An Analytical Approach to the Fourth Symphony by George Enescu, Completed by Pascal Bentoiu
An Analytical Approach to the Fourth Symphony by George Enescu, Completed by Pascal Bentoiu

Summary/Abstract: George Enescu’s Fourth Symphony in E Minor, which was completely composed in 1934 and then partially orchestrated, has been left in the manuscript for more than half a century. In 1996, after several years of deciphering, the composer Pascal Bentoiu succeeded in completing the orchestration of the symphony and offering it to the performers and the public. Enescu left 53 orchestral pages in the manuscript and ended suddenly in the first section of the second movement. Then continues with a two-staves sketch of the entire music to the end, written in ink and dated May 4, 1934, which Bentoiu reconstructed with care and complete abnegation. One can describe the music of this symphony as a hot lava flow, which with its harmonic-melodic glow fills every corner of perception, in which the hyperpolyphony of the Octet and the Third Symphony merges and fuses in permanent transformation into a thematic amalgam. Furthermore, the article proposes and comments on a version of a formal analysis, combining several methods based on Constantin Bugeanu’s notation system.

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