Donemus Webshop — Arch music for St. Louis

Other authors:
Schat, Peter (Composer)
Description:
Program note (English): (First performance: 8-1-1999 - St. Louis (Missouri, US) - St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, cond. Hans Vonk).

Arch music for Saint Louis is the result of my first contact with an American symphony orchestra: in February 1997 the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Hans Vonk, performed my symphonic variations De Hemel [The Heavens]. The orchestra danced through the demanding score with panache and a self-assured casualness, led by the man who had conducted the work's premiere (as well as the operas Houdini and Symposion). The meeting in St. Louis was a fortuitous occasion for all parties involved, and resulted in a commission from the orchestra within a matter of days. I knew immediately what I wanted to do: to create a musical equivalent to Eero Saarinen's monumental Gateway Arch. I began work while still in St. Louis and completed the score in October 1997. I then saw and touched the Gateway Arch, but hadn't the nerve to go up it due to a fear of heights. While composing the piece I therefore had to rely entirely on my imagination, putting myself in the place of the traveller
heading heavenward in his tiny cabin - an imaginary journey in tones. 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 tranquillity 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. An experience of peace and stability at the point where two extremes meet: at the height of nearly 630 feet the traveller is firmly grasped by the extended steel arms of a supine giant. We are at the very spot where on October 28, 1965 a hydraulic force pressed the giant's arms apart in order to wedge the keystone into place. This enormous effort is an essential part of the experience of heavenly peace. The lofty meeting place expresses the hope for a resolution to the destructive social contradictions in the world - violin, 'cello and viola have a dream up there... it is a dream, a
melody, that stays with the traveller as the motors of rhythm begin to turn in preparation for the descent. A "blue note" on the violin insures the traveller as the motors of rhythm begin to turn in preparation for the descent. A "blue note" on the viola insures the traveller of a soft landing. Forging a musical arch of about fifteen minutes that will do justice to Eero Saarinen's technically and estetically 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. - PETER SCHAT

Sheet Music
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Product	Description	Price/piece	Count
Score	Download to Newzik (A3), 71 pages	EUR 40.88
	Download as PDF (A3), 71 pages	EUR 49.06
	Hardcopy, normal size (A3), 71 pages	EUR 81.77
	Hardcopy, study size (A4), 71 pages	EUR 55.18