Zusammen; nicht gemeinsam. Das symphonische Werk Anatol Vierus
Together. Not Alone. The Symphonic Music of Anatol Vieru

Summary/Abstract: In his first Symphony, Ode to Silence, Anatol Vieru continuously chisels blocks from high-piled, noisy masses of sounds, until he reaches an eloquent and significant silence. On the occasion of the 15th year since the death of this important Romanian composer (born in 1926), some questions arise: What is hidden in this silence? How much of the circumstances of a particular life are inscribed in the structure of his symphonic music? Like many Romanian Jews, Anatol Vieru became in his youth a member of the Communist Party, believing in an ideology that promised emancipation and the end of resentments. He wrote enthusiastically some ardent mass choirs, and conducted them. But already at the beginning of the 1950s, when he studied in Moscow with Aram Khachaturian, he began to doubt the sustainability of communist ideas. This was the start of a long process of increasing estrangement, which found a voice in his music. Its climax is reached in the Sixth Symphony, Exodus, completed in the year of change 1989: the insight that there is no ideological basis able to drive people towards solidarity and community is adequately expressed through music.

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