Philobiblon

VOLUME X, XI
2005 - 2006

Contents

Abstracts

THE CHAMBER-OPERA ORESTES-OEDIPUS BY CORNEL TARANU

István ANGI

 The study explores on a musicological and estetic level Cornel Taranu's chamber opera Oedipus & Orestes, composed after the libretto of Olivier Apert - the theater-opera Orestes & Oedipus, finished in 2000. Acknowledging the current function and significance of the genre of chamber opera, the paradigmatic value of Taranu's creation becomes prevalent within both, universal and Romanian contemporaneous music. Regarding the historical-structural mutations in the revitalization process of myths starting from George Enescu, Aurel Stroe and ending with Cornel Taranu, the author asserts that we are confronted with the face to face setting of two fundamental myths in order to explain each other as well as themselves in the signification of the senses of other times, representing new visions of modern musical interpretation. The analytical sections of the study illustrate the cathartic differentiation of the tragic faults of the main characters in the drama per musica. The way in which the main characters Orestes and Oedipus atone their faults at the end of the opera is the paradigm of loneness, the solitude of collective alienation. The musical rhetoric of the leit motifs illustrate how they pass by each other, speaking deaf monologues to which nobody answers. They both suffer equally deeply, but they can not utter their sufferance in order to be comforted. They live a lost present, always calling for the past, either in mad nightmares - Orestes - or, in longing for return - Oedipus ...

BÉLA BARTÓK AND THE IDEAL OF EUROPE LECTURE HELD AT THE HUNGARIAN INSTITUTE IN BUCHAREST ON MAY THE 3-RD 2004

Ferenc LÁSZLÓ

 The paper discusses the political message of Bartók’s work, concluding that Bartók was a pioneer of a new kind of patriotism and "europeanness". A patriotism which is essential in the building of Europe, and in the process of European integration where the harmony of neighboring countries is based on mutual knowledge and acknowledgment. Bartok's example for patriotism is unique and it manifests in his music, as he never accepted any kind of political role ...
 

MUSIC AND POETRY WITH GEORGE ENESCU

Mircea POPA

 The paper reveals the productive interconnection of poetry and music. Romanian literature abounds in a great variety of poetry dedicated to music. Poetry inspired by big composers' music, and reversely, music written on poetic inspiration. The connection between music and poetry is exemplified by Proust's Vinteuil's sonata which was inspired by the music of Enescu or the poetry of Louis Bastien, a french poetess, who dedicated many verses to Enescu. Some of which - Anniversaire and Le Salon - are quoted at the and of the paper, along with an article from 1912 that appeared in the Tribuna journal, and which displays a letter of Enescu addressed to two personalities of the philharmonic society from Arad.

ASTROLABIUM

Pavel PUŞCAŞ

The author describes a yet unexplored music-manuscript from the sixteenth century which is to be found in the mixed stock of the Teleki-Bolyai Library in Târgu-Mures. The manuscript is located in a colligate containing works from eight differerent scientifical areas - some printed, others written by hand. The twenty pages of the musical manuscript contain thirteen unique works of different letter styles. The pieces are motets on 3-5 voices in Latin on specific renaissance vocal style. Nr.6 and Nr.9 are predominantly instrumental. The mansucript was assembled between 1520 - 1540, and in 1579 it was bound into the colligate.

THE BODY ANIMAL AND HUMAN AS A SIMILE: ARISTOTELIAN AND GALENIC ANATOMY IN LATE MEDIEVAL BOOKS OF MUSIC THEORY AND PRACTICE, CA. 1200-1350*

Luminiţa FLOREA

Music theorists of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries borrowed concepts, terminology, and illustrations from tracts on anatomy, surgery, dissection, and treatment used at the medical schools in Paris, Bologna, and Padua. Arranged hierarchically according to function, location, and level of performance, internal organs, fluids, and systems were used in cleverly constructed parallels to clarify the meaning of music theory concepts for a readership that would have been quite familiar with contemporary medical lore. Thus Perseus and Petrus discoursed on the brain, skull, the heart, and the arterial system to explain the structure of the medieval hexachord; Johannes Grocheio (Grocheo) dwelled on the respective functions of the heart, liver, and brain when prescribing composition rules for motets and organa; and Marchetto of Padua went to extreme interpretive lengths when describing the anatomy of the heart to clarify the role of proprietas in mensural notation.

