Un manuscris autograf inedit cu opera muzicală a dascălului Gheorghe Căciulă (sec. XIX)

Author(s): Codruț-Dumitru Scurtu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 7-9/2023

In Câmpulung-Muscel there are known by name some music teachers, trained in the Romanian schools founded by Macarie the Hieromonk in the first half of the 19th century. After 1850, the teacher Gheorghe Căciulă opened music schools in Pietroșița and Câmpulung-Muscel, in the Romanian language, leaving many apprentices to serve in the churches in the area. Not much is known about him, but several manuscripts containing his compositions are preserved. In this article I present an unpublished manuscript of the composer Gheorghe Căciulă ,indicating in double notation the beginning of the songs. This material is adapted from the chapter “Unpublished musical manuscripts in the Library of the Archdiocese of Argeș” of my doctoral thesis, entitled „Romanian musical culture of Byzantine tradition in the area of Argeș, Pitești and Câmpulung-Muscel, sec. XIX-XX”, defended in 2013, at the National University of Music in Bucharest, under the supervision of Arch. prof. dr. Sebastian Barbu-Bucur.

Mormântul lui Anton Pann de la biserica Lucaci din București. O cronică documentară (1854-2023)

Author(s): Andrei Zaieț / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 7-9/2023

Martori ai unei relații „interetnice” speciale: scrisorile lui Bartók păstrate de Brăiloiu

Author(s): Viola Bíró / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2022

The scientific relationship between Béla Bartók and Constantin Brăiloiu represents a beautiful and extremely instructive episode in the history of 'borderless' ethnomusicology. Brăiloiu was Bartók's most important collaborator in the research of Romanian folk music, a devoted supporter of his work, and a propagator of his most important achievements. Bartók, in turn, considered the documentation system applied by his younger colleague's research group as an exemplary method in his 'precepts of musical folklore' (Why and How to Collect Folk Music). The correspondence between these two authorities in folk music research offers a deep insight into their collaboration. Ferenc László, the most diligent editor of these letters, dedicated a comprehensive and systematic article to discuss the main lessons of these documents available until 1980. However, the collection of 36 letters by Bartók, kept in Brăiloiu's possession in Paris and discovered relatively recently, has received considerably less attention in the literature. These letters, mostly written between 1933 and 1939, offer a new perspective on Bartók's late folkloristic activities: for example, issues related to the revision of Bartók's collection of Romanian folk music transcriptions, questions related to some phonograph and gramophone recordings, or discrepancies between the two's opinions on the transcription and analysis of folk music. In this article, I would like to draw attention to some particularly interesting points of this material.

Creația corală a compozitorului Adrian Pop – o privire de ansamblu

Author(s): Paula Șandor / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2022

Totaling a considerable number of titles (standalone works or cycles), the choral creation of the Cluj composer Adrian Pop is representative both in terms of the frequency with which the genre has been approached throughout his entire creative activity (started in the '70s), but especially through the various sources of inspiration – Romanian or universal folklore, and poetic lyricism – particularly German and Italian. The way these tendencies are highlighted in musical terms defines a strongly individualized compositional style, situated at the intersection of tradition and modernity, which makes full use of the resources of choral ensembles in a refined manner, and whose finality lies in highlighting the meanings of the supporting text – folkloric or lyrical.

Elemente de mediere muzicală în concertul educativ: analiza concertului educativ Carnavalul animalelor

Author(s): Dalma-Lidia Toadere / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2022

This study focuses on the elements of mediation in the educational concert for children: verbal explanation and dialogue with the audience, musical examples, comparative listening, focusing auditory attention, modeling activities, and participation in interpretation. After describing a number of representative examples from the concerts of Leonard Bernstein, David Wallace, and the author, the complete analysis of the educational concert Carnival of the Animals, moderated and conducted by the author, follows. Detailing the concert allows for a deeper understanding of the use of various elements of musical mediation in the context of the concert's dramaturgy.

