Learning Kit No.

3 (3rd Year, Music EN)

March 25, 2020

George ENESCU (1881-1955)

1. Life and general presentation of style and creation

1. Key moments in his life

- George ENESCU – the most acclaimed Romanian musician: composer,
conductor, violonist, pianist and pedagogue (Yehudi Menuhin)
- He was a child prodigy (violinist) and revered by the foreign press as a
Romanian Mozart.
- Born in a middle-class rural family in Moldavia
- The 8th son and the first to survive childhood.
- Showed an early great musical talent
- Brought to Iași (Eduard CAUDELLA) by his parents to be musically tested.
Caudella advised his parents to sent him abroad to study music professionally
(1888, Vienna (he meets Brahms), 1895, Paris, studying with Massenet and
André Gédalge. Since 1896 he studies composition under Gabriel Fauré, being a
colleague of Florent Schmitt and Maurice Ravel).
- 1906 – begins touring in France as a violinist.
- 1916 – has a vivid concert activity in hospitals for soldiers during the WW1.
- 1918 – becomes a honorary professor at the Conservatory in Iaşi
- 1928 – begins teaching at Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris (teaches violin
performance of Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms).
- 1930 – teaches at Harvard
- 1931 – completed his only opera (tragedie lyrique) Oedipe (premiered in Paris,
1936)
- 1937 – marries Maria Rosetti, princess of Cantacuzino, whom he had loved for
two decades.
- 1946 – during a tour in USA he begins his exile.
- 1955 – dies in Paris
- 1958 – Bucharest – the first edition of the George Enescu Festival

 Enescu’s creation:
- His style is characterizeb by the classic-romantic synthesis (eary works,
deeply influenced by Brahms and Wagner, the Romanian Rhapsodies,
the Romanian Poem, up to the 1st Symphony), combined with
impressionistic (3rd Orchestral Suite, tone-poem Vox Maris etc.) and
even neoclassical features (ex. Piano suites op. 3, op. 10) as well as the
National Romanian style, expressionist
- Bach, Beethoven, Brahms

- The use of folkloric sources (rural and urban) is manifesting along his
whole creation, in different shapes (musical quotation, followed by
stylized folklore. The last stage in reworking folklore in his music is the
so-called sublimed folklore).

- There are 3 stages in his output (33 opuses), delineated by the evolution
of his style and also by the stage of reworking folklore:

o 1897-1905 – post-romantic musical language and thought,

wagnerian and brahmsian stylistic influences, along with late
romantic French style features:
 The 2 Romanian Rhapsodies, Romanian Poem, The String
Octet, first 2 Violin sonatas, The Concertante Symphony for
cello and orchestra
o 1905-1916: - late romantic and National style synthesis,
extremely prolific period:
 First two Orchestral Suites, First 2 Symphonies, Dixtuor
(Decet), first string quartet, 7 Songs on poems by Clement
Marot, 2nd and 3rd Piano suites, The Ghosts (Strigoii), an
unfinished oratorio for soprano, tenor, barytone and
orchestra, text by M. Eminescu (completed and reworked
by Cornel Ţăranu).
o 1916-1955: mature style period:
 Oedipe, 3rd Symphony, Piano sonatas, 3rd Sonata for piano
and violin „in Romanian character”, 2 Sonatas for piano and
cello, piano and violin suite Impressions d'enfance, String
quartets op. 22, 4th Symphony (reworked by Pascal
Bentoiu), 5th Symphony for tenor, female choir and
 orchestra (on a poem by M.  Eminescu)(reworked by Pascal
Bentoiu), the tone-poem Vox maris, the Chamber
Symphony for 13 solo instruments.

 Special features of Enerscu’s composing thinking and technique:

- National-Universal synthesis.
- Organic assimilation of rural and urban folklore into his musical language (de
ex. rubato, half-semitones, folkloric chromaticism, ornamentation, trichordal
and tetrachordal melodic structures)
- Cyclic thinking
- Thematic transformism
- Obsession for the sonata form and genre (see Cesar Franck). Attempted time
and again the synthesis of the form and genre of sonata.
- Continuous variation concerning microstructure
- Melody is built out of pre-pentatonic bricks, which are permanently morphing.
- Enlarged tonal-modal concept
- His main drive in the musical flow is counterpoint.
- Use of heterophony

Octuor (octet)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfxC0j9mbwQ (Enescu, String Octet,
op. 7, 1900)
00:00 - I. Très modéré 12:24 - II. Très fougueux 20:31 - III. Lentement
29:37 - IV. Mouvement de Valse bien rythmée

- Early work, dedicated to Andre Gedalge, his professor of counterpoint in

Paris
- Great mastery of counterpoint
- Synthesis of sonata form and genre (sonata form extended over all 4
movements)
- It is not set for 2 string quartets, but rather as a group of 4 violins, 2
violas and 2 cellos.
- Rich texture, density of musical flow
- The style is late romantic with some elements of modernity
- It does not use folkloric suggestions (Romanian and Gypsy)
- Musical ideas are cut into smaller bricks and recombined
- The work is unified by the cyclic element
- Heavy chromaticism and dissonances (NOT atonal)
- 4th movement - Mouvement de Valse bien rythmée – all themes are
recombined