Gaudeamus was founded by Walter Maas: a Jewish textile engineer who fled from the nazis, and who grew to be a passionate advocate of young composers and their work. A man whose willfulness is part of Gaudeamus’ DNA to this day.
The Jewish textile engineer Walter Alfred Friedrich Maas (1909 – 1992) fled the rise of nazism in Germany in 1933. From 1941 on, he and his parents lived in the villa called ‘Huize Gaudeamus’ in Bilthoven, where they rented out rooms for guests. When The Netherlands started to be unsafe for Jewish people as well, the family went on the run again. Maas embarked on a difficult journey from safe house to safe house, including a stitch of three months in hiding once again at Huize Gaudeamus, in a hidden nook in the attic. During this rough period, at one point he told himself: if I survive this, I will do something in return for The Netherlands.
Shortly after the war, Maas once again returned to Huize Gaudeamus. There he received a visit one day of Julius and Johannes Röntgen, the sons of composer Julius Röntgen, who had build Huize Gaudeamus in 1924. They wanted to give a concert in Huize Gaudeamus. That concert happened on Sunday afternoon, 4 November 1945. It was a smashing success and more concerts followed. After Maas met the young composer Henk Stam at one of those concerts, Gaudeamus started to focus more and more on the work of young composers. Gaudeamus and Maas had found their purpose.
Approx. 1950 Photo: C. Ferguson 
Approx. 1967 Photo: Imon Heystek 
Approx. 1975
The English-German accent of the internationally oriented Maas was not always easy to understand – listen for yourself below. Yet one motto of his was always clear: ‘Ich hab’ das Meine getan, tut ihr nun das Eure.’ (‘I have done mine, now you do yours.’) What that meant, people would find out at the ungodliest of hours. He was not afraid to call his employees and others in the middle of the night. Maas was an inescapable advocate for young composer. He drove government institutions ‘mad’ with the many phone calls they received from him. But this way, he also unlocked many fundings for concert programmes. This meant a lot for the cultural scene. All the work Maas did, was ‘paid off’ with many awards for musicians and composers, whose works would later prove to groundbreaking.
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History can be made at any moment. On a Sunday afternoon. In a glowing recommendation. After dozens of phone calls. By listening. In the decision never to give up. Premieres sound. Batons are passed on. In full confidence. Time goes by. Pioneers cultivate new resources.
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From the outset, Dutch electronic music found itself in between two principal European trends: the musique concrète introduced by French radio in 1948 and the German elektronische Musik that emerged from 1951 onwards at the Cologne broadcast station. The first real Dutch electronic music studio was built in 1956, not by a broadcasting company but, remarkably enough, by the acoustics department at Philips Research Laboratories as part of a research program. Around the same time as Philips was establishing the first Dutch studio for electronic music, Walter Maas, director of the Gaudeamus foundation for contemporary music, took steps that led to the founding of the Contactorgaan Elektronische Muziek (Electronic music contact organization), or CEM.