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oa Jacob van Eyck before 1619: a Reconstruction
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Carillon and Bell Culture in the Low Countries, Volume 3, Issue 1, Jul 2024, p. 1 - 56
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- 01 Jul 2024
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Abstract
Until recently, the first thirty years of Jacob van Eyck’s life were shrouded in mystery. The assumption that he was born and grew up in Heusden was accompanied by reasonable doubt. How could the blind musician have developed into a campanologist and carillon expert in that small, fortified town? The discovery that he arrived in Heusden in 1618 with a membership certificate of the Reformed Church from Bergen op Zoom invited renewed research. Based on newly discovered sources, and with the help of a lot of circumstantial evidence, the missing half of his biography can now also be written. Van Eyck was almost certainly born in 1589, possibly in Heusden but even more likely in The Hague. He grew up in Bergen op Zoom, where the tower clockmaker Pyeter Heyndryckxsen must have been paid to familiarize him with the technical ins and outs of the carillon.