ANNOTATIONS ON THE CONTEMPORARY SYMPHONY

Authors

• Adrian Iorgulescu For a while I have been preoccupied – from the composer’s perspective –, with the (sometimes polemic) academic debates on the trajectories and, evolutions in the area of orchestral music. I would like to make the initial and, necessary specification that I am making a clear distinction between symphonic, works and the symphony as a well defined musical species., The stances assumed in these debates (empirical or sophisticated,, supported by arguments or not) primarily focus on the analysis of the, symphony, which is justifiable if we reflect on its phenomenological, conceptual,, and stylistic impact, as well as on the value that it has proved and imposed on, the evolution of the art of sounds. I have noticed, for instance, opinions that, postulate – from the perspective of the former avant-garde – the “death” of the, symphony today, on the grounds that it represents an outdated matrix of, thought, “umbilically” connected to the parameters of a discourse and of an, ethos of classical, romantic, post-romantic or neoclassical filiation., Without going into details, it is certain that the above-mentioned thesis, stems from a portfolio of statements pertaining especially to the 6th-8th decades, of the past century, statements that constantly aimed to reform the fundaments, of the compositional system radically. This massive “makeover”, of exaggerated, proportions and consequences at times, focused both on the lexical,, morphological, and syntactic components, but it also indirectly affected the, insertion into the area of genres, species, and constructive (deconstructive), particularities., One specification: I think the elements of infra- and micro- structure do, not categorically influence the global physiognomy of an opus, and all the less so, its tonus, its potential of sensibility, such as the elements derived from strategies Author