The year is 1955. The city of Arnhem had commissioned Herman Strategier to compose a major work to mark the tenth anniversary of the city's liberation. Jan Engelman (1900-1972), a poet and writer from Utrecht, was approached to provide the work's text, which he based on a particular moment in the city's history: this was Kate ter Horst and her reading aloud of Psalm 91 -- a singularly appropriate text -- to the wounded and dying British soldiers whom she had taken in and cared for during the Battle of Arnhem.
This moment became the starting point of Engelman's description of the tragic events that took place during the Battle of Arnhem in 1944. He wrote the text of his Arnhemsche Psalm around the words of the psalm itself. Strategier: "The text of the Arnhemsche Psalm seems to demand a musical setting. Any composer would have considered it a privilege to set these words to music".
Herman Strategier was deeply honoured to have been awarded this commission by the city of Arnhem, as he himself had been very much affected by the events of September 1944: he and his family, like so many others, had been evacuated and he was forced to abandon the body of work that he had built up. Strategier always considered the Arnhemsche Psalm to be not only one of his best works -- Jan Engelman's text had been a source of particular inspiration -- but also one that he held especially close to his heart.