Cantata Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her de Hans Peter Türk

Author(s): Alexandra Păcurar / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2022

This article, conducted as part of doctoral research, proposes an analysis of the Christmas cantata Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her from the creation of the Cluj composer Hans Peter Türk. The work is characterized by unity in diversity. The unity is represented by the chorale melody that remains unchanged from the beginning to the end of the work. The diversity results from the multitude of variants in which the Lutheran chorale is processed and harmonized (timbral, rhythmic, dynamic, harmonic diversity). Hans Peter Türk thus continues the tradition of the Bachian Lutheran cantata, writing a valuable work with a strong liturgical message.

Ioan Bocșa și Alina Stan. Muzică vocală tradițională din Ținutul Pădurenilor. Cluj-Napoca: MediaMusica, 2021, 556p,

Author(s): Irina Zamfira Dănilă / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2022

Carefully and legibly musical, optimal page layout, fine, high-quality paper – all contribute to achieving an impeccable graphic appearance. The content of the volume is organized in the manner established by ethnomusicological studies – a succinct Foreword, followed by the Introductory Study, the Collection of Melodies and Literary Texts, and a number of Appendices. In the Foreword, the motivational framework of the research of Ținutul Pădurenilor by the two authors, Ioan Bocșa and Alina Stan, is highlighted.

Sănătatea emoțională a muzicienilor de muzică clasică profesioniști

Author(s): Angelica Postu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2022

The professional classical musician experiences a close and often inseparable relationship between their personal and professional life. This is because artistic performance requires strong emotional involvement, an intense psychological process, and constant physical dedication. Besides artistic preparation, musicians implicitly take on several organizational roles, which affect their mental health, leading to emotional imbalance. Among musicians, there is a record of performance anxiety, depression, and other worrying conditions, whose number is increasing. These conditions are associated with stress, fear of failure, and perfectionism. Most musicians do not know the means and techniques to help them cope with problems, which is why the introduction of preventive methods is recommended. Additionally, identifying and understanding risk factors would contribute to raising awareness about the conditions they are predisposed to. Studies have shown that beneficial methods include resilience, mindfulness, and positive psychology, which, unlike traditional deficit-oriented psychology, focus on present moments and positive aspects of the human being.

Despre o matrice analitică

Author(s): Amalia Szűcs-Blănaru / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2022

The analysis of 20th-century music requires appropriate methods, different from traditional ones. It is necessary to create a synthetic analytical system that brings together criteria from traditional musicology, computational musicology, mathematical musicology, and more recently, performance analysis. For the development of the analytical matrix, we started from the idea that we need a fixed, stable part (like a skeleton) that is found in all analyses, as well as a variable, adaptable part. Musical morphology can be thought of as a first level in which the parameters of the sound material are inventoried. Syntax is the higher level of its organization. Like any theory, the proposed method of analysis is to be validated through its practical application. I chose as an example a piano miniature from Anatol Vieru's creation, Sfârleaza. This piece particularly caught our attention due to the suggestive power of movement achieved with simple means and the beauty of its composition. The piece is among the works that prepared the ground for shaping the mature style and innovative musical thinking, which places Anatol Vieru among the important composers who influenced 20th-century composition. The example of analysis was chosen specifically to use a good part of the available working options and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. The matrices designed for both morphology and syntax ensure the stability of the method, as they do not leave any important aspect out of the analysis. The freedom of movement within them gives an eclectic aspect to the approach, but it often offers everyone the possibility to choose the working method that is most familiar to them.

Elena Maria Șorban, Muzică din cuvânt. De la Bach la Beethoven. București: Eikon, Colecția Universitas, Seria Muzicologie, 2022, 207p.

