: iancu dumitrescu

"The new Romanian school, with Iancu Dumitrescu at the forefront, is not alone in its search for a similar spectral approach - hyper-consonant, hyperharmonic, in the real sense of these terms - as we find parallel tendencies in the young French school of the Groupe de l'Itinéraire, amongst the young Canadians or the Italians. The Romanians, working for so long in relative isolation, are in right to claim a certain seniority in this approach that lead with Iancu Dumitrescu's to a real spectral analysis of the interior of the sound, equivalent to a kind of nuclear fission. The great predecessor in this direction, whose importance is just beginning to be recognized as he celebrates his eightieth birthday, is the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi... In such a "spectral" and "hyperconsonant" music as that of Iancu Dumitrescu, we seem to recognize ceaselessly fragments, echoes of folkloric melodies, songs and ancestral calls of the Carpathian shepherds. And that because the folk instruments also elude the compromise of the temperate scale in order to render the natural scale of the harmonics. The spectre thus contains thousands of virtual melodies that fleeting embody themselves according to the meeting or the crossing of the harmonic columns. Folk music is thus a sonorous phenomenon both natural and cultural. Starting with the brilliant forerunner George Enescu, the whole Romanian school has used its pure resources, fructifying and transfiguring them. This was the case with Iancu Dumitrescu's masters: St. Niculescu and A. Stroe, while A. Mendelson inculcated him the basic classical craft and S. Celibidache's precious advices helped him to clarify his phenomenological conception of musical composition. Iancu Dumitrescu's works situate themselves far from the traditional concepts, not only regarding sound, but also form and structure. His main works introduce the concept of acousmatic, Socratic term designing the art of hiding the essence of the sound source, of disguising its origin. Based on the intimate exploration of the secret, hidden, parameters of the sonorous phenomenon, his music extracts its formal models out of the inner structure of the sound, in a perfect correspondence of micro- and macrostructure. This phenomenological approach of the compositional proceeding implies both a great confidence in the intuitive dimension of the invention and a permanent, indispensable, intellectual lucidity. Composing becomes thus a surgeon or biologist-like attitude, working directly on the sonorous plasma, on the living and mobile substance. This attitude extends to the several parameters of the sound, especially to a system of duration organization that confers each number a rhythm that bears its own aesthetics, ethics and poignancy. As Time, the only sonorous parameter also existing outside the sound, is equally the one who implies all the rest: pitches, timbres and intensities are evaluated by means of vibrations, periods, and, thus, time. Iancu Dumitrescu's predilection for grave instruments (double bass, bassoon, trombone, tuba etc.) is explained by the fact that they possess the most complete column of harmonics, the richest and most beautiful spectrum. The acoustical principles evoked above otherwise permit rendering almost unrecognizable the instrumental sources. Thus, in "Ursa Mare", the two bassoons are prepared, by introducing foreign objects in the wholes and clefts. Additionally, the instrumentalists must play with the upper part of the instrument stuck to the membrane of the big drum, which prolongs and modifies the harmonics. The bassoon has thus at its disposal an original scale of micro-intervals. Some of Iancu Dumitrescu's important works exist in several variants which differ by their instrumentation. Finished in 1983, this recorded version of "Ursa Mare", the most complete regarding the instrumental force, uses two prepared bassoons, four double basses, one piano (also prepared), an ensemble of percussion (membranes and metals) and, finally, a magnetic tape. The work is dedicated to Harry Halbreich. From the beginning of his career, Iancu Dumitrescu made himself known through orchestral pages of amazing novelty, where most of his nowadays achievements were more than prefigured. "Apogeum" (for winds and percussion), "Reliefs" (for two orchestras and piano) count among the major pages of the new Romanian orchestral music. Invigorated by the experiences acquired in the long years of practicing with his musicians in the Hyperion Ensemble and with the great Italian double bass player Fernando Grillo, Iancu Dumitrescu composed "Aulodie Mioritica", first for clarinet and orchestra, and then for other soloists. The double bass solo and orchestra version ("Aulodie Mioritica" Gamma), dedicated to and created by Fernando Grillo, was finished in June 1984 and performed for the first time soon after its ending, at Radio France, by the latter, accompanied by the Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique conducted by Yves Prin."

-Harry HALBREICH

Editions Salabert, Paris