To: Angharad Cooper (only), not for publication
Date: May 9, 2025
Hi Harry, please find below an overview of media and info relating to the Prize Papers Opera [work title] I have so far. Today I can’t spend too much time on it, because of a family weekend I’m supposed to be at. Will add more in next few days and will drop you an email when I do.
Illustation is of Whitesands in Pembrokshire, by the author.
Songs That Never Come Ashore (2024)
Commissioned by Simffoni Mara with a première performed by soprano Georgina Stalbow accompanied by David Pepper (piano) and Daniel Davies (cello) in Theatr Gwaun, Fishguard, September 22, 2024.
Like Manx shearwater and petrels and swifts, these songs live their lives on the sea. And equally, like seabirds, they are about lives little studied and poorly known.
The lyrics of the song Write With the First quote from a Prize Papers Project letter in which its writer mentions that the Dutch ship he is on was about to pick up some horses in Dublin first, before continuing to North America. This means that this particular ship passed Fishguard over the Celtic Sea and some of the audience ancestors might have seen this very boat.
Below you can find the live recordings taken from the mixing desk of the theatre. Best listened to with headphones.
Write With The First
This song follows the template of a Dutch letter from 1664 as found in the Prize Papers Project archive. The title is a frequently used expression in these letters meaning ‘write to me with the next available ship’. These personal letters often show much dignity, with its writers keeping up hope and spirit, in spite of all the bad news of illnesses and death caused by the returning bouts of plague.
Source of lyrics: edited from letters from Prize Papers Project
Image above shows in transcription “het is hier oock slecht ende de menschen die sterfen haestich in een dach oft 2 gesonten doodt” which I freely interpreted into English as follows: “things are also very bad here, people die fast, in two days the good are dead”.
Sea Shanty
The rhythmical work song of the cycle, which moves focus in the latter part, keeping the work going in the background.
Source of lyrics: the wind directions and latitudes are edited from Henry Hudson’s travel journal of 1609, as well as the thoughts in the second segment of the piece, as found in Narratives of New Netherlands 1609-1664, pp.17-19, by Robert Juett.
49 knots
A thunderous song about being exposed to the elements in the middle of the great big ocean. Only the first part of this work is available at this point of time.
Source of lyrics: edited from letters from Prize Papers Project
Hi Harry, below you can find the [at present obsolete] trailer I made for sourcing funders with the text we have been using on the public domain for the promised collaboration. There might be some useful bits in it. The logo in yellow is my adaptation of the existing Oldenburg University logo in blue. As mention, this logo has nothing to do with ownership of the Prize Papers, as these are in the public domain. So we can make out own logo and exchange it in the video, for example.
The last scene, the page turning, is my work and my technique, which I started with a SaM commission for Apartment House ensemble, which I developed into a working technique use page turning in a composition, or as sound art. Imagine this to be one big screens as part of the chamber opera.
Lots of the material I’m working with are currently confidential, I’m waiting for a good opportunity to show my transcriptions and my work to the world, as part of being an authority in my work, rather than being in a position somewhere in a corner of a gallery, with a chance to getting copied before one has had a chance to make the statement themselves.
A showcase at the British Library, supported by X and Y, with my music publisher and PRS registered I see as a good opportunity – to give you an example.
The Prize Papers Project archive is the home of a cacophony of voices in silent ink on paper. Composer and transcriber Jobina Tinnemans is bringing these first-hand accounts back to life in our exciting new Prize Paper Opera production.
Tinnemans’ opera will be set in 17th century New Netherland and at sea, with a libretto in English created from personal letters sourced from the Prize Papers Project and planned to be staged in 2026.
For the development of the Prize Paper Opera, Jobina Tinnemans is transcribing and translating 17th century Dutch letters from our archive, as well as researching the environment and soundscape when the very first Dutch settlers set foot on the shore, to create a historical world that will resonate with us today.
