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SUITE N0 2 pour orchestre Op. 20 en ut maj. (1 9 1
5> I
I Ouverture - Il. Sarabande - III. Gigue - IV. Menuet
grave - V. Air -
VI. Bourrée.
3.3.2.2. - 4.2.3.1. - timb., batt. (3>, hpe, piano,
(glock.> cordes.
Durée : 30 minutes.
Création : 9 avril 1 9 1 6, Bucarest, direction
G. Enesco.
SUITE N0 3 pour orchestre op. 27 en ré maj.
"Suite Villageoise". 1937-38> I
I. Renouveau champêtre - Il. Gamins en plein
air - III. La vieille maison de l'enfance au soleil couchant... - IV. Rivière
sous la lune - V. Danses rustiques.
3.3.3.3. - 4.3.3.1. - timb., batt., glock., piano,
hpe, xyi., cel., cordes. Durée : 26 minutes.
Création : 2 février 1 939, Orchestre
Philharmonique de New-York, dir. G. Enesco.
SYMPHONIE N02 Op. 17 en la maj. (1912-1914> I
3.3.4.3. - 4.3.3.1. - timb., batt., cel., hpe, piano,
harmonium, cordes.
Durée : 40 minutes.
Création : 29 mars 1 9 1 5, Bucarest, direction
G. Enesco.
SYMPHONIE N0 3 Op. 2 1 pour voix, choeur et orchestre
(1 9 1 6-1 9 18, nouvelle version en 1921>. I4 fi. <.3 et 4 jouant aussi
petite flûte I et il>, 4 Htb. <3e et 4 - aussi C.A.> I et Il>
3 Cl. Sib <3e - aussi petite Cl. en mib>, i cI basse <sib>, 4 Bassons
<4e - aussi Contrebasson> - 6 cors chromatiques <Fa>, 3 trp. chrom.
<ut>, petite trp. <Ré>, 2 cornets à pistons <Sib>,
i trb. à pistons, 3 trb.ténors, i trb. basse, i tuba ténor
<Sib>, i tuba ténor <Fa>, i tuba basse
-Timb. <2 paires chrom.>, batt. <6>: i triangle
<+ crécelle, + sonnette>,i tambour <+ tamb. de basque>, i
paire de cymb. <+ Tam-tam>, i grosse Caisse <+ Castagnettes>, i xylophone
<+ cloche en fa# et Machine à tonnerre>, i glockenspiel <célesta>
- piano, 2 harpes, i orgue <ou harmonium> - choeurs : Soprani, Contraltos
<Si possible des voix de jeunes garçons>, Ténors, Basses
- Cordes: 20.18.14.12.12.
Création : 25 mai 1919, Bucarest, dir. G. Enesco
192 1, Paris,
Concerts Colonne, dir. Gabriel Pierné.
VOX MARIS Op. 31, pour choeur et orchestre <poème
symphonique>. <1929-posth.> L
4.4.4.4.-6.4.3.2. - trmb, batt. <3>, 2 Hpes, piano,
cordes. Durée : 20 minutes environ.
Création : 10 septembre 1964 à Bucarest,
Orch. de la Radio Roumaine, dir. losif Conta.
OEDIPE
Tragédie lyrique en 4 actes <6 tableaux>
sur un livret d'Edmônt Fleg. L0 op. 23 <1910-1931> L
OEdipe <baryton basse>, Tirésias <basse>,
Créon, <baryton>, le berger <ténor>, le grand prêtre
<basse>, Phorbas <basse>, le veilleur <basse>, Thésée
<baryton>, Laios <ténor>, Thébains <choeur T.B.>
Jocaste <mezzo-soprano>, la Sphinge <contralto>,
Antigone <Soprano>, Mé-ope <mezzo-soprano>, une Thébaine
<contralto>, Petits rôles et figuration
Orch. : 4.2<+i>.2<+1+1>.2<+1> - 4.2.2.1.
timb., bat., 2 harpes, cordes. Durée: Soirée.
Création : 13 mars 1936 à l'Opéra
de Paris, dir. Philippe Gaubert.
DIXTUOR en Ré majeur, Op. 14 pour instruments à
vent. <i 906> L
2.2<CA>.2.2.-2.0.0.0.
Durée : 26 minutes.
