Dan Dediu
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Biografie
Zu seinem Werk
Werkbetrachtung
wurde 1967 in Brila, Rumänien, geboren, und besuchte die
Musikakademie, wo er Komposition Stefan Niculescu und Dan Constantinescu bis
1989 studierte. Es schloß sich eine Gasthörerschaft an der Musikhochschule
Wien an (Komposition bei Francis Burt, Notation bei Günter Kahowez, elektronische
Musik bei Wilhelm Zobl und Bruno Liberda). Außerdem war er ordentlicher
Hörer an der Universität in den fächern Philosophie, Metaphysik,
Ästhetik und klassische Sprachen.
Verschiedene Stipendien, wie das Herder-Stipendium der Alfred-Toepfer-Stiftung,
Hamburg, und das Alban-Berg-Stipendium, Wien, erleichterten Dediu die kompositorische
Arbeit, die bei internationalen Wettbewerben prämiert worden ist (Budapest,
Dresden, Wien, Bukarest, Ludwigshafen).
Er ist aktives Mitglied des rumänischen Komponistenverbandes, Doktor der
Musikwissenschaft und unterrichtet vorläufig Komposition und Formanalyse
an der Musikuniversität in Bukarest.
1994 wurde Dediu vom Pariser Institut IRCAM für einen Monat eingeladen,
ein kompositorisches Projekt zu entwickeln.1997-98 bekam Dediu ein Fellowship
der New Europe College - Institute for Advanced Studies in Bukarest und gastierte
einen Monat im Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. 1999 fanden Komponistenportraits
in Wien-Modern und in Musik-Hörwelten Hamburg statt. 1999 leitete er auch
das Festival für Neue Musik in Bukarest.
Sein Oeuvre umfaßt u.a. vier Symphonien und mehrere Orchesterstücke,
eine Oper, Gotik-Konzertzyklus, Streichquartette, Trios, Klaviermusik, Lieder,
Tonbandmusik und elektronische Musik.
The composer DM Pedi;u (borm in Bräila in 1967) is an energetic, representative
artistic persagalnty :in Ramanian composition, in direct contact with the musical
reality abroad. His composiion studies at the Academy of Music in Bucharest,
with $tefan Niculescu arid Dan Constantinescu, were carried an at the Hochschule
für Musik in Vienna, wäh Francis Burt. He also attended classes of electronic
music arid electroacoustics in Vienna (1990-1991) and Paris ? IRCAM (1994) arid
was invited at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (1998). He was a Herder (Toepfer
Foundation) and Alban Berg scholar (Vienna, 1990-1991), as well as a New Europe
College fellow (Bucharest, 1997-1998). His record is compieted by numerous national
arid international composition prizes, as well as many performances of his works
in concerts. His creation goes hand in hand with his pedagogical activity at
the University of Music in Bucharest, where he teaches composition, musical
forrns and analyses.
A general review of Dan Dediu's creation indicates a pervading feature: the
diversity of the genres approached, ranging from symphony arid instrumental
concertos to opera, ballet, chamber arid vocal music, electronic music. The
apparent "instability" in choosing the genre arid musical form frame comes from
the inner need to adapt the sonorous matter to a deeply sensitive content. lt
is in this spirit that this compact disc emerges, delimiting a phased chamber
music segment against a longer period of time (since 1989 up to the present).
The String Quarlet No. 3 Op. 22, written in 1990, is structured in four movements.
The coherence of the whole sonorous architecture is based an the development
of three acoustic "pattems". At the Same time, the introductive bars of the
first movement, as well as the coda of the quartet ? very much akin to the former
in terms of musical material ? contain the inner sections just like the covers
of a book. The second movement, a "quasi Passacaglia", seeks possibilities of
combining the musical syntaxes ? the "one layer melody" arid heterophony. Against
the background of dominating sounds arid essentialised harmonies, an homage
to the composer Luigi Nono in his last period of creation comes to the fore.
The third movement is defined characterologically as a grotesque?dramatic scherzo,
the outcome of a hybrid sonorous universe, extracted from the characteristics
of Byzantine music (as regards the melodic line), of post?serial music arid
of the early 20th century Viennese "Jugend?Stil". The final section of the work
summarises all the previous technical ideas, globalising them in a generalised
heterophonic texture.
