De Schatkamer van Dynamisch Archief
ARCH MUSIC FOR ST. LOUIS, OP.44
HANS VONK & PETER SCHAT
Years of friendship and collaboration at operas and concerts.
We highlight the composition ARCH MUSIC
ARCH MUSIC for Saint Louis is dedicated to Hans Vonk and was premièred by him in 1997 with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, who commissioned the work (after the orchestra had played the American premiere of 'De Hemel', a year before.)
Carnegie Hall Tuesday, February 23, 1999 at 8 PM Isaac Stern Auditorium / Ronald O. Perelman Stage PRESENTED BY The Carnegie Hall Corporation Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra Hans Vonk, Conductor.
Peter Schat (1935-2023) en Hans Vonk (1942-2004)
About the film
The composition intended to be the “musical equivalent to Eero Saarinen’s monumental Gateway Arch”. Schat’s piece, Arch Music for St. Louis, Op. 44 premiered on January 8, 1999. In it, Schat attempted to capture the experience of someone riding up to the top of the arch:
[T]he traveller head[s] heavenward in his tiny cabin — an imaginary journey intones. Propelled by the motor of a syncopated rhythm (Syncopated Allegro), the traveller/listener is hurled, with gigantic force and in one continual movement, to a summit of tranquility of an Adagio, his soul — the violin — contemplates the panorama of endless open spaces, the air, the shimmering river and the silently bustling city far below. . . . Forging a musical arch of about fifteen minutes that will do justice to Eero Saarinen’s technically and esthetically stunning achievement (a masterpiece, incidentally, that he never saw) requires compositional material with the tensile strength of steel. This metal can be found in the inexhaustibly rich mine of chromatic tonality. This tonality is to diatonic tonality as steel is to wood. Saarinen could never have built this monument out of wood.
Video editor: Fred van Dijk (VPRO)
Eero Saarinen and the Arch
About the architect Saarinen, the Arch and its Artistic Admirers on Medium.com
Photo: Italian Design Club