was a traumatic experience. Yet, Vermeulen started to work on his Second Symphony, Prélude à la nouvelle journée, shortly after that, and a year later he gave up journalism in order to fully dedicate himself to composing, while financially backed by some friends. After a last, fruitless appeal to Mengelberg, Vermeulen moved to France with his family in 1921 in the hope of finding a more favorable climate for his music. There he completed work on his Third Symphony Thrène et Péan, and composed the String Trio and the Violin Sonata. However, Vermeulen's symphonic works did not find their way into the French concert halls either. From sheer necessity Vermeulen returned to journalism. In 1926 he became the Paris correspondent for the Soerabaiasch Handelsblad, a daily paper in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). For fourteen years he wrote two weekly extensive articles on every possible topic. The commission, in 1930, to compose the incidental music to the play De Vliegende Hollander [The flying Dutchman] by Martinus Nijhoff was encouraging. Nine years later he received a new impetus with the first performance of his Third Symphony by the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Eduard van Beinum. The long-awaited confrontation with the resounding notes confirmed the effectiveness of his concepts. In the years 1940-1944 he composed his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, bearing the titles of Les victoires and Les lendemains chantants, which symbolize Vermeulen's faith in the good outcome of World War II. During the fall of 1944 Vermeulen had to take severe blows. In a short space of time he lost his wife and his most cherished son, who was killed while serving in the French liberation army. The diary Het enige hart [The singular heart] gives a deeply moving account of his mourning process. Seeking the meaning of this loss, Vermeulen drew up a philosophical construction, which he further developed in his book Het avontuur van den geest [The adventure of the mind]. In 1946 Vermeulen married Thea Diepenbrock, daughter of his former mentor, and went to work again for the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, in the Netherlands. His articles on music rank among the most compelling in that area. In 1949 his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies were performed. Politics and society kept on occupying Vermeulen passionately. He found the stifling atmosphere of the cold war increasingly depressing. Fearing a nuclear confrontation he spoke out against the arms race in