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HYPERBOLIC SPACE AND VIOLETA DINESCU'S MUSICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE ‘WOMAN'S SOUL’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2023

Livia Teodorescu-Ciocanea
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Abstract

This paper proposes an approach to the representation of mental musical space, understood here as a mental ‘hologram’ of a musical structure created while composing or listening to a piece of music. Composers claim to ‘hear’ music in their mind and ‘see’ it in their spatial imagination; normally we see music graphically represented on two-dimensional staves, but we could mentally decode it in a three- or multi-dimensional space, and I argue that Violeta Dinescu's musical vision occupies a non-Euclidean imaginary musical space rather than the Western classical-music template. Dinescu's graphical design suggests a hyperbolic space, distorting the musical parameters accordingly. Two of her works are discussed: Gehen wir zu Grúschenka, for cello with voice ad libitum, and Herzriss – Aus deinem Herzen kannst du die Liebe nicht ausreißen, an opera for solo voice(s), percussion and cello. The first views the behaviour of musical parameters as if in an imaginary hyperbolic space; the latter exemplifies intertextuality in a cultural hyperbolic space. Both are metaphors of the woman's soul.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Information
Tempo , Volume 77 , Issue 306 , October 2023 , pp. 51 - 68
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Martin Anderson presentation of Myriam Marbe for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in October 2019.

2 Violeta Dinescu, Michael Heinemann and Roberto Reale (eds), Myriam Marbe, Archiv für osteuropäische Musik, 6 (BIS-Verlag: Oldenburg, 2022).

3 Britta Lübbers, ‘Die Tonkünstlerin’, Diabolo-Mox, Extrablatt, February 2022, pp. 4–5.

4 Houben, Eva-Maria (ed.), Violeta Dinescu (Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag, 2004)Google Scholar.

5 Violeta Dinescu, ‘Let's Go to Grúschenka! The Mystery of the Female Soul in Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov. A musical psychogram for cello with voice performed by Katharina Deserno’, programme note; composed for the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA) Symposium in Salzburg on the 200th anniversary of the birth of F. M. Dostoevsky, 13 November 2021, initiated and organised by Professor Birgit Hareß, Vice President of EASA and Professor of Slavic Literature and Cultural History, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XKjNrU8fkw&t=367s (accessed 10 July 2022).

6 Boden, Margaret A., ‘Conceptual Spaces’, in Milieus of Creativity. Knowledge and Space, vol. 2, eds Meusburger, P., Funke, J. and Wunder, E. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), pp. 235–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. ‘Spaces exist in the mind as well as on land and sea… they are abstract spaces, or styles of thinking… These mental spaces cover all domains of thought (and thoughtful action)… They enable us human beings to come up with ideas that are new, surprising, and valuable; they enable us to be creative’ (p. 235).

7 Quoted in Monty Adkins, ‘Nodalism and Creative Practice’, 2nd Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics and X, 26–27 June 2014, Porto, https://pure.hud.ac.uk/files/5863883/Nodalism_and_Creative_Practice.pdf (accessed 10 July 2022), p. 292. There is more about creativity in Boden, Margaret A.: The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990)Google Scholar.

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9 Grisey, Gérard, ‘Tempus ex Machina: A Composer's Reflections on Musical Time’, Contemporary Music Review, 2, no. 1 (1987), pp. 239–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 Violeta Dinescu, Let's go to Grúschenka!, Programme note.

12 Ibid.

13 Livia Teodorescu-Ciocanea, ‘Poetics of Hypertimbralism in Music’, Proceedings of the European Academy of Sciences & Arts, www.peasa.eu/poetics-of-hypertimbralism-in-music/ (accessed 30 April 2023).

14 Teodorescu-Ciocanea, Livia, ‘Timbre versus Spectralism’, Contemporary Music Review, 22, nos 1–2 (2003), p. 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On ‘inharmonicity’ see also Rose, François, ‘Introduction to the Pitch Organization of French Spectral Music’, Perspectives of New Music, 34, no. 2 (1996), pp. 8–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Earlier versions of this work were premiered as: Aus deinem Herzen kannst du die Liebe nicht ausreißen (solo voice with percussion and cello, 14 January 2005, Bonn, Christina Ascher (voice and percussion) and Christoph von Erffa (cello) and Herzriss (solo voice with percussion, 28 September 2005, Mannheim, Christina Ascher (voice and percussion)). The third version (2021) is called Herzriss – Aus deinem Herzen kannst du die Liebe nicht ausreißen (voice(s) (one or 5 voices), percussion and cello).

16 Violeta Dinescu, ‘Herzriss - Aus deinem Herzen kannst du die Liebe nicht ausreißen’, Programme note.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 For future performances of this version the composer intends to make appropriate changes in the melodic contour to fit different singers’ vocal ranges.

20 Eliade, Mircea, ‘Sacred Time and Myths’, in The Sacred and the Profane – The Nature of Religion, tr. Trask, Willard R. (New York: Harcourt Inc, 1959), pp. 68–95Google Scholar.

21 Who, whose people are you? And where is your birthplace? I am amazed that the magic potion does not transform you! For no mortal man has passed your spell who drank as soon as the wine slipped off his tongue. But you carry an indomitable heart in your bosom! Are you that Odysseus who, wandering around many shores, when he returns from Ilion in a swift ship, shall also come here, as the god with the golden rod tells me? (English translation by the author).

22 Milne, Andrew J., Laney, Robin and Sharp, David B., ‘Testing a Spectral Model of Tonal Affinity with Microtonal Melodies and Inharmonic Spectra’, Musicae Scientiae, 20, no. 4 (2016), pp. 465–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Sandell, Gregory J., ‘Roles of Spectral Centroid and Other Factors in Determining Blended Instrument Pairings in Orchestration’, Music Perception, 13, no. 2 (1995), pp. 209–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Ibid.

25 Violeta Dinescu, ‘Herzriss - Aus deinem Herzen kannst du die Liebe nicht ausreißen’, Programme note.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.