Author(s): Iulia Mogoșan / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2022

The book by Elena Maria Șorban – researcher and professor of music history at the 'Gheorghe Dima' National Academy of Music in Cluj-Napoca – strengthens this conviction through the sharpness and depth of thought, the orderly and comprehensive structuring, and, not least, the thoroughness of the research. These are presented in a measured language – a welcome hand extended, a generous invitation to join a journey that exudes propedeutic echoes, noticeable through the choice of current and online accessible references and the restraint of the scientific enthusiasm, which does not intimidate but chains the ideas in a suitable cadence, with increased care for the reader.

Appassionata” op. 57 de Beethoven: analiza unui interpret

Author(s): Joan Grimalt / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2023

A hermeneutic, interpretative analysis involves going beyond formal and harmonic analysis to include aspects related to rhetoric, topoi, and dramaturgy. Musical aspects related to language, such as rhetoric and narrativity, are meant to enliven the interpretation, giving it a communicative sense. This work presents a series of specific interpretative conclusions, resulting from the analysis of parameters such as tempo, articulation, timbre, or dynamics. Musical significance has sometimes been compared to a bodily reaction to listening to music, singing, dancing, and playing an instrument. Hepokoski and Darcy, in turn, emphasized the importance of the 'presence of absences' in analysis, focusing attention on what is missing from the score. These statements inspired the author of this work to undertake a hermeneutic analysis of Beethoven's 'Appassionata' Piano Sonata from the performer's perspective. In Op. 57, Beethoven seems to experiment with the symbolic value of representing an absence. Some fundamental musical parameters, such as harmony, melody line, or movement, are systematically missing from the three main themes of the Sonata. How can these absences be understood hermeneutical? Too often, academic analysis is related to nothing but itself, reflecting the outdated ideology of so-called 'absolute music.' On the other hand, performers have relied on their intuition to draw conclusions that go beyond harmonic and formal analysis, ignoring decades of intense study on musical semantics and symbols. By establishing links between interpretation and analysis, performers will gain criteria, and theorists, argumentative strength.

An die nahe Geliebte: modelul ciclului de lieduri din tinereţe ale lui Béla Bartók

Author(s): Fanni Molnár / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2023

Felicie Fábián, three years younger than Bartók, studied piano and composition at the 'Franz Liszt' Academy of Music in Budapest. Her name appears increasingly frequently in Bartók's letters from the beginning of the 1899 academic year, and their intense relationship, which lasted until 1903, is also highlighted by three compositions associated with Felicie. The Liebeslieder cycle is the first of these, composed in 1900, without an opus number and unpublished during Bartók's lifetime. Its lyrics and musical style suggest German romantic models, which indeed played a decisive role in the young composer's orientation. This is confirmed by an important source: until 1903, the composer kept detailed lists of all the works he had studied, heard, or wished to study in the future. The songs appear on the list of pieces he had known since the spring of 1898; before this date, Bartók does not mention the genre, and from the end of 1900, the song almost disappears from the list. Since during that period the young composer had studied several songs or song cycles by Schubert and Schumann, certain songs by Brahms, and even Wagner's Valkyrie, we can agree with researchers who compare Liebeslieder with these works. Although other musicologists consider that the influence of Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, and Franz Liszt can be discovered in Liebeslieder, their names do not yet appear on Bartók's list, so we can rather talk about coincidental similarities or common stylistic bases. However, analyses often ignore an equally important figure from the list: Beethoven, who was not only considered by Bartók an unavoidable figure in symphonic, chamber, and piano works, but the young composer also studied his song compositions. In this work, I explore the influence of Beethoven's only song cycle on Bartók's Liebeslieder.

