by Emma Lou Diemer
as published in the IAWM Journal, February 1996, pp. 30-31.
Many of us have had the pleasure of meeting the Romanian composer Violeta Dinescu at festivals and concerts in this country and abroad, some of us at the International Congress in Heidelberg in 1988 where I had that experience and also met her teacher and mentor Miriam Marbé. From time to time Violeta has sent me her compositions for organ, and I am in continual admiration of her music and her individuality.
To review a musical work it is usually helpful to have a score, but lacking any or even program notes on most of the pieces I found myself enjoying the freedom of simply listening to the music. Following a score tends to split one's sensibilities into visual and aural impressions to the extent that one may obfuscate the other. And the written score invites close analysis of and searching for those precious formulas and connections that we delight in pointing out to waiting students. So, scoreless, my discussion of Dinescu's music will be less than technical in the analysis class understanding of the word.
In teaching, it has occasionally been useful to play a recording or a live work and have the students write their impressions. Even with university students this may result in descriptions of rainy days or mountains or hectic schedules. I do not have mental pictures when listening to music except of the notes and the movement of the lines and the rhythmic ideas, etc. and their interaction unless the composer indicates some concrete image on which to focus. Even then, it is quite possible to listen to a program piece and not care at all that it is about a nightingale or a faun in the forest.
Dinescu is one of those composers who is fairly consistent in her musical utterances, not bowing to popular trends, and remaining faithful to her complex and expressive view of how music should sound. She was born in Bucharest in 1953 and has lived in West Germany since 1983. She has received many stipends for composing and over 50 international prizes and distinctions since 1975. Her music has been performed throughout the world. She has written in all genres including opera, ballet, film, and show music, with a preponderance of solo and chamber works.
Reviewers write of her "superior balance between static and momentum that simultaneously revolves around a fantasy-like, thought-provoking center" [Frostburg State College, 1986], "her conception of form and tonal language are mainly influenced by mathematical operations and models on which the architectural structure of her works are usually based, and her intense occupation with folklore" [CPO Live Recording, Germany, 1987], "...a marvelous sense of timing. She knows where the perfect spot is for flutter-tongued passages" [Living Music, USA, 1989].
She writes:
In the beginning of every composition, I try to find a sphere, an imaginary space, where the flood of imagination can meet the rigour of thought. It is necessary to control the different dimensions of the musical language in the microstructure as well [as] in the macrostructure...the numbers [are] used in the music in different ways-as different intervals, directions, proportions-but remain within the limits given by the order, appearance and importance of certain numbers. The music tries to dominate this strength of succession and priority of numeric symbols, discovering new spaces which have their origin in the same structures. My aesthetic necessity is at the same time to better know the infinite universe of sound and to discover new relations between thought and its multitude of spiritual projections.
Two of Dinescu's works are on the CD Like Fire Burning, Contemporary Music for Two Guitars (ProViva LC 6542, produced in Germany in 1994). The guitarists are Reinbert Evers and Wolfgang Weigel. There are two versions, A and B of her Figuren II. I could find no date of composition. In Version A many of the characteristics of her instrumental writing are there, all of them idiomatic: tremolos, shimmering figurations, strongly accented notes appearing out of scalar formations, glissandoed textures, repeated notes, echoes, fleeting ascents, knocking on the wood of the instruments. Version B elaborates on ideas in Version A. It begins more aggressively with events coming at shorter intervals, groups of notes tending to emerge from the agitated underlying textures with more passion and insistence, less emphasis on the open strings of the guitar, denser formations of sound, rapid fluctuation of the dynamics. The fascination in both versions lies in the freedom of time, the absence of meter, and the aleatoric virtuosity required of the performers.
Other works of great interest on this CD are by Václav Kucera, Klaus Hinrich Stahmer, Joe Nickerson, and Helge Jung.
The second CD is Kompositionen von Violeta Dinescu produced by GEDOK Heidelberg (Jahnstr. 3, D-69226 Nussloch-Heidelberg). Dinescu states that the CD is a "clarinet portrait in a kind of rondo form" because it alternates between works for clarinet, piano, violin, and cello. The order of the works and my comments follow:
Tautropfen is a 1992 composition for clarinet and piano. The composition "ist eine Hommage an Gudrun Wassermanns Gemälde 'Szenen eines Parks' und spiegelt nach Worten der Komponistin einerseits die Atmosphäre eines poetischen Raumes, anderseits das kaleidoskopische Bild eines fast visuellen Motivs..." [Rainer Köhl, Rhein. Neckar-Zeitung, 1993]. The clarinet features pitch bending and multiphonics, the piano is coloristic but has fleeting moments of tonality. These are interspersed with atonal flourishes and figurations. Solo sections for the clarinet alternate with dialogues, with the piano's low and high registers in clusters and tremolos used extremely effectively. The mood of the work is often meditative, thoughtful, but the gestures are incisive and driven rather than nirvana-seeking. The outstanding performers are Aurelian-Octav Popa, clarinet, and Carlos Roggan, piano.
