George Enescu
Born 1881, Liveni, Romania; died 1955, Paris, France
Trois Mélodies sur Poèmes de Fernand Gregh, Op. 19 (1916)
George Enescu was a child prodigy who became an exceptional violinist, pianist, conductor, composer and teacher. He studied in Vienna, where he met Brahms in 1894, and in Paris, where he studied with among others, Gabriel Fauré. His compositions combine the influence of Romanian folk music, the Viennese style of Brahms and the French style of Fauré. Enescu was known for his compositional steadfastness: Not only did he allow his works the chance to mature for years (most notably, in the case of his opera Oedipe, for which he spent twenty-five years writing and rewriting), but also acknowledging very few compositions, leaving many complete and incomplete works aside.
Enescu entered the Vienna Conservatory at the age of seven, studying with Joseph Hellmesberger Jr., Robert Fuchs and Sigismund Bachrich. He continued his studies at the Paris Conservatoire studying violin with Martin Pierre Marsick, harmony with André Gédalge, and composition with Jules Massanet and Gabriel Fauré. Enescu’s classmates in Fauré’s composition class included Maurice Ravel and Florent Schmitt. He completed his studies at the Conservatoire in 1899, and was awarded the first prize for violin playing.
He made his conducting debut in 1923 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and continued to make guest conducting appearances with various American orchestras. In 1936 he was in the running to replace Toscanini as the permanent conductor of the New York Philharmonic. He maintained dual residency in Romania and Paris, but fled to Paris (where he remained until his death) after the Soviet occupation of Romania.
Enescu wrote in all genres, his most important works being the two Romanian Rhapsodies, the opera Oedipe, and his suites for orchestra. His extraordinary musical talent was once commented on by the esteemed cellist Pablo Casals, who said, “He is the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart.”
The poetry used for Enescu’s Trois Mélodies sur poèmes de Fernand Gregh is by the French poet Fernand Gregh (1873-1960), who was also a critic and member of the Académie Française. He was associated with the literary school of Humanism which never fully developed, but the aesthetic is found liberally in his prose. Enescu’s settings present the rich use of layers of melodic lines in a parlando style which is evocative of Romanian folk music.
Rain
Slow, rainy night in July!
I hear the rain in the distance fall in the dark, drip by drip…
A wind, humid and fresh, ruffles the branches.
All the dogs are silent in the distant hamlets.
All the smells of the day are dead under the leaves:
You only smell the odor of the moist greenery.
Oh sweetness, oh immense mystery of the night!
Not a star in the sky; no singing, no steps, no noise.
Only, on a background of indefinite murmurs,
the gentle dripping of the rain in the treetops.
The earth is a garden, closed and silent,
A grove, dark and warm, sleeping under the skies,
Where nothing lives, if not the smooth sound
and numberless drops of rain scattered in the shade.
The musical silence
In the silent song of a marble flute
which murmurs under the nimble fingers of a satyr,
mouth open in a silent cry of delirium,
the satyrs and the marble nymphs danced.
And the sun glistened in the branches of a tree,
Golden like a murmur on the strings of a lyre;
And, in the calm air where the wind’s flute sighs,
A fawn laughed vaguely at the foot of a tree.
From the dark grass sprang the cry of the roses,
A harmony was scattered at the heart of things.
The silence was like a song with mouths closed;
The ray was a hymn and the voices were flames,
And all was silence like our souls,
And all was musical like our souls.
The flute to the horn
A horn whispers in the woods, distantly;
Flutes, by the sleeping lake, like voices,
Sweet, double, gossip a little,
Modulating the alternating responses
that lead a slow rhythm.
The one deep, the other more clear,
blend with the horn, slow down or accelerate
in the golden evening.
Then sometimes both cross their light plays,
like shepherds cross their fingers over their mouths.
They sing for a long time in the deep of night
their sweet double song of Spring, of the dove, and of hope;
Then, confounding their sister song which trembles again,
Die in the immense sweetness of the sonorous horn…
And those two songs, one more ardent, the other sweeter,
This is our souls responding to our essence;
This is first your soul and mine singing a little,
And struggling first like a duel, the double flute;
This is your soul, sweet and feminite,
And this is my soul, more sonorous and sadder, like a man,
Uniting like the two unite amongst the rumor of the extinguished horn,
These tender flute who die in distant accord.
George Enescu
Born 1881, Liveni, Romania; died 1955, Paris, France
Cello Sonata No. 2 in C Major, “Buruiana” (“The Weed”), Op. 26 (1935)
Despite the fact that Enescu’s two cello sonatas are published under the same opus number, almost forty years passed between the two compositions. The second cello sonata represents Enescu’s mature style, both harmonically and melodically. While published in C Major, the sonata regularly shifts tonality and is rarely in the advertised key, but manages to maintain a sense of established tonality. The second sonata is dedicated to the renowned cellist, Pablo Casals.