Architectural Elements in Vasile Herman’s Symphonic Works (I)
This study on composer Vasile Herman’s five symphonies, structured in two parts, aims to integrate their syntactic and morphological features with the system of organizing musical time that is specific to the orientations and directions of 20th-century music. From this perspective, our analytical approach tries to highlight the role of sound architectures in the development of a personal language, in which the composer’s approach to form becomes a hallmark of his style. V. Herman made his début in the 19720s with the symphony 7 ipostaze fonice alcătuind un Nomos [7 Phonic Stances Making Up a Nomos], where he freely experiments with the series organized according to mathematical criteria, then in the 1980s, he writes the other four symphonies: Symphony No. 2, Memorandum, in 1980; Symphony No. 3, Metamorfoze-Doime, in 1982; Symphony No. 4, in 1984; Symphony No. 5, Omagiu cântecului, in 1988, a symphony with choir and baritone soloist, in junction with the vocal-symphonic, in which vocality and the chosen folk verses are intrinsically tied together in a semantic dependency. The composer takes on the aesthetic task of giving expression to the most universal essences of the Romanian folk song in a contemporary language. In terms of the stylistic and aesthetic aspects of contemporary music, the analyses will highlight the implications and changes that the musical language elements – tonal systems: modal, serial dodecaphonic, serial modal; modal, geometric harmony; complex polymorphic, heterophonic syntax; thematic-constructive rhythm – will impose on the structural dialectics of the symphonies.
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