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    Sonata Torso

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    Ana
    Enescu began work on his third violin sonata in 1911 but only completed the first movement before abandoning the piece. The movement has an opening theme that evokes Gypsy violin playing with elements of cimbalom and exotic harmonies from the piano. The theme is developed in a traditional post-Brahmsian manner but also features more impressionistic and rhapsodic elements reflective of Enescu's background and training. Although unfinished, the movement points to later developments in Enescu's style and shows his ability to blend Romanian folk influences with Western techniques even during a period of stylistic uncertainty in his career.

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    Sonata Torso

    Uploaded by

    Ana
    381 views3 pages
    Enescu began work on his third violin sonata in 1911 but only completed the first movement before abandoning the piece. The movement has an opening theme that evokes Gypsy violin playing with elements of cimbalom and exotic harmonies from the piano. The theme is developed in a traditional post-Brahmsian manner but also features more impressionistic and rhapsodic elements reflective of Enescu's background and training. Although unfinished, the movement points to later developments in Enescu's style and shows his ability to blend Romanian folk influences with Western techniques even during a period of stylistic uncertainty in his career.

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    comparison with other sonatas

    Original Title

    sonata torso

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    Enescu began work on his third violin sonata in 1911 but only completed the first movement before abandoning the piece. The movement has an opening theme that evokes Gypsy violin playing with elements of cimbalom and exotic harmonies from the piano. The theme is developed in a traditional post-Brahmsian manner but also features more impressionistic and rhapsodic elements reflective of Enescu's background and training. Although unfinished, the movement points to later developments in Enescu's style and shows his ability to blend Romanian folk influences with Western techniques even during a period of stylistic uncertainty in his career.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    381 views3 pages

    Sonata Torso

    Uploaded by

    Ana
    Enescu began work on his third violin sonata in 1911 but only completed the first movement before abandoning the piece. The movement has an opening theme that evokes Gypsy violin playing with elements of cimbalom and exotic harmonies from the piano. The theme is developed in a traditional post-Brahmsian manner but also features more impressionistic and rhapsodic elements reflective of Enescu's background and training. Although unfinished, the movement points to later developments in Enescu's style and shows his ability to blend Romanian folk influences with Western techniques even during a period of stylistic uncertainty in his career.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    At a glance
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    Enescu was influenced by both Romanian folk music traditions and Western classical techniques in his compositions. He drew from Romanian folk modes, rhythms and ornamentations without directly quoting folk melodies. His works also show the influences of his studies in Paris with Fauré and Massenet.

    Enescu incorporated Romanian folk music influences by using folk modes and rhythms, omitting piano accompaniment to evoke solo folk violin playing, and including ornaments like trills and turns. However, he altered folk elements to be more consistent with Western techniques rather than direct quotation.

    Some characteristics of Romanian folk music that Enescu drew from include modal scales like Hicaz, monophonic folk violin traditions, and regular off-beat accentuations in rhythms and accompaniments.

    Sonata Torso, for violin & piano (single

    movement of unfinished sonata)

    In 1911, Enescu began work on what would have been his third violin sonata
    but abandoned the piece after completing a lengthy first movement. Though he
    made a fair copy of the score and dated it, the movement was published only
    after Enescu's death, with the appellation "Torso" affixed as in indication of its
    fragmentary nature. The sonata movement is actually one of a number of
    unfinished or lost works from what seems to have been a period of indecision
    and stylistic uncertainty for Enescu, and its own ambivalence of style reflects
    this plainly. Nevertheless, it points the way to later developments in Enescu's
    oeuvre, and is an attractive and accomplished work in its own right.