MUSIC AS LOVE - ON SOME STRANGE FRAGMENTS OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MUSICAL SPECULATIONS

Lóránd RIGÁN

The paper attempts to sketch a picture of avatars of the platonic god Eros in a collage of accidentally chosen texts and interpretations. The pieces of the puzzle could be loosely called musical theories of platonic inspiration and are held together by the same basic philosophical intuition. Beginning with the works of a medieval author, Boethius, and then dwelling on its splendid rebirth in the time of Renaissance, Eros is manifested as an answer to the classical question quid est musica?. The collage of the presented texts links to philosophy, which is Love, which is Harmony, which is Music – and Music as Love is a whole, not only as the sum total of its components, but also in a way in which the components all exemplify Eros in their sundry interrelations on higher and lower levels of cosmological, natural and human activity.

ALCHEMY AND MUSIC

Ioan Mihai COCHINESCU

 The paper deals with the connection of alchemy and music in the spiritualistic musical composition of Michael Maier: Atalanta Fugiens. The piece is based on the myth of the metamorphosis of Atalanta and Hippomenes. The author found in this myth the most suitable symbols to alchemy, composing a series of fugues for three voices. A principal characteristic of this music is its auxiliary feature, since it is composed as background for concentration or meditation. Thus Atalanta Fugiens can be regarded as the result of musical alchemy, and bears the roots of the Baroque as a literary-graphical-musical composition. Michel Maier’s work grounds new musical philosophical concepts in pursuit of the metaphysics of universal harmony.

MUSIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN THE ROMANIAN SOCIETY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Avram ANDEA

The majority of the Romanian intellectual society considered music a valuable and useful instrument for education and acknowledged it as favorable for the development and improvement of the individual. Music stopped being a mere auxiliary to religion, and musical education began to cut off from moral education, acquiring a strictly esthetic basis. The instruments (violas, violins, wire strings for these, fine bows, "claviers", "fortepianos", guitars) were acquired from abroad, brought by merchants from Vienna, Leipzig, Pest, Neukirchen. Though somewhat delayed in comparison with the West, the progressively "enlightening" Romanian society gradually integrated into the pace of the European development. Boyars and merchants were concerned with, and engaged in the new innovating flux, which gave rise not only to social homogenization in terms of wealth, but also a spiritual one of those who shared the same cultural aspirations and musical tastes.

KUNST UND FEST

Vasile PĂDUREAN

 At the ancient Greeks, Nietzsche seeks a way of thinking other than the metaphysical. Next to the pre-Socratic thinkers, Greek art (tragedy) as living art proves paradigmatic for non-metaphysical philosophy. The feast proves to be the original relation to understanding tragedy. The festive encounter between Man and Existence occurs in celebration. From a phenomenological point of view, to celebrate means: to be free, to sing, to dance, to become a "work of art". The opposition of the feastly and the ordinary leads us to the rift between "questionable" and aesthetically "justified" existence. This relation to existence binds art and celebration in an existential manner. Tragedy arises from the Dionysian goat's condition of ecstatic transformation (Dionysian choir) - from the festivity that forms in the "spirit of the music". Tragedy plays the feastly manifestation of life on stage. Man justifies himself in the tragic manifestation as aesthetic appearance, in so far as he understands that there is no other "justification" for life other than appearance per se. In this manner, the living art proves to be the way to the "justification" of existence. The experience of art remains paradigmatic for Nietzsche's philosophy, because thinking for Nietzsche means not the knowledge of truth, as with metaphysics, but rather a way to the fulfilment of existence.