Echoes I for piano solo, and my favorite on the recording, dates from 1980. The piece uses rapid repeated notes, agitated, colorful statements of material that die away gradually, and dynamic contrasts from very soft to forte. The absence of a discernible meter is a major characteristic of Dinescu's writing, but often present is a pulse expressed in figurations and tremolos, and melodic statements have rhythmic identity but within the context of great flexibility. One can imagine V.D. sitting at the piano and creating tapestries of sound that come forth from a wealth of pianistic technique and ideas whose numerical associations may be consciously worked out by her but that are woven into the distinctive and varied fabric of sound. Tonal broken chords appear sometimes-"as echoes of the past?"-but are soon overcome by those fantastic utterances of vivid color. The work ends with a low pedal tone (a C# on my piano), as does one of the later works.
Satya IV is a clarinet solo written in 1981. It is a quieter, calmer work exploring particularly the low and middle registers of the clarinet. "...wenn der freude thränen fliessen...," the longest work on the CD, is for cello and piano, and dates from 1990. There are effective uses of harmonics in glissando in the cello and frequent drones, either above or below a moving melodic line, and splashes of pizzicato. The extensive solo cello sections are joined almost unintrusively by entrances of the piano with ensuing creation of tension and density. The piece is not a catalog of effects on the cello, but certainly they are all there, not to astound but to express Dinescu's unique sonar imagination. Ostinato patterns are a bit rare, but they do occur, and are generally more tonal in nature. A striking example of this near the end has ostinatos in the piano coupled with all-over-the-place harmonics and scalar movement in the cello. V.D.'s endings are never predictable, but this one again has a low C# in the piano. The stellar performers are Wolfgang Boettcher and Ursula Trede-Boettcher.
Lichtwellen is for clarinet solo, and dates from 1991. This work is lighter (light waves?) and has unique low-registered multiphonics and high, punctuated notes popping out of sustained lower ones. Aretusa is for violin solo, written in 1988, and performed by Dora Entcheva. Not having the score, I nevertheless assume that a great deal is left up to the performer in interpreting the music. This extended work is, in general, more tonal. But "tonal" for Dinescu does not mean the same thing as tonal for any other composer, only in contrast to other of her works which are basically "untonal" in the sense of not relating to any key. Dinescu's tonality resembles somewhat the Bartok device of centering around one note with all manner of diversion and escape. Again there are the extensions of pitch back and forth between very high and middle and lower registers. There are open-string drones with upper arabesques, occasional glissandos, and fragments of melodic motives that are almost lyrical. The drones-the centerings around one note-are often on the A string, one imagining that the soloist is more at home improvising around the open strings with tonal utterings rather than atonal ones, but nonetheless incredibly virtuosic. There are striking rapid pizzicato broken figures among the traditional bowed techniques.
Ostrov II is the last work on the CD. It is for clarinet quartet, written in 1989, and the performers are the exceptional Arundo Clarinet Quartet. Here, the utmost skillful writing for the four instruments is evident. The bass clarinet extends the range and color opportunities. Detached figures are more in evidence as well as the strong, sharp punctuations of single pitches jumping back and forth from high to low. Frequent fluttertonguings create contrasting tone colors, tremolos, scattered multiphonics, some "bluesy" configuration, trills, "square-wave" rocking back and forth between two pitches, "other-worldly" harmonics in tandem, amplitude modulation created by two instruments-one holding, the other repeating, the same pitch. Dinescu is not afraid, in any of her music, to ask for long, sustained notes, but they are usually enhanced by figurations that become denser, then disappear. You need to hear the last chord of this work: the instruments playing a multiphonic chord crescendoing from soft to loud. This work easily outdoes Rite of Spring in its colorations and imagery.
Violeta Dinescu is one of our major composers, and you will look forward to becoming acquainted with her music if you haven't already.
Emma Lou Diemer is a composer residing in Santa Barbara, CA.