclude his doctorate in Leiden. This article, Die mittlere Energie rotierender elektrischer Dipole im Strahlungsfeld (1914), contains a differential equation which in 1917 was taken over and elaborated by the German physicist Max Planck (1858-1947). The “Fokker-Planck equation” plays ever since an important role in statistical mechanics and can be applied to a large number of problems relating to “Brownian motion”. It was therefore no coincidence that Adriaan Fokker commanded respect already in his younger years. It is even plausible that Einstein already held his new colleague in high esteem before Fokker travelled to Zurich, after which in this city they conducted physical research as colleagues, which resulted in a fruitful collaboration.

After Fokker had worked with Einstein, gone to England and fulfilled his military service during the First World War in neutral Netherlands, he was between 1917 and 1919 assistant to Lorentz and Ehrenfest at Leiden University, where he became special professor in 1928. In the meantime, on 26 September 1923, when Fokker had been professor of theoretical and applied physics at the Technical University in Delft for six months, the above group photo with leading physicists was taken on the veranda of the observatory in Leiden, featuring from left to right Willem de Sitter, Ejnar Hertzsprung, Arthur Eddington, Paul Ehrenfest, Adriaan Fokker and none other than Albert Einstein. Many years later in 1955, when Fokker as curator of the physics cabinet in the Teylers Museum had long since devoted himself to music and the 31-tone tuning of Christiaan Huygens, he wrote a very personal treatise in the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Natuurkunde (volume 2, issue 5 of 1955) about Albert Einstein on the occasion of his death, in which one finds Adriaan Fokker’s view on the philosophy of the theory of relativity and the attitude to life of this famous physicist. He writes the following about Einstein: “The memory drifts to long bygone years. How did he look again? Eyes under open-round eyebrows. A small mouth under a short moustache. Long-cut hair. When he thought he would pull at it. In conversation, when he came upon an idea, the eyebrows went very high, the lips pursed together. Was it a little joke that came up, then he laughed good-heartedly with satisfaction: hòh-hòh-hòh! They were not biting jokes; he did like to say something a little daring, but it was always utterly good-natured. He was a gentle man, simple, sensitive, sincere, open-hearted, unpretentious, sometimes almost naïve. […] He was averse to pedantry or complacency, rather humble, downright honest. That does not mean that he was not sensitive to it, and did not admit that he liked it when he noticed that unknown people treated him with respect, when they realised that he was Einstein. Yet he seems to have been wonderfully resistant to fame. The unbridled admiration of the great world has spoiled and destroyed many a strong character, but not Einstein. He remained simple. And in his guilelessness an easy prey for people who took advantage of it, but that I know only by hearsay.
His true passion lay in penetrating the mystery of the boundless world, which stood outside and above the bickering and wriggling of personal interests, feelings and drives of people. That thinking consoled him when he had seen through the hollow hypocrisy of the prevailing respectable ideals. As a liberation from an earthly prison, the contemplation of that impersonal reality beckoned to him, and in that, he writes in his autobiography, he was never disappointed. For small successes, which flatter vanity, he did not care much. No, he once said to me during a walk, it must be a big fish, even if one had to think oneself to pieces over it! When he said that, he had already caught the three big fish of 1905, Brownian motion, the light quanta, the relativity of uniform translations; it was late 1913. The very greatest fish, the theory of gravitation as general relativity, was yet to be hauled in.” Adriaan Fokker concludes with: “He was a human being like us, but in his insignificance as a mortal man he revealed to us a magnificent eternity.”  (Sander Germanus, 31 december 2024)