Bond of broeders: Anton Hartman and music in an apartheid state

Musical Times, Summer 2004 by Walton, Chris

Where everyone agrees, even those from the opposite end of the political spectrum to the man himself, is that Hartman was a true champion of contemporary South African music. This itself, however, raises interesting questions, for some of the most important composers from whom Hartman commissioned works were gay (such as Arnold van Wyk and Hubert du Plessis).

Of course, there have been other cases of an artist's sexuality being conveniently ignored by authoritarian, homophobic regimes - but in at least the cases of van Wyk and du Plessis, the composers made no bones about their sexual orientation (the latter even displaying considerable courage during a state-sponsored homophobic campaign in the 19603). Hartman - as a Dutch Reformed Calvinist and a Broederbonder the representative of a patriarchal, homophobic culture - was by all accounts not just unconcerned about their gayness, but felt positively comfortable in the company of these men. Indeed, it seems he became as close to them as he ever could to another human being. This naturally raises a quite specific question: did he feel comfortable because he was tolerant to the wide spectrum of sexual orientation to be found amongst one 's fellow men, or because he felt a special kinship with them? Throughout Mia Hartman's book, there lurks a strange, sexual subtext that is difficult to tease out. There is Hartman's father, who as a sportsman was 'massaged enthusiastically from head to toe' by his black mineworkers in between practice sessions on the track (p.6); there are the surreptitious visits to Hartman's orchestral rehearsals by his closest brother and that brother's best friend, a male ballet dancer; there is a letter quoted here from Arnold Van Wyk after the two men had fallen out briefly, the obscurity of whose tone states nothing but speaks volumes; and then there is the manner in which Mia Hartman describes her uncle's marriage, which seems to have been more of a friendship than the result of any overtly sexual passions (again, this interpretation is supported by others who knew them). One contemporary described Hartman's personality as 'asexual'; and one cannot help suspecting that perhaps he repressed both the emotional and the physical because some part of him might have desired to bond with his broeders in ways beyond the boundaries of the Calvinistically permissable. Or has the present writer simply been reading too much New Musicology, and is assuming that a man with perverse political desires must be compensating for desires in another part of his psyche that his society itself regards as 'perverse'?