THE CHANCES OF AN "OPEN" METAPHYSICS A DIALOGUE WITH JAN PATO?KA

Cecilia LIPPAI

 The main issue of the paper is the question of the contemporaneous chances of metaphysics. This question arises through a special analysis of Ian Patocka's ideas, which by validating the principle of opennes delineates the possibility of a new metaphysics, the essential feature of which is the openness that does not allow any kind of dogmatic finality, or any kind of final answers, conclusions. On the contrary, its main principle is to continuously maintain the state of quest and question. Open metaphysics does not inspire to transcend being, but it attempts to question beyond the actual, to take on that authentic openness that in fact could mean the validation of man's freedom that is the freedom of the endless questions, through which man would always aspire beyond its boundaries. This interpretation of Patocka's philosophy also elucidates the fact that open metaphysics represents that productive mental environment from which the Czech philosopher's subjective phenomenology and ontology of movement spring. Moreover, beyond its theoretical significance it leads from the openness of existence through the openness of spirit to the openness of life itself, to such a practical philosophy that is the foundation of responsible actions as well as of a rich, versatile and active life.

"THE NIGHT OF SUBSTANCE" - OR THE TIME-TRAP OF MUSIC (A 19-TH CENTURY COMMENTED TEXT)

András MÉSZÁROS

 What we have here is a "text-trap", a philosophical bounce that unfolds itself from line to line and tricks the curious reader. We have an essay from an unknown author, Sándor Tsúszó - Tsúszó meaning Slider, and this is where the Time-Trap begins. And it ends with music. It's interesting. Read it and see it yourself!
"... it is but a joke, as any other philosophy"
Hermann Hesse
 

MUSIC AND LITERATURE IMPRESSIONS AND NOTES OF AN INVETERATE MUSIC-LOVER

Alin Mihai GHERMAN

 Music and literature are interrelated and the scale of this interrelatedness varies from one literary genre to another. The paper discusses the possible relations between music and literature and it explores the existence of musical language as such. Roman Jakobson asserts that music has its syntax and morphology, but it has lost its vocabulary, turning thus music into a universal language. Ferdinand de Saussure claims that musical language should have the same dichotomic structure as any language: the signifier always refers to the signified. But in music the signified is mainly emotional, and only to a lesser degree notional. Similarly, in literature the constitutive element is also dichotomy. These are the tracks in which the author entwines his impressions and notes.

THE MUSICALITY OF MAKING PHILOSOPHY OR KARL JASPERS BETWEEN WEST AND EAST

István KIRÁLY V.

The paper tries to grasp and acquire mainly with the terminological and methodological instruments of the musical - primarily symphonic - thematisation, of the musical composition, Karl Jaspers's philosophical-mental horizons. Namely those typically jaspersian tensions and impulses, which in their connections to the Encompassing and to Existence are apparently far from them - turning back (and forth) to the oriental and western metaphysics of Sound and Light. While the "philosophical problems" elevated into themes, now start to interweave into spectacle (spectaculum) and - along this - they open up as ciphers. Concomitantly they do not send us - western thinkers - beyond the World, but contrarily, they attach us to the communicative responsibility towards the world, to ourselves respectively to others.
 

DEBUSSY-RAVEL PARALLELS IN THE MIRROR OF MODERN ARTISTIC TRENDS (MODE OF REPRESENTATION - ARTISTIC TREND - STYLE)

Attila FODOR

 The present study is an investigation about the main stylistic and esthetic characteristics of musical impressionism. The controversial presence of impressionism in music (it has only one - or a few - recognized representative, Claude Debussy; possibly Ravel and Respighi) determined us to examine the esthetic specifics of the modern tendencies in the mirror of the esthetic-stylistic sense of the concepts of way of depicting, tendency and style. The specificity of the system structure and configuration of the esthetic values reflected in modern musical creations, appears nuanced in the creation of the two main personalities of modern tendencies: Debussy and Ravel. We defined as the base of comparison the following stylistical-esthetical specifics: doubling, hexaphony, relation solo-texture, ostinato, leading-elements, contrasts etc. Beside the presence of a few stylistical-esthetical similarities between the creation of the two composers, and the other artistic branches (above all pictorial art) we also observed some major differences.