Creația lui Tudor Jarda pe scenele lirice și de concert bănățene

Author(s): Constantin Tufan Stan / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2023

Tudor Jarda was a complex personality, a unique voice in the history of Romanian music at the end of the 20th century, with original compositional approaches, in which he transcribed, in a modern modal vision imbued with the ancestral perfume of the sounds he absorbed in childhood from the rural universe, the image of a miraculous topos. With a sinuous biographical path, marked by soul tribulations after the Timisoara refuge following the Vienna Dictate, Tudor Jarda assimilated vast musical experience (studies in trumpet, violin, piano, composition), augmented by an elevated and broad literary, aesthetic, and philosophical vision, to which was added an appetite for exact sciences, beneficial in the labor and rigor of the compositional act. The study captures significant episodes from the course of some musical projects (the 'Musical Timisoara' Festival, 'Romanian Music Evenings' broadcast by Radio Timisoara), through which Tudor Jarda offered the Banat music-loving public, on concert podiums and the Timisoara lyrical stage, some of the gems of his creation.

Academia de Cercetare a Sonatelor „München” de Mozart – Institutul „Orpheus” – 3-13.07.2023: Raport și întrebări despre practica ornamentației și improvizației pe instrumente timpurii cu claviatură ca pianist din secolul XXI

Author(s): Christophe Alvarez / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2023

The research was conducted around these three focal points: 1) Authenticity: I replaced the composer-performer as part of an aesthetic whole, with the instrument being the focal point of his experiments. I questioned the meaning of 'authentic' performance and restored the historical context of the works. 2) (Re)forming interpretation: I deepened the understanding of musical works by exploring the characteristics of the clavichord and Stein fortepiano. I questioned the expressive architecture of the chosen musical pieces in the light of Empfindsamkeit, rhetoric, and good taste. 3) Artistic exploration: focusing on Mozart's 6 'Munich' Sonatas and C. P. E. Bach's 6 Sonatas with Variations Wq. 50, I studied the connections between the musical score, sound complexes, and the instrument itself. I explored the notion of improvisation and variation in the classical era and questioned my relationship with it as a modern performer.

Prima coloană sonoră a lui Șostakovici: politică și simfonism

Author(s): Sabina Constantin / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2023

The article proposes a detailed historical-analytical exposition of the soundtrack of the film New Babylon, signed by Dmitri Shostakovich. It examines how Shostakovich used a diverse range of musical techniques to highlight the visual, emotional, and narrative aspects of the cinematic production, thus illustrating an innovative approach to film music composition. The analysis focuses on his creative side, highlighting how the composer subtly integrated various recurring musical motifs and fragments to emphasize the evolution of the action and the characters' emotions. It also explores how diegetic music was used to strengthen the synchronization between sound and image, thus highlighting his concern for the coherence and impact of the soundtrack. Additionally, the article examines the political and social context of the era in which the film was made, analyzing the initial critical reactions and the subsequent significance of this work in the history of cinema. Through this comprehensive approach, the importance of the film's soundtrack is revealed not only in the landscape of film music but also in the broader cultural and social context of the era. Thus, the work represents an essential contribution to the understanding and appreciation of the evolution of film music and its influence in the artistic and cultural sphere.

„Imiter est d’un sot.” Simfoniile lui Bizet

Author(s): Sára Aksza Grosz / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2023

After the first English biographer of the composer, D. C. Parker, found the Symphony in C major at the Conservatory library and after its world premiere in 1935, this youthful work also conquered the ballet stage, thanks to George Balanchine's choreography (1947). Since then, researchers have aimed to reveal its possible models. Generally, they link and compare Bizet's First Symphony with that of Gounod, both dating from 1855. The conductor, musicologist, and Bizet's biographer, born in Baia-Mare, Amadé Németh (1922-2001), strongly suggests Mozartian echoes. On the one hand, I follow this path. On the other hand, considering the analogies in Bizet's writings between composers and artists, I wonder if non-musical sources could have also served as models for his symphonies, especially the second one. In the 1860s, during his stay in Italy as a winner of the Rome Prize, Bizet had the idea of depicting four Italian cities through music: Venice, Rome, Florence, and Naples. Which music resembles and points to the so-called 'Rome' Symphony (1860-1868)? This study aims to commemorate 185 years since the birth of Georges Bizet by questioning his own words, quoted in the title: 'to imitate is to be a fool.