Création : i 2 juin i 906, Paris.
INTERMEZZO en Ré majeur op. 12 pour cordes L SYMPHONIE DE
CHAMBRE op. 23 pour douze solistes <1954> V,L
I. Molto moderrrato - Il. Allegro moto - III. Adagio - IV. Allegro
molto
moderato.
1 1 .CA. 1.1.-i .1 .0.0. - piano, violon, alto, violoncelle, contrebasse.
Durée: 1 6 minutes.
Création : 23 janvier 1 955, Paris, direction Fernand Oubradous.
1. Pour piano - For piano - fùr Piano forte.
PRELUDE ET FUGUE <1898) V
SONATE en Ré majeur, Op. 24 N0 3 <1933-34>
V
Création : 6 décembre 1938, Paris, Salle
Gaveau, par Marcel Ciampi.
SUITE N0 3 en Sept parties Op. 18 <Pièces
impromptues>. V
Création : 13 février 1959, Bucarest,
par Ion Filionescu <diffusion radio-
phonique>
2. Musique de chambre - Chamber music - Kammermusik.
QUATUOR N0 1 en Ré majeur Op. 1 6 pour piano,
violon, alto et violon-celle. <1909> V
Création : 1 8 décembre 1 909 à
Paris.
QUATUOR N0 2 en Ré mineur Op. 30 pour piano,
violon, alto et violon-celle. <1943-1944> V
Durée : 29 mn environ.
Création : 3è octobre 1 947 à
Washington. V
QUATUOR à CORDES en Mi bemol majeur Op. 22 N0
1 <1921> V
Durée : 42 mn environ.
Création: mai 1 92 1 à Bucarest, 1 9
octobre 192 1 à Paris, Quatuor Flonzaley. QUATUOR à CORDES
en Sol majeur Op. 22 N0 2 <1951> V Création : 7 février
1 954 à Boston, Fondation Coolidge.
QUINTETTE en la mineur Op. 29 pour piano, deux violons,
alto et violon-celle. <1 940> V
Création :1 964 à Bucarest
SONATE en Do majeur Op. 26 N0 2 pour piano et violoncelle,
dédiée à
Pablo CasaIs <1935> V
Durée: 28 mn environ.
Création : 4 mars 1 936 à Paris par
Diran Alexanian et G. Enesco.
SUITE Op. 28 pour violon et piano <« Impressions
d'enfance») <1940> V
Durée : 22 mn environ.
Création : 22 février 1 942 à
Bucarest par G. Enesco et D. Lipatti. V. Musique vocale - Vocal Music -
Vokalmusik.
SI J'ETAIS DIEU pour voix et piano, sur des vers de SuIIy Prud'homme V
DOINA pour chant, alto et violoncelle sur des vers
populaires roumains.
(1905) V
Création 26 mai 1 956, Bucarest.
14 MELODIES sur des poêmes de Carmen Silva.
(1898-1936)
I. Zaghaft (baryton et piano) (1898) - Il. Armes Mgdlein
(Soprano et piano) (1898) - 111. Junge Schmerzen (mezzo Soprano, basse
et piano) (1 898> - IV. Der Schmetterlingskuss (baryton et piano> (1 898)
-
V. Reue (voix et piano> (1898> - VI. Schlaflos (voix
et piano> (1898) -VII. Frauenberuf (voix et piano) (1898) - VIII. Waldgesang
(choeur mixte a capella) (1898) - Ix. Maurerlied (chant et piano> (1899>
- x. Kônigs-husarenlied (chant et piano> (1899) - Xl. Die Kirschen
(Soprano, baryton, violoncelle et piano> (1 904) - XII. Entsagen (voix
et piano> (1 907) -XIII. Morgengebet (voix et piano) (1 908) - XIV. Regen
(chant et piano) (trad. fr. de G. Enesco) (1903/1936)
QUATRE MELODIES Op. 19 sur des poèmes de Fernand
Gregh. (voix et
piano> (1902-1916) V
1. Pluie ("La beauté de vivre"> (1 9 1 5>
2. Le Silence musicien ("La Maison de l'Enfance">
(1915)
3. L'ombre est bleue ("La Maison de l'Enfance"> (19
16)
4. De la flûte au cor ("La Maison de l'Enfance">
(1 902)
CADENCE - violon seul (pour le Concerto violon et
orchestre de Brahms> V
Isaac Albeniz RAPSODIE ESPAGNOLE pour piano et
orchestre (orches-tration>. L
2. Picc. 2.CA.2.2. - 4.2.3.1. - Timb., batt. (2>, harpe,
cordes.