LANDMARKS FOR ALTERNATIVE JAZZ IDENTITIES IN THE WAKE OF TOTALITARIANISM

Virgil MIHAIU

 In the beginning jazz was an Afro-American import. In those European countries that were subjected to the trauma of totalitarianism jazz acquired an aureola of martyrdom becoming the symbolism of underground resistance. The appearance of jazz orchestras was considered concealed reaction to oppression through the expression of national identity. Hence jazz lost its originally entertaining function and metamorphosed into a sound metaphor for liberty. By the early 1960s, all over Europe there already existed a conscious generation of jazzmen, able to assert each country's identity under the broad spectre of this cosmopolitan music. The Azerbaijani mugam, the Romanian doina, the Swedish visa, the Spanish flamenco and the Portuguese fado are paradigms of "interbreeding" jazz with the national musical ethos and of the formation of an own approach in jazz, based upon autochtonous tradition.

IN BETWEEN PLACES OF REMEMBRANCE AND REALMS OF MEMORY: THE 15-YEARS COMMEMORATION OF THE ROMANIAN REVOLUTION IN TIMISOARA

Sidonia GRAMA

This study is devoted to the commemorative practices and the sites of memory of the 1989 Romanian revolution. It has resulted from a multi-sited fieldwork experience through Timisoara, Bucharest, and Cluj occasioned by the fifteenth public celebration of the founding event of the Romanian post communist democracy. We hereby propose an oral history and cultural anthropology analysis which is methodologically based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with participants at the commemoration. We have closely followed the itinerary and the pace of this public celebration attempting to a thick description, in order to scrutinize the world of meanings that the commemorative gestures and the memory sites of Timisoara spread out. The historical events of December 1989 are seen through the lenses of the current stakes of the end of 2004; a year marked by the particular political context of the recent parliamentary and presidential elections held in November in Romania, by the judicial context of prescription which was going to be applied to some crimes of the revolution, and by the perennial religious context of Christmas Eve. The theoretical hypothesis we subscribe to is, that spaces of remembering - which are often traumatic in the case of the Romanian revolution - are converted into sites of memories only if there is a political will of memory to erect them, as well as recurrent cultural practices to ritually reactivate their meanings. The paper outlines the manner in which a tensional proximity of these different contexts, political, cultural, social, interfere with the commemorative practices, and with the socially (re)organizing modalities of the collective memories of the revolution. By the fact of "having been there", in the very tradition of cultural anthropology, we aim at an inner, intimate knowledge of a social reality which would challenge the master narratives on the revolution as simplifying politically charged versions of the past. We also wish, in the very tradition of oral history, to give voice to those narratives that would yield different untold or less told histories of the revolution, or would reveal hardly visible discourses on the political scene.

HUMOR IN THE MIRROR OF MUSICAL COMPARISONS THE CIRCULAR ANALYSIS OF ALBERT MÁRKOS' TORSO I

István ANGI

 Abstract According to the premise of the author the circular analysis of Márkos Albert's Torso I may denote at least a binary starting point in the musical understanding of the esthetic field. It equally opens up the opportunity of re-thinking the theory of musical humor as well as the theory of the basic structures of the musical image. Nevertheless it also develops the hermeneutics of the present work from the phenomenon to the essence. The conclusion is that the basis of humor is nothing but the deprival - striking, even if expected - of the already negative phenomenon of that which does not belong to it. It is interesting that in the case of musical humor the presence of the accompanying emotions is fundamental. These are the musical alternatives of laughter. The humor of the Torso I is a whimsical kind of humor; it is the grimace of a distorted laughter which does not bear the easement of the outburtsing laughter. The study yields a detailed introspection into the workshop of creating comparisons. It turns into sight that musical comparison also derives from analogies. But analogies always go beyond simple juxtaposition. It implies the inner correlativeness of its components: similarity between the elements. While the metaphor is based on transition and transfer of meaning, the comparison comes from the sometimes flexible, sometimes punctual juxtaposition of contrasting elements. The Torso I builds up its comparisons from five metaphors. One leading metaphor guides the appearance of the other four counter-metaphors. The circular analysis standing in the opposition of ideal versus torso leads through the labyrinth of the branch arts to a series of associations that are found on the paradigm axis in order to ultimately cuddle us back into the center of the meanings roused by these branch arts. Hence a final conclusion regarding the message of the Torso I ends with a rhetoric question, which bears in a concealed manner the affirmative answer: ’is it not the actual content itself, the basic quality of the Distorted which always defies (and wins over) the Ideal which resounds as an esthetic program in the Torso title?".

