Reine Colaço-Osorio-Swaab
Reine Colaço Osorio-Swaab started her career as a composer later in life. Initially she wrote mainly songs in a late-Romantic style. After lessons in composition with Henk Badings, her music became more atonal. We know little about how Reine survived the war, she never talked about this period. Despite the fact that most of it was published, her work was largely forgotten.
by Carine Alders
Reintje (Reine) Swaab was born in Amsterdam, Geldersekade; the youngest of five children in a wealthy Jewish family. A servant accompanied her to kindergarten at the nearby Nieuwmarkt. She spent her elementary school years at D. Vas Nunes’ distinguished girls' school on Muiderstraat, later located on Nieuwe Herengracht. The Swaab family attended the Neije Sjoel synagogue where Reine’s oldest brother became 'gabbe' (principal). Jewish observances were strictly followed in the family home and young Reine was, in her own words, very devout. Music played an important role; Reine as well as the other children loved the piano, resulting in frequent battles for their turn to play.
Early compositions
In 1901, Reine Swaab married Samuel Colaço Osorio, a stock broker. He also came from an affluent and devout Jewish family. The young couple settled on Nieuwe Keizersgracht and had four children: Sophia (1902-1999), Elisa (1903-1990), Jehuda (1906-1944) and Alfred James (1908-1995). Her husband died in 1923. Around that time and beyond, her children were moving out into their own homes; now she sought new activities. She translated The Legend of Ba'al Shem by Austrian-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber into Dutch in 1927. She also decided to take composition lessons with Ernest W. Mulder and composed songs on texts by Jacques Perk, Paul Verlaine, Rainer Maria Rilke and Stefan George.
Two compositions by Reine Colaço Osorio-Swaab were published by Alsbach & Co in 1930. The vocal group De Joodsche Stem (The Jewish Voice) performed her choral work Commemoration to the Jewish people with lyrics by Jacob Israël de Haan in 1933. In 1936, Santo Serviço, the Portuguese Synagogue Choir conducted by Sim Gokkes, performed her Psalm 150, a work which became popular with Jewish choirs in Amsterdam.
In the meantime she studied composition with Henk Badings. She had also been composing chamber music since 1939. Her art songs were regularly performed at concerts of the Dutch Society for Contemporary Music. In January 1941 her Sonata for violin and piano was performed for members in the Muzieklyceum. Around a year later it was performed again as final examination of Henk Badings' composition class. For over twenty years she stayed in touch with him.
After her early works in late-Romantic style, Reine Colaço Osorio-Swaab developed her own musical language. In Trio for flute, violin and viola from 1940, the instruments follow their own melody without a tonal point of focus. The reactions were unfavourable. A year later a performance of this work at The Dutch Society for Contemporary Music in the Muzieklyceum was reviewed as 'nothing more than rejoicing in competitiveness of the different instruments without any convincing musical meaning' (Het Volk, June 24, 1941).
Monument
In memory of her son Juda, murdered in Dachau on December 15, 1944, Reine Colaço Osorio-Swaab composed Monument in 1946; six coplas for soprano and piano on (partly spoken) texts by Hendrik de Vries and published by Broekmans & Van Poppel. By her own account, this work was unsuccessful due to its sorrowfulness. In 1947, she composed her first declamation: De tocht door de hemelen (Journey through the heavens) on a text by Buber. Nine additional declamations would follow, partly on biblical texts. Almost all of her music was published by Donemus. Becoming a member of the Society of Dutch Composers, she was not completely honest about her age. On the occasion of 80th birthday in 1968, Donemus sent her a festive telegram. This was a good moment to confess her true age; which resulted in twice as many flowers and fruit to make up for missed years.
Although Reine Colaço Osorio-Swaab retained to classical forms such as sonata and suite, her late music is predominantly atonal and yet firmly geared in melody. In Four pieces for piano and flute (1958) slow, lyrical movements are alternated with cheerful, rhythmic movements as in a baroque suite. In 1959, at the age of 78, she composed two more works which were published by Donemus: Five pastorales for flute solo and Sonatine for solo oboe.
Reine Colaço Osorio-Swaab lived her entire life in Amsterdam: from 1938 to 1961 on Waalstraat (no. 44) and then the Prins Hendriklaan (no. 54). In 1966 she stayed for several weeks in retirement home Sophia-oord, on Sophialaan and that same year in September she moved to Beth Shalom, the Jewish retirement home on Henri Polaklaan. There she died on April 14, 1971 at the age of ninety.
Reine Colaço Osorio-Swaab's music is rarely performed. As far as is known, only her Piano Trio (1941) was awarded in 1967 by the Gemeinschaft für Dokumentation von Künstlerinnen in Mannheim. Thanks to musicologist Helen Metzelaar and Stichting Vrouw en Muziek, there is revived interest since the late 1980s.
Sources
Amsterdam City Archives
Leo Smit Foundation, Amsterdam: program notes Uilenburg Concerts.
Het Volk (daily newspaper) , June 24, 1941.
Ton Poolman, [interview] (1969) [audio recording in Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam].
Helen Metzelaar, Honderd jaar Nederlandse componistes. An overview of the role of women composers in Dutch musical live of the past 100 years and analysis of works by two of them [doctoral thesis University of Amsterdam] (Amsterdam, 1985).
Hans Blom et al. De geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland (Amsterdam, 2017)
Thea Derks, Het tweede gezicht (1997) [recording of radio broadcast about women composers; in Atria, Amsterdam].
Helen Metzelaar, ‘Colaço Osorio-Swaab, Reine’, lemma in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online (Oxford, 2016) [URL: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/48111; consulted 28-11-2016].
Illustration: Reine Colaço Osorio-Swaab, photographer unknown, 1923 (family-archive).