Four very short pieces make wp eh, e work Sphinxes pour une Symphonie, Op. 12,
for voice (baritone?tenor) and piano (1989). They point out various composition
procedures coming from the high European vocal tradition, as well as from the
folk one, especially a particular use of the vocal "adomment" technique. In
the ferst miniature, the transfiguration of ornamental stylemes of the musical
baroque type, projected against a sonorous continuum of a heterophonic nature,
is achieved by means of the "throttled tremolo" technique. In the second piece,
the melody, shaped against a diatonic background, is inspired from the (Papadic?type)
melismatic melody of Byzantine chant combined with the Romanian folk glottal
singing technique. The third miniature welds hundreds of ornamental formulae
from various Romanian folk regions, the voice alternating between one?Sound
falsetto chant and normal bel?canto impostazione, resulting in a yellow tremolo
variant.The last piece resorts to the lowest voice register and altemates passages
of held notes with passages of quasi?instrumental virtuose. The whole work tries
to get to the essences, to simple truths, as mysteribus as the character that
embodies them.
Being part of a wider cycle of works commenting an Straussian themes, Don GiovannilJuan
? SonatOpera in due atti for violin and piano, created in 1995, is an example
of experiment with new musical forms of a synthetic type, whose main elements
are sections of the overture, air, duo, quartet or recitative type. The author's
personal style, füll of substance, as it emerges from this work, comes from
a harmonic, melodic, rhetorical composing system, springeng from inner necessities,
unchained from "fashionable" constraints, from prejudices. The music is lively,
it animates stylistic characters, cadences hidden in a trans?tonal context,
obsessive rhythms, poignant attack modes. As a matter of fact, the composer's
interest to create a hybrid, synthetic architecture, or, as he calls it, a concertopera,
sei?opera, symphopera, sonatopera (illustrated by Don GiovannilJuan) is justified
by the high poeticality degree of the musical expression following complex narrative
levels.
The miniature Griffon Op. 31 for viola and piano (1992) brings isorhythmics
to the fore, making use of the technique of "traps": each register is granted
several sonorous gestures (melody for one, effects for another, different ways
of attack for a third one a.s.o.). The musical material of the work represents
a combination of these gestures whereby the performer "enters" (or lets himself
caught in) something like a trap. The title alludes to the mythologicai character,
whom it tries to "sonorise", to catch in musical expression.
In an entirely different sphere of ideas and atmosphere, DE CAEGO Op. 69 for
6 clarinets (1997?98) uses few means to create well shaped sonorous images,
homophonic sonorous fields based an the expressively oriented controi of the
chordic chains, an the "pulsating" melody, an the "Gothic"?type dynamics (be
it glaring crescendo or descrescendo) and an the transfer of instrument?specific
writing to another instrument. One may notice "Choralvorspiel" composition techniques,
or procedures such as those coming from the Bugandese "mbira" (easy to spot
in the last ?section of the work, that of the "Soul / Breath"). Starting from
several extra?musical impulses, springing from phidosophically?loaded quotations,
De caelo tries to imagine a living Heideggerian space, at the same time describing
the fright after the latter's silencing as an object of our contemplation and
the delicacy of its descendance as a subject of the beauty we are pursuing.
The ensemble chosen for tuming such unsonorous, but existing forces, into music,
brbngs together two groups of three clarinets, placed an stage in an antiphonic
way, made up of one piccolo clarinet (E flat), three soprano clarinets in B
flat and two bass clarinets in B flat. The work was written in memory of Aristotle,
Averroes, Cremonini, Constantin Noica and all those who wrote treatises an a
sky that is not, but existS.
By the richness of artistic solutions in his works, the composer Dan Dediu can
be attached neither to one particular trend, nor to a certain generation of
Romanian creators. His innovating spirit goes hand in hand with the data offered
by tradition. Their synthesis is the result of choice rather than of deformation
or of irreconcilable rupture. Thus, cultural references to previous musical
works ? may they be classic, folkloric, bearers of different styles ?, the resort
to various techniques and syntaxes, the economy an d the coherence of the sonorous
material, as illustrated in the String Quartet, Sphinxes pour une Symphonie
or Don GiovannilJuan, melt into the bold discovery of new musical territories.
The universe thus delimited is peopled by picturesque characters (see the Gryphon
or the Sphynx) or lives an metaphysical impetuses in between the grotesque and
the sublime (as in De caelo). To put it shortly, a well defined personal attitude
in the tormented arena of today's music.
Antigona Radulescu
English version byMaria-Sabina Draga
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