STACCATO SINGING - A NEW METHOD IN THE EDUCATION OF TONE-DEAF CHILDREN

Dorina CREŢ

 This paper is part of my doctoral thesis now in progress, and its subject is the evaluation of the basic musical aptitudes, sense of rhythm, hearing, and musical memory of a special category of subjects, the inaccurate singers (who have no musical ear), as well as the elaboration of an educational program based on a new method in the correction of vocal production, the "staccato method".

VIRGIL VĂTĂŞIANU AND THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY IN CLUJ (1925-1947)

Stelian MÂNDRUŢ

The paper follows the activity of the librarian and doctor in art history Virgil Vătăşianu at the Cluj University Library. He took part in various activities from physical work in the deposit to merit-based endeavors as the rearrangement of the subject catalogue. The years productively spent in Cluj and Rome display the activity of the intellectual constantly concerned about his own situation around books and culture.

ELECTONIC JOURNALS: THEIR DEVELOPMENT IN DIFFERENT BRANCHES OF SCIENCE

Alice KELLER

This paper deals with the development of electronic journals in different branches of science. After a brief introduction to the emergence of the learned journal as the speaking tube of particular disciplines, the paper focuses on the development history of the recently appeared e-journals. However, the electronic journals have become widely accepted and favoured in all disciplines due to their high user-friendly features. A survey on the history of development of the electronic journals demonstrates that the new medium could not establish equally simply and rapidly in all the disciplines. After a content-analysis of in the most important Pioneer projects of the 80’s, the paper scrutinizes in the first place the trends of the last decades. The registry of the American Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion Lists displays the developments of the first half of the 90's. For the second half of the 90's the Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek (EZB) of the Universitätsbibliothek Regensburg has emerged as the most important database. Each survey distinguishes the developments of the branch of digital parallel publications and the branch of simple online-journals. The retrospectively digitalized journals should also be taken in consideration, which in the last eight years have gained increased importance. A debate on the significance of the online-journals rounds the paper off.

ANOTHER ASPECT OF MUSIC

Victor CENUŞE

In March 2005 have passed fifteen years since the inauguration of the Mediateca audiovisual department of the Octavian Coga County Library. The paper offers the description of this section along with a case study that assigns a deeper and more concrete representation of this "aspect of music". The Mediateca offers its users documents both on traditional and on electronic support and it is destined for all categories of users. The author offers a statistics according to sex, occupation, age, type of support, content, as well as a sum-up of the proportions of demand/supply. As a conclusion he asserts that the statistics reveal, as a general image, the demands of the public from the latest music for entertainment as the top of the demand, to folk music at the bottom of the list.

SUBJECT AND GENRE ANALYSIS OF ROMANIAN LIBRARY SCIENCE LITERATURE: FOR BOOKS PUBLISHED BETWEEN 1945-2003

Ana Maria CĂPÂLNEANU

The purpose of this survey is to analyze - scientometrically and bibliometrically - the Romanian literature of librarianship and information science, published between 1945-2003 in book format, in order to reveal the degree of the de facto contribution of this literature to the acknowledgement, affirmation and strengthening - or perhaps, weakening - of the librarian profession in Romania. Our study represents, in fact, a hermeneutic incursion into the historical and internal resorts of the profession and its literature, attempting to reveal the manner in which the Romanian authors have approached the issues, that is, through the genre descriptors - precisely conferred to each of the 430 bibliographic references - on the one hand, and the main subject fields of the decades, that are fixed in the survey by subject descriptors, on the other. The stages of this survey - investigation for documents retrieval, compilation of the analytic bibliography as basis for the survey, the bibliometrical calculation and result data analysis - outline a social and professional approach, by means of critical analysis and evaluation of the Romanian literature of librarianship - considered also as result of a social-cultural factors complex, and through a thourough research of its dynamics, its values system, and the social position that it is associated with.