Dutch composer Peter Schat died on 3 February, Trouw of Amsterdam reports. He was 67.
Schat first came to attention in the Netherlands in the 1950s for his Passacaglia and Fugue for organ and his Septet, both of which were performed at the Gaudeamus Music Weeks, a showcase for new music in Amsterdam. In 1960, he moved to Basel to study with Pierre Boulez; there he began work on the music-theater piece Labryinth — a sort of opera, which was premiered at the Holland Festival in 1966.
In the late 1960s, Schat helped to found the Amsterdam Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM). He also became increasingly involved in left-wing politics, collaborating on the anti-imperialist opera Reconstructie (which, he wrote on his idiosyncratic Web site, "for musical and moral reasons I rejected ... even before it had been completed") and joining the "Nutcracker" movement, aimed at overthrowing the traditional structures of classical music.
One of Schat's revolutionary methods was the use of, in his words, "wild combinations of instruments." Two of his most successful pieces were Thema (1970), for winds and electric guitars and organs (and one of his "most extreme, repetitive and loudest compositions," he wrote) and the 1972 To You, for soprano, four pianos, two organs, six guitars, three bass guitars and six "huge humming tops."
During the 1970s, Schat developed a harmonic system called the "Tone Clock," which he formally proposed in a 1984 book by that name (translated into English in 1993). Among the works based on the system was the 1977 opera Houdini, which was commissioned by the Netherlands Opera and revived at the Aspen Music Festival in 1980. Subsequent operas included AAP, also known as Monkey Subdues the White-Bone Demon (another Netherlands Opera commission), and Symposium, commissioned by Gerard Mortier and the Théâtre de la Monnaie of Brussels and premiered in 1994.
Among other works, Schat was the composer of several chamber works, a set of symphonic variations titled De Hemel and two symphonies. The first movement of his third symphony, Gamelan Symphony, was premiered in 2001; according to his Web site, he had planned to complete a second movement this year.
— Ben Mattison
"Peter
Schat 1935-2003 / 'Groot componist, zwaar onderschat'"
Sandra Kooke -
Trouw [Amsterdam] - 4 February 2003
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