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- Theodor Grigoriu
The Modal Column (1985)
(Columna Modala)- Editions Musicales Transatlantiques (World)
Programme Note
The Modal Column is a cycle of paired pieces for piano, starting from the classical structure- prelude-fugue - used by Bach in Das wohltemperierte Klavier. The modes that are being used have a relatively simple octavizing structure, hence an almost infinite variety of combinations that can generate a large number of pieces, impossible to exhaust by a composer. Therein lies the idea of a column, in the sense given by Brancusi, i.e. an endless succession of modules.
In the vision of the author, the mechanism of the mode is a secondary (ancillary) aspect, the primary goal is deciphering the ethos incorporated in it.
The prelude-fugue structure hypostatizes the musical discourse at the two possible extremes. free-constructed. While Romanian music rules in free areas, like any old music with an (especially oral) tradition, the constructed pieces start from Dutch (Flemish) or Venetian polyphony, which precedes the idea of fugue, understood as a technology of the movement (dynamics) of sound, after the models of Giovanni Gabrieli or Ockeghem.
The Modal Column is first of all the presentation of a melodic world but, as the subtitle indicates, also an investigation into the ethos of Romanian music.
The forms in which the pieces are thought are simple, non-ostentatious, the whole cycle being in fact a musical workshop, whose better parts may be worth including in ampler works. Before the succinct description of the six couples in Books I and II, a few observations, necessary from a musicological point of view:
1. The modes are rich in nostalgia, with even graver nuances in the livelier movements.
2. It is well-known, that all the columns - Egyptian obelisks, ancient ornamental columns - have scenarios engraved on them. Trajan's Column describes the wars against the Dacians and their defeat. George Calinescu says, "Trajan's Column is beautiful, but let us not forget that the Dacians are in chains on it." The Romanian melos is millennia-old and was but little influenced by historical events.
3. In The Modal Column there is a departure from some ideas of contemporary music, as the fourth, fifth and octave (intervals of great acoustic value) are reintroduced, but also from other technical and formal aspects originated in dodecaphonic music.
BOOK I contains three couples
COUPLE I
Cantus Planus is a Romanian "long song" commented with brief, closer or remoter, allusive musical events. The entrance to a world.
Polifonia (I) da campane a sonority study: from a conglomerate of sounds remained in resonance, the ear would like to distinguish melodies with a sense.
COUPLE II
Sentimento (I) is a piece in a free style, written as for a defective instrument with missing strings, keys or sounds, which must express itself with whatever means it has at its disposal. It is "un canto vecchio", accompanied "con tre suoni".
Polifonia (II) is a synthesis between Flemish polyphony and Giovanni Gabrieli's old Venetian polyphony.
COUPLE III
Impossibile continuo is a fantasy on a Romanian motif, aiming to control the play and fix it in the memory.
Invenzione con eterofonia (I) opposes a concrete world to a fantastic one, which preexists in the former, in embryo stage.
BOOK II also contains three couples:
COUPLE IV
Intonazione pian e forte has the aspect of a prelude that seems to be played on two manuals, with varying intensities. From the emission of a music, the (objective or subjective) echo whimsically retains certain fragments.
Polifonia (III) - Passacaglie del silenzio is a slow-tempo piece; the weakest impulses are used, feeling the silence, never absolute in the human psyche.
COUPLE V
Gioco antifonico capitalizes on short notes, appoggiaturas anticipating chords. The antiphony is carried by the most ephemeral elements, which replace chords in the sound hierarchy, making these gradually fade out.
Eterofonia (II) highlights a different conception of this syntactic possibility of music: the role of memory, from fidelity to the infidelity and forgetting of a matrix. The failure of human memory to intone with fidelity a melodic profile de-structures it into infinite aspects. The simultaneous intonation of the infidelities generates the heterophony. A few curtains of oblivion (tenta d'oblio) are used here that emphasize this aspect of matrix de-structuring in contact with adverse phenomena.
COUPLE VI
Meloepica marina is a tableau inspired by the contemplation of the sea. The fugitive impressions blend with heroic accents, and lived, read, or imagined dramas. Everything seems commanded by the spirit of a ballade.
