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The Zuiderzee (/ˌzaɪdər ˈzeɪ/; Dutch: Zuiderzee, Dutch: [ˌzœy̆dərˈzeː]; old spelling Zuyderzee) was a shallow bay of the North Sea in the northwest of the Netherlands, extending about 100 km (60 miles) inland and at most 50 km (30 miles) wide, with an overall depth of about 4 to 5 metres (13–16 feet) and a coastline of about 300 km (200 miles). It covered 5,000 km² (1,900 sq mi). Its name means "southern sea" in Dutch, indicating that the origin of the name can be found in Friesland to the north of the Zuiderzee (also see North Sea). In the 20th century the majority of the Zuiderzee was closed off from the North Sea (leaving the mouth of the inlet to become part of the Wadden Sea) and the salt water inlet changed into a fresh water lake called the IJsselmeer (IJssel Lake) after the river that drains into it, and by means of drainage and polders, an area of some 1,500 km² (580 sq mi) was reclaimed as land. This land eventually became the province of Flevoland, with a population of nearly 400,000 (2011).

History and disasters[link]

Approximate landscape in North Holland during the 1st century AD (left) and the 10th century AD (right)

In classical times there was already a body of water in this location, called Lacus Flevo ("Flevo Lake") by Roman authors. It was much smaller than its later forms and its connection to the main sea was much narrower; it may have been a complex of lakes and marshes and channels, rather than one lake. Over time these lakes gradually eroded their soft peat shores and spread (a process known as waterwolf). Some part of this area of water was later called the Vlie; it probably flowed into the sea through what is now the Vliestroom channel between the islands of Vlieland and Terschelling. The Marsdiep was once a river (fluvium Maresdeop) which may have been a distributary of the Vlie. During the early Middle Ages this began to change as rising sea levels and storms started to eat away at the coastal areas which consisted mainly of peatlands. In this period the inlet was referred to as the Almere, indicating it was still more of a lake, but the mouth and size of the inlet were much widened in the 12th century and especially after a disastrous flood in 1282 ^[1] broke through the barrier dunes near Texel. The disaster was the making of the little village of Amsterdam, for seagoing traffic could now make it a rendezvous for the Baltic trade. The even more massive St. Lucia's flood occurred 14 December 1287, when the seawalls broke during a storm, killing approximately 50,000 to 80,000 people in the fifth largest flood in recorded history. The name "Zuiderzee" came into general usage around this period.

The size of this inland sea remained largely stable from the 15th century onwards due to improvements in dikes, but when storms pushed North Sea water into the inlet, the Zuiderzee became a volatile cauldron of water, frequently resulting in flooding and the loss of ships. For example, on 18 November 1421, a seawall at the Zuiderzee dike broke, which flooded 72 villages and killed about 10,000 people. This was the Second St. Elizabeth's Flood: see Sint-Elisabethsvloed (1421).

The Netherlands was part of the First French Empire between 1810 and 1813. A département was formed in 1811 and named as Zuyderzée after the Zuiderzee, of which the territory roughly corresponded to the present provinces of North Holland and Utrecht.

Zuiderzee hosted the 6-meter and 8-meter sailing events for the 1928 Summer Olympics held in neighboring Amsterdam.^[2]

Geography and development[link]

Landsat photo

Map of the Zuiderzeeworks in the Netherlands

Around the Zuiderzee many fishing villages grew up and several developed into walled towns with extensive trade connections, in particular Kampen, a town in Overijssel, and later also towns in Holland such as Amsterdam, Hoorn, and Enkhuizen. These towns traded at first with ports on the Baltic Sea, in England, and in the Hanseatic League, but later also with the rest of the world, when the Netherlands established its colonial empire. When that lucrative trade diminished, most of the towns fell back on fishing and some industry until the 20th century when tourism became the major source of income. Contained within the Zuiderzee were five small islands, the remains of what were once larger islands, peninsulas connected to the mainland, or in the case of Pampus, a artificial island . These were Wieringen, Urk, Schokland, Pampus and Marken. The inhabitants of these islands also subsisted mainly on fishing and related industries and still do in the case of Urk and Wieringen. All of these islands, except for Pampus, are now part of the mainland or connected to it.

The construction in the early 20th century of a large enclosing dam (the Afsluitdijk) tamed the Zuiderzee. The creation of this dam was a response to the flood of January 1916. Plans for closing the Zuiderzee had been made over thirty years earlier but had not yet passed in parliament. With the completion of the Afsluitdijk in 1932, the Zuiderzee became the IJsselmeer, and large areas of water could be reclaimed for farming and housing. These areas, known as polders, were respectively the Wieringermeer, the Noordoostpolder, and Flevoland. This enormous project under the direction of Cornelis Lely, called the Zuiderzeeworks, ran from 1919 to 1986, culminating in the creation of the new province of Flevoland. The reclamation project was originally intended to reclaim the former southwestern portion of the Zuiderzee, a polder that would have been called the Markerwaard, but this final stage of the reclamation project was indefinitely postponed in the 1980s.

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Zuiderzee Museum (www.zuiderzeemuseum.nl), dedicated to the history and culture of the former Zuiderzee.

