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- Theodor Grigoriu
Elegia Pontica (1968)
- Editions Musicales Transatlantiques (World)
Black-and-white movie for the Romanian TV station; directed by Carmen Dobrescu.
- 1.0.0+bcl.1+cbn/1010/glock/str(0.0.6.6.6)
- Female choir
- Baritone
- 17 min 30 s
- Ovid
- Latin
Programme Note
The work is a musical tribute to the great Latin poet Ovid, who was exiled by emperor Octavian Augustus on the shore of Pontos Euxinus (Black Sea of today), in the ancient town of Tomis (the city of Constantza), where he passed away in 17 B.C., without seeing his native country ever again.
The text of the work is taken from a fragment of the 3rd Elegy from Ovid’s Tristia. It is a long epistle in which the poet sensing his near end, addresses his wife, asking her to bury him in the ground of Rome. He even hallucinates and believes he sees his wife on the shore heights and desperately calls out to her.
In the chosen fragment, there is the famous epitaph, engraved on the pedestal of his statue in the city of Constantza:
Hic ego qui iaceo, tenerorum lusor amorum,
ingenio perii naso poeta meo.
At tibi, qui transis, ne sit grave, quisquis amasti
dicere: Nasonis molliter ossa cubent!
I, who lie here, the singer of youthful love,
Naso the Poet, have perished because of my talent.
And you, passer-by, if you have ever loved, don’t find it hard
to say: may Naso’s bones rest in peace!
The work is sung in Latin, but the score comprises a literal tentative translation into Romanian of every lyric.
Number 6, deduced from the Latin hexameter, is the parametrical number of the work, from the composition of the modes used to the 6-beat pulse, constant throughout the music. The soloist (the poet) is accompanied by an ensemble made up of 6 violas, 6 cellos, 6 double basses and 6 brass instruments, and the choral women group is written on 6 voices.
The part of the soloist uses a technique of micro-intervals, keeps the accents of Latin scansion, and the melodic profiles recuperate an ancient melodic universe, deduced from the later Byzantine and Gregorian songs, since it is impossible for them not to have borrowed something from ancient songs.
The orchestral writing uses an original technique of treating the bundle of sounds.
- Theodor Grigoriu
The text of the work is taken from a fragment of the 3rd Elegy from Ovid’s Tristia. It is a long epistle in which the poet sensing his near end, addresses his wife, asking her to bury him in the ground of Rome. He even hallucinates and believes he sees his wife on the shore heights and desperately calls out to her.
In the chosen fragment, there is the famous epitaph, engraved on the pedestal of his statue in the city of Constantza:
Hic ego qui iaceo, tenerorum lusor amorum,
ingenio perii naso poeta meo.
At tibi, qui transis, ne sit grave, quisquis amasti
dicere: Nasonis molliter ossa cubent!
I, who lie here, the singer of youthful love,
Naso the Poet, have perished because of my talent.
And you, passer-by, if you have ever loved, don’t find it hard
to say: may Naso’s bones rest in peace!
The work is sung in Latin, but the score comprises a literal tentative translation into Romanian of every lyric.
Number 6, deduced from the Latin hexameter, is the parametrical number of the work, from the composition of the modes used to the 6-beat pulse, constant throughout the music. The soloist (the poet) is accompanied by an ensemble made up of 6 violas, 6 cellos, 6 double basses and 6 brass instruments, and the choral women group is written on 6 voices.
The part of the soloist uses a technique of micro-intervals, keeps the accents of Latin scansion, and the melodic profiles recuperate an ancient melodic universe, deduced from the later Byzantine and Gregorian songs, since it is impossible for them not to have borrowed something from ancient songs.
The orchestral writing uses an original technique of treating the bundle of sounds.
- Theodor Grigoriu