Servais - Fantaisie et Variations brillantes sur l’Hymne national hollandais (Urtext Edition)

In 1876, a decade after Servais’s death, the publisher Schott undertook the posthumous publication of four of his fantasias. Three of these were composed for cello and orchestra (or piano), and one for two cellos and piano. Among them, the Fantaisie et Variations brillantes sur l’Hymne national hollandais was issued as Œuvre posthume No. 4. This work is also known by the alternate title Souvenir de la Hollande.

The first known performance of this fantasia took place on 10 December 1858 in Amsterdam. At under ten minutes in length, it is one of Servais’s shortest works in the genre. The piece is based on the former Dutch national anthem, “Wien Neêrlandsch bloed in de aders vloeit” (“Whose Dutch blood flows in the veins”), composed by the Dutch-German composer Johann Wilhelm Wilms (1772–1847), with a text by Hendrik Tollens (1780–1856). This same theme was also the basis for a variation set by Servais’s friend Carl Schuberth (1811–1863), composed around 1829 and published in 1836. It is unknown whether Servais was directly inspired by Schuberth’s earlier work.

Servais’s Fantaisie opens with a dramatic D-minor orchestral tutti featuring imitative counterpoint. The theme it-self, stated plainly in D major, is followed by four variations. The first and third variations are slow in tempo, the first being rhapsodic and expressive, and the third more melancholic. The fourth variation serves as a virtuosic finale, featuring the dazzling passagework characteristic of Servais’s more technically demanding works. This final section shares notable similarities with comparable sequences found in Carnaval de Venise, La Fille du Régiment, and the Fantaisie sur deux célèbres Romances de Lafont.