Dutch Composers's video: Peter Schat - Entelechie I Op 12

Peter Schat (1935-2003) Entelechie I (Entelechy) : für fünf Instrumentengruppen, Op. 12 (1960-1961). Orchestra: Netherlands Ballet Orchestra Conductor: Thierry Fischer Program note (English): 'Entelechy' is the condition in which a potentiality has become an actuality. I am using the term here as a description of the technique of composition, in that a complete organism is developed from a small musical motif. To demonstrate that here, in a programme note, is just as useless as it is confusing - as everyone knows from experience. What then shall I do? I should like to talk about the emotion evoked in me by an 'isolated musical object' or about the 'attacking' of musical motifs. I have however already been talking about this in this score. A description in words would probably increase misunderstandings considerably. I shall therefore say a few words to the wise. It is the mounting and isolation of fragments in which can be clearly distinguished. The quoting of such fragments in a milieu of 'spots of sound'. The raking through of causal continuity which is a heritage from classical tonal thought. (Listen to Mozart in order to keep this conflict alive). Finally, the increasing importance of silence. I wrote this Entelechy during the period I was having lessons from Boulez (1960-1961). It is in the Stravinskian sense a 'dissertation' about Boulez, a creative reaction. The whole cycle of 3 Entelechies is conceived for five groups of instruments placed in different positions. In the case of the performance of one part only such a placing would take up too much time in proportion to the duration of that part, so that provision has been made for a version for a normally placed ensemble. - 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'.