Dutch Composers's video: Peter Schat - Anathema Op 19

Peter Schat (1935-2003) Anathema : for piano, Op. 19 (1969) Gerard Bouwhuis, piano dedicated to Marina Schapers Program note (Dutch): Anathema werd geschreven in de zomer van 1969. Het was een roerige zomer, met politie- en mariniers-charges rondom het Nationale Monument, waar de jeugd bivakkeerde, hetgeen taboe was, anathema. De laatste maten werden geschreven op de dag dat Ho Chi Minh stierf (4 september 1969) en met hem het revolutionaire elan van de zestiger jaren. Anathema betekent banvloek. Het begrip is hier in verband gebracht met het taboe van de seriële muziek op de melodie. Een thema (in e-mineur) verschijnt hierin in barokke, impressionistische en romantische schijngestalten, die een onverzoenlijk contrast vormen met de overigens seriële schrijfwijze. Het is een stuk vol met stijlbreuken; het markeert de overgang naar een schrijfwijze waarin 'dissonantie' en 'consonantie' volledig geïntegreerd zijn (zoals in Canto General, 1974). - PETER SCHAT Peter Schat was a Dutch composer and writer on music. He studied composition with van Baaren at the conservatories of Utrecht and The Hague (1952-1958), with Seiber in London (1959) and with Boulez in Basle (1960-1961). Between 1974 and 1983 he taught composition at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. In 1967 he co-founded STEIM (Studio voor Elektro-Instrumentale Muziek). His awards include the Matthijs Vermeulenprize (1973, for To You) and the Joost van den Vondelprize of the Westfälische Wilhelmsuniversität of Münster (1990). Schat's training was as a serial composer. His first compositions, such as the Introductie en adagio in oude stijl (1954) and the Septet (1957), combine traditional forms, including sonata form, with dodecaphony. But his lessons with Boulez led him to a more radical, strict form of serial thought, and even before that he was regarded in the Netherlands as one of the leading members of the avant garde of his generation. In the fourth part of the Octet (1958), dedicated to van Baaren, it is the players who determine the order of its 12 segments, while in the final part there is occasion for individual improvisation. In Improvisations and Symphonies (1960) free performer invention becomes the central component. The work also reveals Schat's inclination towards the theatrical, with spatial movement prescribed in the form of performer-directed 'promenades'. Of his Boulez-influenced pieces, Entelechie I displays structures with fixed properties and less fixed 'commentaries' upon them in the form of retrospective and anticipatory 'shadows'; the work also involves complex textures in its accumulated heterophonies. However, as Schat subsequently became involved with socio-political issues, he came to associate the static qualities of this piece and its successor, Entelechie II, with what he saw as the immobility of western social institutions serving a cold war mentality; Boulez himself was described as a 'premature specialization', a biological concept relating to a species without a chance to develop. In 1969, Schat was one of the leading figures in another demonstration event -- the notorious 'notenkrakersactie' in which a group of activists disturbed a concert by the Concertgebouw Orchestra, demanding an open discussion of music policy. In the same year, alongside the composers Reinbert de Leeuw, Louis Andriessen, Jan van Vlijmen and Misha Mengelberg, and the writers Harry Mulisch and Hugo Claus, Schat was also involved in Reconstructie, a 'morality' theatre work, again a homage to 'Che' Guevara, about the conflict between imperialism and liberation. The symbolic central character is a US imperialist Don Giovanni, who seduces and rapes the ladies Bolivia and Cuba; his opponent is the Commendatore 'Che'.