Hein Krammer, Person

Firstly, the main points of my life. I was born on July 18th, 1936 in 's-Hertogenbosch. During 23 years I was married, now I live with the loveliest friend I can think of, Maria. I have three children - Daan, Tijs and Eva - and six grandchildren - Sam, Rosa, Zeb, Lance, Estelle and Guusje. I studied mathematics at the University of Utrecht, for 8.5 years I was a mathematics and physics teacher at Ludger College in Doetinchem. Afterwards, I worked at the departments of Teacher Education and Educational Technology of the University of Twente. I got my PhD in October 1984. Since August 1998 I am pensioned.

This hobby, the Hungarian and Romanian gipsy music, started already during my school period. My father, Thijs, was for his income a office worker, but lived entirely for his music: he was a church choir director and played at the piano in restaurants. One song that he often played did facsinate me highly.

MP3-file

Later on I discovered that the song was "Piros pünkösd napján imádkoztam érted" of the composer and poet Kókay István. This was the only Hungarian melody my father played, but it was enough for me to erouse my interest in this kind of music. In order to learn more of Hungarian music I regularly listened to gipsy orchestras on the radio, bought a book with gipsy music and bought some records. From these sources I learned myself some melodies at the piano (from eleven years old I took piano lessons and I also played a bit of jazz, so that improvizing at the piano was not entirely strange to me).

I began my university studies at the city of Utrecht in 1957, one year after the Hungarian revolt. Therefore, amoung my co-students were a lot of Hungarian refugees. Hearing of my interest in Hungarian music they envited me to the Hungarian Club in Utrecht. There was a piano on which I played when the Hungarians sung. I learned a lot of new melodies as well as the texts of many songs. To understand the songs I began to study the Hungarian language. The students' union Veritas of which I was a member had a student "gipsy orchestra" named Palotas. Many students' unions in The Netherlands have gipsy orchestras. I participated in this orchestra as pianist, cimbalist and arranger. In order to gather many melodies and to improve my Hungarian pronounciation I regularly listened to the Hungarian radio broadcasting. Very important appeared to be the dayly broadcastings for the agriculture from four o'clock in the morning. They contained many folk songs and dances, often played by original village people. With these programs began my love for the Hungarian folk music, which however never could extinct my love for the Hungarian "nota".

During the occupational phase of my live this hobby slimbered a little bit. As for the music, I applied myself mainly to classical music. However, now and then I played again some Hungarian and Romanian music, sometimes I bought a disk, from which I found new melodies to add to my collection. Once I had to visit a congres in Hungary and I decided to resume my studies of the Hungarian language. From then I often visited Hungary and Hungarian friends. A few years ago I started to subsume my collection of melodies into an electronic database, which is now available.

Since I have retired I took up the hobby passionately. I now also learned Romanian language and I visited several times Romania. I purchased a new cimbalom on which I am studying dayly. Also, I have expanded my repertoire of Romanian melodies considerably, which resulted in a book with 62 arrangements. I made two CDs with piano recordings of Hungarian, respectively Romanian music.