Continuitate sau incompatibilitate? Un studiu comparativ între teoriile estetice ale lui Sámuel Brassai și István Angi

Author(s): Beáta Simény / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2023

Sámuel Brassai (1797-1897) was a Transylvanian polymath whose first essays on aesthetics were published in 1832 in the weekly Nemzeti Társalkodó from Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca). As an active chamber music instrumentalist, music critic, and encyclopedic thinker, Brassai supported his aesthetic hypotheses with the help of music, visual arts, and literature. Although there are only a few publications on aesthetics in his work, it is essential to know them, as they certainly influenced his work as a music critic. A century later, István Angi (1933-2020), the founder of the Cluj school of musical aesthetics, published a first theory of his grotesque-transcendental axis system in 1970 in the magazine Utunk. As a professor at the Cluj-Napoca Conservatory of Music, he presented his aesthetic system in a two-volume course entitled Lectures on Musical Aesthetics (2004), and he was also the author of numerous volumes and articles in Romanian and Hungarian. The article will present the viewpoints of these two exceptional and beloved scholars of Cluj, highlighting their philosophical roots and the directions of their ideas, their attitude towards beauty in aesthetics, as well as their interpretations of the relationship between reality and ideal. In light of these considerations, I try to answer whether Brassai's assumptions, questions, and concepts find continuity in István Angi's aesthetic system theory.

Evocarea ca atitudine creativă. Compozitorul român Vasile Herman

Author(s): Elena Boancă / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2023

The 20th-century composition school in Cluj-Napoca is known for its moderate modern attitude, with representatives including the figure of Vasile Herman, composer and musicologist. His long-term activity can be placed under the sign of evocation, which defines the language, the choice of stylistic features, and his entire perspective as a musician. This work argues for the sense of evocation as an important inner resource that leads to the recollection of memories, the use of history as a source of inspiration, and the use of imagination to recreate the musical atmosphere of an ancient world.

Practica de salto în producțiile de operă: de la tradiție la practicalitate sau vice versa?

Author(s): Tatiana Oltean / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2023

Even before opera became a tradition in itself, Monteverdi rewrote the final score of his opera L'Orfeo after its premiere. Since then, opera composers have made numerous changes to their scores, either as a result of the premiere's reception among the public and critics or to adapt the score to the taste of audiences in different European cultural centers (Paris, Vienna, Venice). But what happens to the score after the composer's death, for what reasons and in what ways are opera scores adapted for stage production, and where does the musical text stand in relation to the rigors of the stage? Conductors, directors, and even vocal performers, especially prima donnas, have taken up this tradition, perpetuating various versions of these scores. The taste of the public evolves over the centuries, and yet the same masterpieces constitute the basis of the opera repertoire, as opera has been, is, and remains a cultural phenomenon today. The research aims to classify and analyze the practice of 'cuts' in opera scores—a procedure completely unimaginable, a true sacrilege, in the symphonic or vocal-symphonic repertoire—highlighting, with relevant examples, the various motivations behind them: the difficulty of the score, its adaptation for different categories of audiences, adaptation to different stage spaces (tours), reducing the duration of the performance, avoiding moments of stagnation in the action—in a century of speed, or even the redundancy of the musical text. Some 'cuts' are at least inopportune, but others have entered the sacred tradition of the genre.

Simbioza dintre sunet și cuvânt în creația de lied a compozitorului Sabin Păutza: Un strop de lumină…

Author(s): Francisca-Loredana Paidac / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2023

This article aims to highlight the modes of expression through which composer Sabin Păutza creates music that reflects the depth and flavor of soprano Adina Covaci's poems, through a truly valuable cycle of songs in the genre's repertoire. The singability of the melodies, the emphasis on certain verses through the construction of the melodic arc, the piano accompaniment that supports the solo voice, the metric and rhythmic diversity, are elements that reveal the creative act of a versatile composer through the content of his music.