Polifonia (IV) is a play on sound flashbacks from the Western Carpathians, with warning and communication functions. They are associated with shrieks or other sounds emitted by birds and animals which, all in all, constitute a universe of suggestions on the vitality of the environment. The music, of course, is of Virgilian inspiration.
- Theodor Grigoriu
In the vision of the author, the mechanism of the mode is a secondary (ancillary) aspect, the primary goal is deciphering the ethos incorporated in it.
The prelude-fugue structure hypostatizes the musical discourse at the two possible extremes. free-constructed. While Romanian music rules in free areas, like any old music with an (especially oral) tradition, the constructed pieces start from Dutch (Flemish) or Venetian polyphony, which precedes the idea of fugue, understood as a technology of the movement (dynamics) of sound, after the models of Giovanni Gabrieli or Ockeghem.
The Modal Column is first of all the presentation of a melodic world but, as the subtitle indicates, also an investigation into the ethos of Romanian music.
The forms in which the pieces are thought are simple, non-ostentatious, the whole cycle being in fact a musical workshop, whose better parts may be worth including in ampler works. Before the succinct description of the six couples in Books I and II, a few observations, necessary from a musicological point of view:
1. The modes are rich in nostalgia, with even graver nuances in the livelier movements.
2. It is well-known, that all the columns - Egyptian obelisks, ancient ornamental columns - have scenarios engraved on them. Trajan's Column describes the wars against the Dacians and their defeat. George Calinescu says, "Trajan's Column is beautiful, but let us not forget that the Dacians are in chains on it." The Romanian melos is millennia-old and was but little influenced by historical events.
3. In The Modal Column there is a departure from some ideas of contemporary music, as the fourth, fifth and octave (intervals of great acoustic value) are reintroduced, but also from other technical and formal aspects originated in dodecaphonic music.
BOOK I contains three couples
COUPLE I
Cantus Planus is a Romanian "long song" commented with brief, closer or remoter, allusive musical events. The entrance to a world.
Polifonia (I) da campane a sonority study: from a conglomerate of sounds remained in resonance, the ear would like to distinguish melodies with a sense.
COUPLE II
Sentimento (I) is a piece in a free style, written as for a defective instrument with missing strings, keys or sounds, which must express itself with whatever means it has at its disposal. It is "un canto vecchio", accompanied "con tre suoni".
Polifonia (II) is a synthesis between Flemish polyphony and Giovanni Gabrieli's old Venetian polyphony.
COUPLE III
Impossibile continuo is a fantasy on a Romanian motif, aiming to control the play and fix it in the memory.
Invenzione con eterofonia (I) opposes a concrete world to a fantastic one, which preexists in the former, in embryo stage.
BOOK II also contains three couples:
COUPLE IV
Intonazione pian e forte has the aspect of a prelude that seems to be played on two manuals, with varying intensities. From the emission of a music, the (objective or subjective) echo whimsically retains certain fragments.
Polifonia (III) - Passacaglie del silenzio is a slow-tempo piece; the weakest impulses are used, feeling the silence, never absolute in the human psyche.
COUPLE V
Gioco antifonico capitalizes on short notes, appoggiaturas anticipating chords. The antiphony is carried by the most ephemeral elements, which replace chords in the sound hierarchy, making these gradually fade out.
Eterofonia (II) highlights a different conception of this syntactic possibility of music: the role of memory, from fidelity to the infidelity and forgetting of a matrix. The failure of human memory to intone with fidelity a melodic profile de-structures it into infinite aspects. The simultaneous intonation of the infidelities generates the heterophony. A few curtains of oblivion (tenta d'oblio) are used here that emphasize this aspect of matrix de-structuring in contact with adverse phenomena.
COUPLE VI
Meloepica marina is a tableau inspired by the contemplation of the sea. The fugitive impressions blend with heroic accents, and lived, read, or imagined dramas. Everything seems commanded by the spirit of a ballade.
Polifonia (IV) is a play on sound flashbacks from the Western Carpathians, with warning and communication functions. They are associated with shrieks or other sounds emitted by birds and animals which, all in all, constitute a universe of suggestions on the vitality of the environment. The music, of course, is of Virgilian inspiration.
- Theodor Grigoriu