George Enescu (1881-1955) is known primarily today in conjunction with the world of
violin playing. Celebrated as a violin virtuoso throughout the capitals of Europe and North
America in the first half of this century, and later admired as a teacher of luminary talents
such as Yehudi Menuhin, Arthur Grumiaux, and Ida Haendel, Enescu exerted a
considerable influence on the developments of the international music scene. This was
nowhere more apparent than in Paris and Bucharest, cities in which Enescu spent most of
his life active as performer, conductor, and composer. As his career progressed, Enescu
dedicated an increasing amount of time and energy to composition, producing an
impressive list of works, many of which were of monumental proportions.
Contemporary with Bartok and Kodály, Enescu found himself caught in the current of
nationalism that asserted itself in Europe during the first decades of the twentieth century.
Seeking a personal, expressive idiom in which he could fuse the musical elements of both
Western tradition and his native Rumanian folk heritage, Enescu experimented with diverse
compositional trends and styles. Expanding the reaches of tonality with heightened
chromaticism, in which microtonal as well as modal inflections were both to play
significant roles, Enescu’s idiom evolved into a highly plastic language, comprising a great
variety of stylistic characteristics. In order to assimilate the heterogeneous elements into
one unified expression, Enescu relied on traditional compositional techniques such as
sonata form, cyclic thematic structure, and motivic development.
The focus of this paper is to examine to what extent these compositional techniques are
incorporated into his work and to direct attention to those elements, i.e., both structural and
non-structural, that were most distinctive of Enescu’s musical style. Owing to its
concentration of key stylistic elements and its stature as perhaps the most accomplished
piano composition in Enescu’s output, the Sonata for Piano in D Major, Op. 24, No. 3
(1934) will serve as model for this analytical study.
Chapter One provides by way of an introduction a brief overview of the formative years
in Enescu’s life and defines the position of the Sonata within the complete ceuvre.
Chapters Two, Three, and Four constitute the main body of the paper and contain
analyses of each of the Sonata’s three movements. In these chapters discussion revolves
around the more significant structural features of the work such as the overall cyclic design,
simultaneously examining the methods Enescu employs to integrate folk inflection
throughout the Sonata. Chapter Five comprises the summary. The most significant features of the Sonata are
recapitulated and parallels to numerous other works are drawn, in an attempt to present the
Sonata as a culmination of Enescu’s compositional style.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/3357 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Kvarnstrom, Jonas Erik |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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