Durée 1 2 minutes environ.
Création : S février 1 9 11, Paris, Concerts
Colonne, dir. Gabriel Pierné,
Alex Ribo, piano.
Editeurs : Enoch, Paris - ESPLA, Bucarest - Bibliothèque
musicale roumaine, Bucarest - revue "MUZICA", Bucarest - Boosey & Hawkes,
Londres.
V partition en vente
L matériel et p.o. en location.
Ten years after Bartok's death, in May 1955, Georges Enesco died in Paris. He had been famous as a violinist before World War II, but as a composer he was unknown - as unknown as Bartok had been when he died. Today Enesco is remembered only by the older generation - and then only as an instrumentalist. As a composer he is still as neglected as he was the year of his death.
And yet Enesco was as great, as major a twentieth century composer as Bartok. Will he ever become as famous ? It is a strange thing, this neglect - a crying injustice, a scandal.
The comparison between the two composers suggests itself automati-cally, despite their differences in style and language. Not only were they born in neighbouring countries -historical Hungary ( actually Transilvania in Romania) and Romania - but their music is rooted in the same soil : the same traditional music centuries old and yet still living, which each composer has renewed in his own way. Where Bartok approached his native Hungarian and Romanian traditions from the musical pers-pective of Richard Strauss, Enesco, emerging from French music - Faure' and Debussy - rediscovered the music of his country - the romanian violins of his childhood in Moldavia, which he imitated perfectly on a violin he had adapted specially for that purpose. As a child he gave every sign of becoming a violinist of genius - as would indeed by the case; when he was seven, his first teacher, Edouard Caudella, urged his father to send him to Vienna. From there Enesco went on to Paris, to new teachers : Marsick, Massenet and Faure for composition.
France - Paris - became Enesco's musical and spiritual homeland. He had not turned twenty when he composed his first masterpiece, the POEME ROUMAIN for orchestra, which was performed by Edouard Colonne on February 6, 1 898, in a concert which also included a Schumann sym-phony, Saint-Saens cello concerto and Act Ill of Wagner's Siegfried.
The other major work of Enesco's youth, the OCTET for strings, which was composed in the same year as the POEME ROUMAIN, had to wait eleven years before being performed in Paris, by the Geloso and Chailley quartets playing together, on December. 18. 1909. Ten years earlier, Colonne had rehearsed it with members of his orchestra. but had finally decided not to perform it in public - its polyphonic innovations seemed too bold. Enesco's career would be characterized throughout by polypho-nic inventiveness but unlike Bartok's densely-packed and savagely complex polyphonics. Enesco's would always retain a Latin clarity and transparency.
The first drafts of OEDIPUS were composed in the year following the first performance of the OCTET. The opera. which was composed on a poem by Edmond Fleg. was completed some twenty-one years later, on April 27, 1931 - twenty-one years during which Enesco composed. among other masterpieces, the famous THIRD SONATA for violin and piano "in the traditional Romanian manner'. Like the sonata, OEDIPUS goes far beyond mere folklore. Its music is universal ; it combines the quarter and third tones of ancient music with an imaginary Greek music suggesting millenniums of civilisation. And above all, you have Enesco's inventiveness, his gift of making timeless syboIs come to life, his daz-zling, rich orchestration, his persuasive and unflaggingly dramatic measu-res. The premiere was given on March 13 at the Paris Opera. with the unforgettable Andre Pernet as Oedipus - it was an overwhelming suc-cess. The opera went through thirty-six performances - no small achieve-ment for the time, especially when you consider that, in every sense of the term, it was a "modern" work.
Since then OEDIPUS has been staged only once, by the Bucharest Opera. Hopefully the Paris Opera's absurd neglect of this masterpiece will be repaired in 1982. For OEDIPUS is a French work, based on a text by one of the great French poets of the twentieth century; and in it, despite the fact that he came from Romania, Enesco expressed the essence of everything France, his country of adoption, had taught him.
