Sonic Zarazas and the Window Technique in Adrian Iorgulescu's Flute and Clarinet Concertos
Sonic Zarazas and the Window Technique in Adrian Iorgulescu's Flute and Clarinet Concertos

Summary/Abstract: Zaraza, the gorgeous gypsy girl that a famous singer from the inter-war period fell madly in love with, does not exist in reality: it’s just an urban legend, a synecdoche for the Bucharest of the old days, with its cosmopolitan charm of the romances and the tangos. In reality, “zaraza” is just a word extracted from the original text of the Argentinian melody, with the much more prosaic meaning of “ox”. Still, Zaraza’s legend lingers in the collective vernacular consciousness. Like Schrödinger’s cat, “Zaraza” exists and doesn’t exist, at the same time. In a similar fashion, the ironic “residual musics” from Adrian Iorgulescu’s works – and I take as example his flute and clarinet concertos – are at the same time apparently anecdotic stylistic fractures and generative themes for the rest of the music material, through fragmentation and sophisticated development techniques. They are both real and not, as the composer uses both quotations and fake-quotations. They shock – and yet, they don’t. Their strength resides in their ambiguity. This window-form towards other musical paradigms and meanings is similar to that used by Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino, with a completely different sonic result.

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