Arnoldus Christiaan Vlok van Wyk (26 April 1916 – 27 March 1983) was a South African art music composer, one of the first notable generation of such composers along with Hubert du Plessis and Stefans Grové. Despite the strict laws imposed by the Apartheid government during his lifetime, van Wyk's homosexuality was ignored by the authorities throughout his career due to the nationalistic nature of his music.
Early life Arnoldus Christiaan Vlok van Wyk was born on 26 April 1916 on the farm Klavervlei, not far from Calvinia, a small town in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. He was the sixth of eight children. His mother, Helena van Dyk, came from a wealthy family seemingly descended from the seventeenth century court painter Anthony van Dyck. The couple married when farming provided reasonable hopes of financial security, however Van Wyk's father was never an efficient manager of the business. Little is known about his childhood other than that life was difficult.S. Muller, "Arnold van Wyk's hard, stony, flinty path, or making things beautiful in apartheid South Africa," The Musical Times, 2008, p.61 From as early as 1918, the family struggled financially, his father Arnoldus Christiaan Vlok van Wyk abused his wife and children. Several members of the family, including Van Wyk's mother and eldest sisters, demonstrated musical talent but had little opportunity for musical education.
Musical education Van Wyk took occasional piano lessons from his 'favourite" sister Minnie and soon he was "improvising dramatic piano illustrations of stories told by anyone soft-hearted enough to pay him sixpence."P. Klatzow, Composers in South Africa Today, 1987, p.1 At 16, Van Wyk was sent to boarding school at Stellenbosch Boys' High School in Stellenbosch. He took piano lessons first from the cellist Hans Endler and later from Miss C.E. van der Merwe. His mother died in Somerset Hospital in Cape Town, followed a few weeks later by the death of his eldest sister. He matriculated at the age of seventeen and decided to spend the next year preparing for an overseas piano scholarship, an effort that proved unsuccessful. He took a job in Cape Town in the claims department at an insurance company. During this time, he made contact with Charles Weich, music critic of the Afrikaans newspaper Die Burger, who invited him to perform for the first time at a concert of works "by unknown South African composers" hosted by the Oranjeklub. It brought an audience to Van Wyk's works and provided the young composer with a voice.
London apprenticeship In 1938, Van Wyk began studies aimed at a BA-degree at the University of Stellenbosch. He interrupted his studies to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He was the first South African composer to receive a Performing Right Scholarship to study there, initially granted for one academic year. Van Wyk received permission to continue his studies there until 1944. While studying at the Royal Academy, Van Wyk received many prizes, including the 1941 Worshipful Company of Musicians Medal, awarded to the most distinguished student in the Academy. Van Wyk had many concerns about his first professional training from his composition teacher, Theodore Holland. After a few months at the Royal Academy, Van Wyk wrote in a letter:S. Muller, "The Musical Times", Arnold van Wyk's hard, stony, flinty path, or making things beautiful in apartheid South Africa, 2008, p.64
During Van Wyk's time at the Royal Academy, his works were performed at several student concerts, including his Violin Concerto, conducted by Sir Henry Wood and performed by fellow student Doreen Cordell in 1940. To supplement his income, Van Wyk took a job at the recently formed Afrikaans section of the BBC, where he worked as announcer, translator, deviser of programmes, and newsreader, for the remainder of his time in London. Through this BBC appointment he met British composer and musicologist Howard Ferguson, who was "immensely impressed by [the] beauty and originality" of his works.H. Ferguson, 1996, p.83 A lifelong relationship developed from this meeting and resulted in performances of several of Wyk's works on stages throughout the United Kingdom during his eight-year stay there.
The first of these public performances included Van Wyk's "Five Elegies for String Quartet", performed as part of the well-known National Gallery Concerts. Other works performed included his two piano-duet works, "Three Improvisations on Dutch Folksongs," and the variations entitled "Poerpasledam", an Afrikaans corruption of the French "pour passer le temps). Other works performed during Van Wyk's stay in England were of his First Symphony, also conducted by Sir Henry Wood, as part of a special BBC broadcast on South Africa's Union Day celebrations in 1943, and the Saudade for violin and orchestra, originally the middle movement of the Violin Concerto, performed by violinist Olive Zorian at an Albert Hall Promenade Concert conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.P. Klatzow, Composers in South Africa Today, 1987, p.3
Some critics questioned Van Wyk's popularity with English audiences and argued that the BBC promoted his works as part of its larger campaign on behalf of the Afrikaners who formed part of the Allied Forces of World War II.S. Muller, "Sounding Margins: Musical Representations of White South Africa", D.Phil. diss., University of Oxford, 2000, p. 37. Muller quotes a letter that the Empire Music Supervisor, Rollo Myers, wrote to Hubert Clifford, in which he says: "May I ask you to see that there is the maximum possible exploitation on the publicity side of the fact that Arnold van Wyk is an Afrikaans composer and that England has given him his musical education."
Wyk returned to South Africa in 1946 following the end of the Second World War.
