An earthquake in Chile in 1945; Professario Extrordinario

(The picture above is of David L. Van Vactor, my father, the composer's son) In 1945, during WWII, my grandfather David G. Van Vactor, 1906-1994, was sent to Santiago de Chile and other South American capitals by the US State Department to the National University of Chile ( see, www.rogerrhodesmusic.com/dvv_bio.htm ). He was flown down with a woodwind quintet. They were composers as well as musicians. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, after playing Solemn Variations written by my grandfather, received fourteen curtain calls. He spoke fluent Spanish and very good German and was on the radio there. He gave ten flute recitals of Baroque music and conducted a lot of symphony orchestras. (below is a picture of my grandfather, David G. Van Vactor, the composer)

David G. Van Vactor was repeatedly invited to conduct the symphony orchestra of Chile and had numerous pieces of his own composition played by the orchestra. The Chileans called him the "Professario Extrordinario." He had a significant influence on a lot of younger Chilean composers whose pieces he critiqued and discussed with them. My grandfather's great friend Domingo Santa Cruz ran all the music in Chile, and he was also a composer. When I say, all the music in Chile, I mean the opera, symphony and orchestra and the music department in the university.

In Chile my grandfather went to the top, the furthest north called la Serena and then to the furthest south called Puerto Mont and he also conducted a piece in La Concepcion, which is 70 miles away from where the epicenter of this most recent earthquake struck. A lot of Germans settled in la Concepcion, so my grandfather who spoke German could speak German to the orchestra.

When my father was seven years old with his older sister in a movie theatre watching King Kong in Chile, having been just dropped off by his parents, the movie screen moved suddenly, he said to me today, "we thought it was part of the movie. And then everybody in the theatre started to get out, to be ready to run out in case the building collapsed, but it didn't." This earthquake in 1945 was pretty tame in comparison to more recent ones. The really big one was in 1960, 9.5 on the Richter Scale.