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Gottfried Michael Koenig at STEM
The studio in Eindhoven had been well equipped for production, and since Raaijmakers had agreed to move to Utrecht with the equipment, it had been possible to continue the studio’s activities almost without interruption.
After the Philips studio moved to Utrecht, Raaijmakers obtained the position of scientific member of staff, which was a considerable promotion. Vermeulen saw Raaijmakers as his eventual successor, partly because he thought Raaijmakers would guarantee the continuation of the studio’s original mission. However, with the studio placed much more centrally in Utrecht, Raaijmakers quickly became aware of other trends in the arts in the Netherlands and realized how isolated he had been working in Eindhoven. He radically changed course, trying to catch up through his own compositional work and intensive collaboration with some of the composers who had worked in the Delft studio before it closed. In the meantime, tension between Vermeulen and Raaijmakers was increasing, 35 which soon led to Vermeulen’s request that the university accept his resignation as of October 1, 1961.
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Although the minutes of the CEM assemblies do not note the problematic situation in Utrecht, it was Bomli, the organization’s chairman, who now felt the need to intervene. He wrote a letter to the secretary of the University’s board of governors, J. H. des Tombe, sending copies to Hendrik Casimir, the head of physics research at Philips Research Laboratories, and Vermeulen, in advance of a meeting scheduled for October 11, 1961. In it, he said he had asked Vermeulen “to name facts and symptoms that [could] clarify somewhat how the highly unhealthy situation between both gentlemen [Raaijmakers and Vermeulen] had come into being.” 36 It was Bomli’s understanding that Raaijmakers
Figure 10. Beate Christina Koepnick, Bruno Maderna and Walter Maas in the Bilthoven studio, 1960s.
Figure 11. Dick Raaijmakers and Leidi Kiewiet in the Utrecht University electronic music studio, April 1961.
35 Letter from Raaijmakers to
Miep Roggen, June 21, 1961. 36 Copy sent to Vermeulen of a letter from Bomli to Des Tombe,
October 10, 1961, PCA NL 163.