Return to South Africa When Van Wyk returned to South Africa in early December 1946 "he received a heart-warming welcome".P. Klatzow, Composers in South Africa Today, 1987, p. 3 His return prompted an interest in contributing to South African art music, motivated by nationalist concerns.M.J. Thom, "Die laat klavierwerke van Arnold van Wyk (1916–1983), M.Mus. diss., University of Stellenbosch, 2006, p. 17 During the next couple of years Wyk worked as a freelance composer and musician and made several tours of piano recitals throughout the Union of South Africa, a concert series organised by the then Reddingsdaadbond, an organisation established in 1939 to promote and invest in cultural projects throughout the Union. The concerts were designed to cultivate classical music appreciation among rural Afrikaners.
Musical nationalism Numerous music critics have questioned the "nationalistic style" that appears in van Wyk's works.One questions his 'nationalistic style,' when he writes: "Hy het maar 'n boereseun gebly en dit tel soveel by sy mede-Afrikaners as sy meesterlike spel en skitterende komposisies". du Preez, 1978, p.1 At a public lecture in 1955 for the Commonwealth section of the Royal Society of Arts, critic Stewart Hylton-Edwards pointed out that Van Wyk would not be capable "to write English music to the end of his days".J. Bouws, "Solank daar Musiek is: Musiek en Musiekmakers in Suid-Afrika (1652–1982)", 1982, p. 181 Another argues that Van Wyk felt exploited by the nationalists and that they were only concerned with his contribution to the cultivation process of South African Art Music.M.J. Thom, "Die laat klavierwerke van Arnold van Wyk (1916–1983), M.Mus. diss., University of Stellenbosch, 2006, p. 18 Van Wyk especially disliked his connections with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), which frequently commissioned works from him and presented him with his only broadcasting opportunities.
In South Africa Van Wyk continued working on his "Kersfees Kantata" (Christmas Cantata), a work he had begun composing in London that promised him financial security with yearly state-sponsored broadcasts. To avoid any further connections with the Afrikaner Nationalists, Van Wyk accepted an appointment as lecturer in Music at the English-speaking University of Cape Town, a post that "promised security while allowing some time for composition and piano playing". He completed his Second Symphony (Sinfonia Ricercata) during this time, a work commissioned for the 1952 Van Riebeeck Festival, as well as his orchestral work "Rapsodie" (1951).
Several scholars argue that Van Wyk's songs represent his finest work. Following his Rhapsody came an important song-cycle "Van Liefde en Verlatenheid", praised by critic Malcolm Rayment as "one of the most important contributions of our time to the literature of songs".J. Bouws, "Suid-Afrikaanse Komponiste van Vandag en Gister", 1957, p. 181 Also, as Ferguson writes: "With great sensitivity and skill he has captured the varied moods of Eugène Marais' magnificent poems and clothed them in music of outstanding beauty. J. Bouws, "Suid-Afrikaanse Komponiste van Vandag en Gister", 1982, p.3 The first performance of "Van Liefde en Verlatenheid" took place at the University of Cape Town Music Festival in 1953. Van Wyk briefly returned to London during 1954–56 for a series of concerts. During this time he worked primarily on a large-scale piano work "Nagmusiek" in memory of his friend Noel Mewton-Wood, the Australian-born pianist who committed suicide in 1953.P. Klatzow, Composers in South Africa Today, 1987, p.4
Although Van Wyk composed simply because he wanted to create "beautiful things," his connection to the ideologies of Afrikaner Nationalism was unavoidable. For the Union Festival in Bloemfontein in 1960 Van Wyk wrote one of his most important works up to that time, the symphonic suite "Primavera", important for its length as well as its prominence among his orchestral works.P. Klatzow, Composers in South Africa Today, 1987, p. 4 It comprises four movements played without interruption, of which the third movement makes extensive use of a minnelied, as used by the thirteenth-century German poet Neidhart von Reuenthal.
Toward the end of his career Van Wyk was attracted by the idea of composing unaccompanied vocal works, such as his "Aanspraak virrie latenstyd" (1973–83) and his "Missa in illo tempore" (1979). He told an interviewer: "At the moment this is the thing that stirs me the most; the idea of people singing without instruments. Maybe it has something to do with where the world is going."M.J. Thom, "Die laat klavierwerke van Arnold van Wyk (1916–1983), M.Mus. diss., University of Stellenbosch, 2006, p. 19
Prominence During 1952 Van Wyk was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy and made several trips to Europe. Important performances outside of the UK and South Africa included a performance of his "Eerste Strykkwartet" (First String Quartet) in Brussels for the International Society for Contemporary Music in 1950 and a performance of his song-cycle "Van liefde en Verlatenheid" during the society's 1954 festival in Israel. During this festival van Wyk received the Jeunesses Musicales Prize. The performance of his song-cycle at the festival was so well received that it was performed on several occasions that same year in the Netherlands, London, and Oslo. Van Wyk was made Honorary Doctor of Music by the University of Cape Town in 1972 and by the University of Stellenbosch in 1981.P. Klatzow, Composers in South Africa Today, 1987, p.6
Compositional style and development