OEDIPUS surely deserves to be as famous as any 'of Strauss's
great works. The music is powerful, extraordinarily dramatic. stunningly
original throughout. When will it take its place in the repertoires of
the great operas of the world ? That this is not yet the case is a great
mystery.
Antoine Golea (1980)
One hundred years after his birth Enesco is gradually
being rediscovered by the Western musical world. The relatively recent
performance of a certain number of his works at the Festival de Printemps
in Paris (1 975) and the series of programs which Radio France devoted
to him (thanks to the tireless efforts of the late lamented Antoine Golea,
to whose memory I wish to pay tribute here) helped to establish Enescu's
reputa-tion as an important and truly original precursor in numerous twentieth
century musical techniques.
The fact that this recognition has been so late in coming raises two questions. First, in what way was Enesco significant - and in what way does he remain significant - for the post-war Romanian composers ? Secondly, what is the reason for the callous neglect of Enesco in the West today, and, by the same token, to what do we owe his belated rediscovery ?
With Enesco Romanian music succeeded at last in breaking out of the childhood world of' the traditional, provincializing "hora" and Southeast Europe at last opened itself up to the thought and dominant form of Western music - the sonata, the symphony.
No school of music developed around Enesco during his lifetime. For that matter, Enesco was never a purist in matters Of style. During the last years of his life he was totally ignored and practically banned in Romania. And yet now, only a few years after his death, he is all at once being acknowledged as the founder of musical modernity and a master for the generations which succeeded him. A great deal has been written in Romanian musicology about the "contemporary Romanian composers following lines contained in an embryonic and prophetic man-ner in Enesco's work." Always a syncretist, Enesco gained no immediate followers. The generation of Romanian composers which came immedia-tely after him did not explore the trails he had blazed and preferred to restrict itself to a specifically national musical language.
Enesco was (and continues to be) rediscovered strictly by the first gene-ration of w post-war composers. Influenced mainly by his later work, such as the CHAMBER SYMPHONY and the second QUARTET, these musi-cians constitute what might broadly be called the post-Enescian pheno-menon, which is characterized by the floating rhythms of the popular "parlando rubato" and by the techniques of co-ordinates, quarter tones and continuous variation. Some of the most undeniably successful works of this period (by composers like Stefan Niculescu, Aurel Stroe, Anatol'Vieru, Tiberiu Olah, Cornel Taranu, Iancu Dumitrescu, Horatiu Radulescu, Costin Cazaban, Ana-Maria Avram, Octav Nemescu and a few others) belong to this trend.
For the second generation of post-war Romanian composers, to which I myself belong, Enesco has a somewhat different significance, owing to the fact that we are more removed from him in time. As my colleague Mihai Mitrea-Celarianu observed with great acuity in a twice-censored article which I tried unsuccessfully to publish around 1966 in the Bucha-rest review ((Amfiteatrul )) (I am quoting from memory) : ((For us, the second generation of young Romanian composers, Enesco is as current as he is outdated today". In other words he loomed no closer to us than some vague and distant phenomenon. Actually the remark did not have the absolutely negative character which some seemed to think it had : it 'was really just a simple statement of fact, as I realise all the more clearly today.
I have come to realise too that my own evolution from the melodic serial technique or integral serialism through Moment-Form, moveable matrixes, and an increasing indeterminacy situated at the juncture of graphics referring to sound, .graphics referring to symbols and/or "Text-komposition", to the later attempt to reorganise all these' techniques in a complex operational mechanism combining what are commonly called "multi-media" or what I would call "spatio-temporal reconversion" - has been possible only because of my rejection of the Enescian "legacy" (the same is true, in different ways, for all the musicians of my generation).
On the other hand each of us has been marked, though not always very visibly, by Enesco's broadening of musical horizons, by that flowering of characteristically Rumanian techniques : the principles of continuous variations and asymmetrical melodic lines, rhythmic fluency and the floating polyrhythmic ambiguity of the parlando rubato of popular songs, with its strange colorings.