Production Plan for Oldenburg University, December 2024, now further developed and in need of revision, but general idea still there.
A brief outline I found dating from December 2025, sent to a chamber opera company in Dresden called Szene 12, directed by my contact Matthew Lynch, we get on really well, it’s one of these things on my journey. More bits of info for you.
To: Szene 12, Matthew Lynch
Status: Unpublished | Confidential
Subject: brief outline and music examples
Brief Outline
Tinnemans’ opera will be set in 17th century New Netherland and at sea, with a libretto in English created from personal letters sourced from the Prize Papers Project and planned to be staged in 2026-27.
For the development of the Prize Paper Opera, Jobina Tinnemans is transcribing and translating 17th century Dutch letters from our archive, as well as researching the environment and soundscape when the very first Dutch settlers set foot on the shore, to create a historical world that will resonate with us today.
Production (subject to change)
Duration: ca. 120 minutes with interval
Uraufführung: in Oldenburg, likely an on-location venue part of the Staatsoper
Touring in DE, UK, NL, US in mind
Jobina Tinnemans : composer and librettist
Voices: [6] 1x soprano, 2x mezzo-soprano, 1x contra-alto, 1x tenor, 1x bass
Instrumentation: [12] 2x vln, 2x vla, 1x vcl, 1x db, 1x harpsichord / hammered psalterium (cymbalom) / harp, 1x bassoon, 1x bass clarinet, 1x trumpet, 1x saxophone, 1x percussion
Short description
The Prize Paper chamber opera will be bringing back to life letters from the Prize Papers Project: frozen in time these confiscated snapshots are of the fleeting lives of just two people, the writer and the addressee. A shipload full of scenes which together might make a narrative or they might not. Each scene is a candle-lit close-up, intimate and personal, at times disclosed to a third person, the scribe, and not read. Each scene is a reconstruction: who said what? Each scene is penned and each letter is of consequence.
The story of the chamber opera will be open for everyone’s own interpretation, depending on who you are, where you’re from and what you identify with. I want this production to raise more questions than it answers and to make people talk, ideally to one another. One can see the scenes as pictograms, inviting watchers to tell their story from their perspective.
“Each scene is penned and each letter is of consequence.”
Did the writer think anything they said was of consequence? In retrospective we think they do, or at least they should, since the sum of their actions we now know to have lead to genocide and the horrors of slave trade.
Do we think every letter we type is of consequence: on social media, on this webpage?
A pack of copies of 280 A4 of transcriptions of ca. 230 letters than have not been read before, some of which I have translated into English (sorry for the smug face). I experienced for once in my life how my Limburg heritage was of use to read the old Dutch hand written letters, because there are many words we still use in our language. It felt very smooth and easy, you might find that academics working on these would have taken much longer to work with certain words and grammar of the sentences. Our language has only been recognised by the EU in 1997, the Hollanders are still not bothered by it. With this transcription work I’ve become fairly convinced that we are speaking a proto-Dutch version, not a different language and that the Hollanders speak a dialect which has become the main language. There are some words I looked up in historical Dutch dictionaries online, to help historians with archive material, and they weren’t included. EU heritage funding? I would not mind to work on publications/ articles/ research/ book next to the opera.
Example of a instagram posts I made
Entities of interest I’m in touch with, top of my head, will add:
The National Archives
British Library
New Netherlands Institute, Albany
New York Historical Society
Dutch Culture New York
New Holland Foundation, Amsterdam
University of Oldenburg – commission contract transcriptions
May 2025: I’m working on the libretto now and it is going to be an adaptation of a diary by Jaspar Danckaerts in which he mentions the letter writing, while he and his comrade is making their journey to New York in 1679. This is the moment the Prize Papers letters will find their place in the libretto.
The main structure and overview as described in the above stays present, this move to an adaptation of a diary gives clarity to characters and a setting for the Prize Papers Project letters.
JOBINA TINNEMANS 