Multimedia[link]

• CBC Archives Matthew Halton of CBC Radio (19 April 1945) reports on German destruction of the sea walls.
• Pathe newsreel of flooding, 1916

Coordinates: 52°50′N 5°20′E / 52.833°N 5.333°E / 52.833; 5.333

v t e Olympic venues in sailing 1900: Le Havre, Meulan-en-Yvelines 1908: Solent, Southampton Water 1912: Nynäshamn 1920: Ostend, Buiten Y 1924: Le Havre, Meulan-en-Yvelines 1928: Buiten Y, Zuiderzee 1932: Los Angeles Harbor 1936: Kiel Bay 1948: Torbay 1952: Harmaja, Liuskasaari 1956: Port Phillip 1960: Gulf of Naples 1964: Enoshima 1968: Club de Yates 1972: Bay of Kiel 1976: Portsmouth Olympic Harbour 1980: Olympic Regatta in Tallinn 1984: Long Beach Shoreline Marina 1988: Busan Yachting Center 1992: Olympic Harbour 1996: Wassaw Sound 2000: Rushcutters Bay 2004: Agios Kosmas Olympic Sailing Centre 2008: Qingdao International Sailing Centre 2012: Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy 2016: Marina da Glória

Cornelis Dopper c.1900

Cornelis 'Kees' Dopper (7 February 1870, Stadskanaal – 19 September 1939, Amsterdam) was a Dutch composer, conductor and teacher.

Reputation[link]

Dopper's reputation as a composer has suffered from the accusation of being 'too German' for much of his career, and still haunts him to this day. Very popular with concert audiences, his works never received much critical acclaim in his home country (unlike abroad). His reputation among the musical avant-garde further suffered because of the so-called 'Vermeulen incident' of November 1918. After a performance of Dopper's Seventh Symphony (which ends with a march) under the baton of the composer, his dissatisfied colleague Matthijs Vermeulen stood up in the hall of the Concertgebouw and shouted: "Leve Sousa" ("Long live Sousa"); the implication being that Dopper was of little more value as a composer than the critically reviled American marchsmith John Philip Sousa (1854–1932). This caused uproar, not just because of Vermeulen's affront, but also because a great part of the audience understood it to be "Long live Troelstra!" (the name of the socialist leader who'd attempted to unleash a revolution days before), and therefore as a call to revolution. In the aftermath, Vermeulen was banned from attending the Concertgebouw for one week, but the subsequent scandal also caused the orchestra board to 'relegate' Dopper. Dopper died in 1939 and was buried at Zorgvlied cemetery.

The same piece, the Seventh Symphony, played a more positive role when it was played at the Concertgebouw in November 1940, six months after the German occupation of the Netherlands. The piece contains many songs from Valerius' Nederlandtsche Gedenck-Clanck (Dutch Song of Remembrance), a collection of anti-Spanish songs originating from the Revolt of the Netherlands against the Spanish in the 16th and early 17th century. The finale ends with an 'anti-march', composed by Dopper as a reflection of the First World War, similar to the way in which Ravel's La Valse is a perversion of the sorrowless waltzes of Vienna before that war. The performance, obviously programmed before the German invasion and conducted by Mengelberg, erupted into a patriotic ovation. The recording of that event can be heard today in what is one of two performances of the Seventh Symphony available on record.

Revival[link]

Although most of Dopper's works slid into oblivion after his death, a recent revival has done much to rekindle interest in his music. A biography was published in 1998 by Joop Stam (revised in 2009), and the British Chandos label released two CDs with works by Dopper (the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th symphonies, and two symphonic poems). In February, 2005, Dopper's First Symphony Diana received its world premiere by the Noord Nederlands Orkest in Leeuwarden. Dopper's two masterworks, the Seventh Symphony and the Ciaconna Gotica, were recorded in 1995 under the baton of Kees Bakels. They are also available in vintage and (in the case of the Ciaconna) severely cut versions (albeit conducted by Willem Mengelberg).

The Stichting Cornelis Dopper in Stadskanaal works to keep the memory of Cornelis Dopper alive. In 2009-2010 a Dopper festival took place at several venues in the north of the country, at which the revised version of Joop Stam's biography was presented and Dopper's Requiem from 1935 was premiered.

Selected works[link]

Stage works[link]

• De Blinde van Castel-Cuillé (The Blind Girl of Castel-Cuillé), opera on a libretto by H.C. Meursinge-Offers (composed 1892, premiered The Hague, 1894)
• Frithjof, opera after Bueninck (composed 1895, unperformed)
• William Ratcliff, opera in 2 acts after Heinrich Heine (composed 1896-1901, premiered Weimar, 1909)
• Het Eerekruis The Cross of Honour, opera in 1 act on a libretto by H. Engelen (composed 1903, premiered Amsterdam, 1903)
• Don Quichote, opera after Cervantes (unfinished)

Orchestral works[link]

• Dance Symphony No. 1, "Diana" (composed 1895, revised 1921)
• Symphony No. 2, "Scottish" (composed 1903)
• Symphony No. 3, "Rembrandt" (composed 1892, revised 1904)
• Symphony No. 4, "Sinfonietta" (composed 1905)
• Symphony No. 5, "Symphonia epica" (composed 1908)
• Cello Concerto (composed 1910, revised 1923)
• Concerto for trumpet, 3 timpani, and orchestra (composed 1910)
• Symphony No. 6, "Amsterdam" (composed 1912)
• Päân No. 1 (composed 1915)
• Päân No. 2 (composed 1915)
• Symphony No. 7, "Zuiderzee" (composed 1917)
• Ciaconna Gotica (composed 1920)

External links[link]

• (Dutch) The website of the Cornelis Dopper Foundation.
• Dopper page at the Dutch Music Association (Donemus) with downloadable English-language biography (MS Word-format) and list of works and recordings.
• A review of the Chandos recording of Dopper's Second Symphony (ClassicsToday.com).
• A review of the Chandos recording of Dopper's Third and Sixth Symphonies (ClassicsToday.com).
• List of Dopper's works