A unique phenomenon in Romanian music at the time of his appearance, Enesco struck out in a new direction without falling back on the' national cultural tradition. As a result he found himself being faced with a fairly serious double difficulty : on the one hand he had to synthesise a lan-guage and on the other he had to give it artistic depth. Because of this fact, Enesco's modernity (astonishing as it is on the technical level) seems somewhat restrained in its formal, timbral and harmonic expression - a modernism which shows signs of the immense effort it took to break away from centuries of Balkanism. Doubtless this explains Enesco's tough but shrewd observation : "... I believe that in life progress is never as rapid as it seems to be..."
Broadly speaking (and overlooking the repetitions and interruptions and the fact that they occurred on altogether different levels), there are two main tendencies in Enesco's stylistic development. Only a few years ago we used to refer to them rather emphatically as the "abstracto-universalist direction ~ and the ~ typical-autochthonous direction ~
Throughout his life Enesco wrote works in a relatively neutral musical language. These include the youthful "school" symphonies, followed by SYMPHONY N0 1 IN E-FLAT (a more academic composition, elegantly referred to as the Enesco Eroica), SYMPHONIES N0 2 and 3 (with their feverish twilight romanticism), SUITE N0 1 for orchestra and SONATA N0 3 for piano (both more neo-classical works).
At one point Enesco's national tendency took the form of straightfor-ward rhapsodic quotations from folk tunes (as in POEME ROUMAIN and the two RHAPSODIES); later it evolved with the development of "imagi-nary folk music" based on the essential characteristics of mode, rhythm and traditional heterophony ; then, with the DIXTUOR and SUITE N0 3 for orchestra ("Villageoise") it seemed to be on the decline, only to return impressively in his masterpiece, the THIRD SONATA for violin and piano "in the Rumanian traditional manner".
As for Enesco's other tendency, his synthetic or syncretic direction, one might point to such works as OEDIPUS and the CHAMBER SYMPHONY as constituting a successful "media aurea".
While containing neither the hard edges nor the "elliptical" solutions found in Bartok, Stravinsky, Schoenberg or Webern, Enesco's predomi-nantly modal harmonic language brought to the music of the turn of the century' a certain calm but profound dignity comparable to the French tradition - Faure, Debussy, Messiaen - with a marked preference for the refinements of harmonic colouring. Notwithstanding this, Enesco states in his memoirs that he regards himself mainly as a polyphonic composer and not as a creator of beautiful and agreeably connoted chords.
Although the prevailing atmosphere in his music is that of ecstatic confession, a great inner variety throbs under the surface of his apparent isorhythms. Despite the occasionally static impression his music gives, Enesco stands out miraculously as a master in the field of rhythm. In his mature compositions he achieves great variety thanks mainly to the fact that, along with the traditional division system, he uses the parlando rubato rhythmic system. Enesco takes his place among the composers of our century who have made major rhythmic innovations - Bartok, Stra-vinsky, Webern, Messiaen, Boulez - as one of the musicians who be-came aware at an early date of the immensely important role rhythmic variation had to play in the music of the future. It is important to point out that, using an intense modal chromatism and an exceptionally rich and mostly asymmetrical rhythm, Enesco was increasingly able to avoid imitative counterpoint, for which he substituted ~ free counterpoint more in keeping with his notions of composition and much closer to the spirit of traditional music. The timbral aspect of Enesco's music is, in my opinion, also well worth investigating. In contemporary music, especially since World War II, va-riety in timber has become one of the leading features in musical discourse. Its possibilities have been explored with fervour by the impressio-nist composers (Debussy, Dukas, Ravel) at he turn of the century, by the representatives of the national schools (Bartok, Stravinsky, De Falla), by the German expressionists (Schonberg, Berg and, above all, Webern), by the French post-impressionists (mainly Varese and Messaien) and, still later, by musicians like Boulez, Stockhausen, John Cage, Xenakis, Kagel and Schnebel.
Enesco unquestionably deserves recognition for having brought novel and interesting ideas to this field during the first years of the twentieth century.
I want to add one last comment about Enesco's conception of the temporal development of the musical form, a conception which may perhaps explain the reasons for Enesco's relative lack of popularity up to now in Europe. Enesco considered each new work to be a unique pro-cess which could never be repeated. Quite exceptionally for his time, he always avoided repeating formulas or successful devices. Enesco is not an easy composer to place for he has none of the stylistic automatism which characterises even such recognised and popular composers as Milhaud, Hindemith, Prokofieff and Stravinsky.
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