related works

Laudi : a symphony for mezzo-soprano, baritone, two mixed choirs and orchestra / Tristan Keuris

Genre: Vocal music
Subgenre: Mixed choir and orchestra
Scoring: sopr-m bar 2GK4 4443 sax-a 4331 timp 3perc hp pf(cel) str

Indoratorium 2 : voor gemengd koor en ensemble, 1994 / teksten: Jayabaya (12e eeuw): Ramalan Jaya Baya; Umi yukaba (Japans strijdlied); Willem Brandt: Nachten/Revolutie; Indonesische strijd- en volksliederen, Sinta Wullur

Genre: Vocal music
Subgenre: Mixed choir and large ensemble
Scoring: GK4 1111 1110 2perc 2vl vla vc cb

Kinot (Klaagzangen) : Oratorium voor gemengd koor, koperensemble, slagwerk en harp / René Samson; Op teksten uit het Oude Testament (Jeremia’s Klaagzangen en Psalm 23) en een gedicht van Nelly Sachs

Genre: Vocal music
Subgenre: Mixed choir and large ensemble
Scoring: GK4 4trp 4h 4trb trb-b tb 2perc hp

This Happens in Vietnam : for choir and ensemble / Louis Andriessen

Genre: Vocal music
Subgenre: Mixed choir and large ensemble
Scoring: GK4 fl 2sax-a sax-t h trp 3trb pf cb

composition

To Brooklyn bridge : for 24 voices and instrumental ensemble, 1987-1988 / Tristan Keuris

Other authors:
Crane, Hart (Text writer/Librettist)
Keuris, Tristan (Composer)
Description:
Program note (English): (Premiere US: 23-3-1994 - Lincoln Center, New York - Ensemble, cond. Harold Rosenbaum). In 1982, I bought a beautiful reproduction of the first model for the Brooklyn Bridge. Shortly thereafter the Netherlands Chamber Choir commissioned me to write a work for approximately 15 instruments and choir. As the scoring was miraculously clear to me (choir, four clarinets, four saxophones, two harps, two pianos, and three basses), I set about to find a suitable text. Leafing through a volume of poems, I stumbled upon the American poet Hart Crane's ode "To Brooklyn Bridge". It was then that I decided to build my own musical bridge with the chosen instrumentation. For further inspiration, I turned to other sources of information on Brooklyn Bridge. Ed Schilder's 'Brooklyn Bridge' proved to be of enormous help with all its descriptions of reactions to the bridge. Sixteen years of blood, sweat, and toil and the bridge was inaugurated to an amazing and sceptical public in 1883. Thirty years
later, with the opening of other bridges, New Yorkers began to take "their bridge" for granted. Later on, poets helped obscure the line between fact and fiction. Hart Crane had a lifelong romantic attachment to the Brooklyn Bridge. The poet not only devoted an entire cycle of poems to the subject, but he went so far as to rent the room in which the bridge's architect, Washington Roebling, had lived during the time the bridge was constructed.
The choral work is based on the text of the opening poem in Crane's cycle. The bridge becomes supernatural in the text, a symbol for eternal rest and peace. To the poet, the bridge transcends the work of mortal labor and is intuitively related to an understanding of God. For me, this work is intended as an ode to John and Washington Roebling who, along with many others, made supreme sacrifices to lend form to their dreams. - TRISTAN KEURIS