composer
Education: A self-taught composer Geert Schoonbeek de Vlaming studied music sciences for a short time at Amsterdam University. He was privately tutored in Counterpoint and Harmony.
Employment:
1980 - performing musician
1998 ...
related works
Made in Holland 17 New Dutch Blues : for piano / Elizabeth Gaskill
Genre:
Chamber music
Subgenre:
Piano
Scoring:
pf
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and large ensemble
Scoring:
fl ob cl cl-b fg h perc hp str
High octane : for voice and ensemble (both amplified), 1997 / on words by the composer, David Dramm
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and large ensemble
Scoring:
voice 1121 1111 perc g-b hp pf(synth) 2vl vla vc cb
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and large ensemble
Scoring:
high 2023 1110 perc harm pf 2vl vla vc cb
composition
1914 – Dulce et Decorum est – 2018 : for tenor and ensemble / Geert Schoonbeek de Vlaming; texts by Guillaume Apollinaire, Evangelist Mark and Käthe Kollwitz
Other authors:
Apollinaire, Guillaume
(librettist)
Evangelist Mark
(librettist)
Kollwitz, Käthe
(librettist)
Description:
In 1995 I started to read books about The Great War and experienced a strong feeling of recognition because of experiences in my youth. In 2007 I decided to create a composition in remembrance of those who died and suffered during that war. I've been working seven years on the score that lies before you. The war to end all wars was unfortunately only the beginning of more tragedy in our world ...
The piece is composed around three texts being: in the opening movement the poem Fête, from the posthumous bundle Calligrammes (1918) by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) in which he compares the war with a party. He 'enjoys' the spectacle in which he recognizes beauty and love. This text also symbolizes for me how the warring parties were expecting a very short mobile war. They believed “the boy's will be home by Christmas”...
In the third part I use the biblical text of the Evangelist Marcus (1?-63) My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me/Us? (The Fourth Word from the Cross) All soldiers believed that God was on their side. A pilot flew over No Man's Land and saw on both sides field church services toke place on a Sunday morning. Something snapped in his head. The result was Shell Shock. He only whispered the text above with the alliteration Us instead of Me for the next couple of months.. In the fifth and final part I use phrases from the Tagebuchblätter und Briefe (1948) by the sculptress Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945). After the death of her son Peter (1896-1914) in the beginning of the war she wants to create a memorial-monument for him and all fallen. She worked for 18 years to create two images of a kneeling older couple. Who were placed on the the German military cemetery in Vladslo, Belgium the 14th of August 1932. The ensemble pieces are placed in between. In part two the memory of an amputation of the right arm of a pianist comes back and in part four a violinist's is wandering across No Man's Land.
As a composer I identify myself with the famous words of Wilfred Owen: All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful'.
This work is dedicated to the numberless people who died during The Great War.
Geert Schoonbeek de Vlaming