    Enescu was himself a virtuoso violinist and more than passable pianist who first
    learned to play (at age four) not from a conservatory violin professor but from a
    Roumanian Gypsy violinist, Nicolas Chioru. The rhapsodic and improvisatory
    elements of Gypsy violin playing are at once evident in the opening theme, a
    dark "song without words" with evocations of cimbalom and exotic "oriental"
    harmonies from the piano. The theme is worked out, however, in a traditional,
    post-Brahmsian manner, with full, robust writing for the piano and a requisite
    big sound and virtuosic technique from the violin. Enescu's treatment of his
    ethnic-influenced material is here closer to the manner of Liszt, but there are
    moments when the Gypsy theme emerges from its thicket of Romantic
    counterpoint and hangs suspended, as it were, in time, while widely spaced,
    arpeggiated octaves shimmer in the accompaniment. There is a tender middle
    section in which the theme is developed in a more impressionistic style
    (reminding us that Enescu was a student of Fauré and Massenet at the Paris
    Conservatory from 1894 to 1899). A sense of muted tragedy, of the "long ago"
    infuses the movement with a passion that was already characteristic of the
    composer, even at this unsettled time in his career. The movement ends on a
    unison note from violin and piano, leaving the listener with the definite sense
    that the sonata could indeed have gone on.
    Media Review

    The 3 items from your media list that you will use for this review:

    1. Pascal Bentoiu, (2010) Masterworks of George Enescu: A Detailed Analysis,


    ;Scarecrow Press
    2. and 3) Michael David Patterson (2009) The Influence of Romanian Folk Music
    on the Music of George Enescu, with special reference to Romanian Rhapsody,
    op. 11 no. 1, Sonata for Violin and Piano, op. 25 no. 3, and Impression
    d’Enfance for Violin and Piano, op. 28. A thesis submitted for the degree of
    Master of Philosophy (Music Performance) at The University of Queensland.
    The discussion

    2)The first movement, “Ménétrier”,is the only one written for unaccompanied violin and
    contains the most overt reference to Romanian folk music, both by nature of its title
    (Gypsy fiddler) and by its rhythmic and modal content. Enescu uses modes and
    technical devices to express the character of Romanian folk music rather than direct
    quotation of folk melodies and in addition he uses a number of instrument-specific
    techniques that allowed him to point to Romanian folk performance without quoting folk
    melodies.
    By omitting the piano from this movement Enescu evokes the image of the “lautar” or
    Gypsy fiddler playing alone and points to the monophonic tradition of Romanian
    peasant music.
    The rhythm could easily form the basis of a folk melody, but Enescu alters it in a way
    that is more consistent with Western techniques.

    3)Published in 1926, this sonata shows the Enescu´s mature response to


    folk music influence. He implies in his statement that the Romanian
    characteristics of the piece were not deliberate, studied or contrived, but
    rather were naturally part of his musical language
    It is a dense interpolation of Romanian traditional characteristics and
    techniques derived from Enescu’s composition training in Vienna and Paris,
    being rich in ornamentation including trills, mordents and turns as well as
    pitch nuances.
    It’s even notable a Bulgarian influence because of the regular off-beat
    accentuation during some parts.
    The second movement was described by Alfred Cortot as ‘an evocation in
    sound of the mysterious feeling of summer nights in Romania: below, the
    silent, endless, deserted plain; above, constellations leading off into infinity’
    (qtd. in Malcolm 187). The composer’s French influences are more apparent
    in this movement than the other two.
    The final movement of the Sonata he characterizes as a lively Romanian
    dance. The regular off-beat accompaniment (firstly with double stops in the
    violin part, and then with staccato chords in the piano left hand) gives a
    regular rhythmic feel which contrasts with the freer tempo of the first two
    movements and the melody is based on Hicaz mode which is common in
    Romanian folk music but finds its origins in Turkey.
    There are also distinct thematic connections with the first and second
    movements despite the tempos being different.

    The conclusion

    After reading about these two masterworks of Enescu, everything connected to his
    music seems or very complex or very simple and ‘rudimentary’’ as folk music, despite
    this so called folk music being complex because all of the external influences as Turkey
    and Bulgaria and of of course the modal aspect of them. Almost everything that I find is
    more directed to the violin itself but in order to achieve my goal which is perform one of
    his works I need to search some information about his writing for piano or even better
    something focused on the piano part of this sonatas being sometimes technically more
    exigent than the violin part. I’m happy with the information that I collected but the
    search is not over. I will look for some information about the piano parts among a
    ‘collection’ of modes used by them to be able to achieve the best result with the
    melodies of Enescu, being them his “best method of communication”.

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