Horatiu Radulescu

Works for Organ & for Cello
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Horatiu Radulescu 

 

Christe Eleison  ( 1986 )  op.69 
Orgel

Immersed in the Wonder  ( 1996 )  op.96 
Posaune und Cello

You-Tree Kalotrope ( 1984 / 2004 )
spektral gestimmtes Orgelpositiv

Intimate Rituals  ( 1985/89 )  op.63
Cello und Sound Icons

Amen  ( 1993-94 )  op.88
Orgel

 

 

Horatiu Radulescu galt lange Zeit als Geheimtipp in der Neue-Musik-Szene. Erst jetzt, zehn Jahre nach seinem Tod, erfährt sein Werk die Wertschätzung, die es verdient. Mode Records, das renommierte New Yorker Label, wird sein komplettes Œuvre auf CD herausgeben. Die vorliegende CD enthält sämtliche Werke für Orgel solo.

Die subtile Orchestrierung der Orgel, die sorgfältig ausgehörten Spieltechniken des Cellos und der exotischen Klang der Sound-Icons evozieren einen ätherischen Klangraum von transzendenter „Otherworldliness“.

jetzt erhältlich

 

Liner Notes

The creative path of the Romanian composer Horatiu Radulescu (1942-2008) can be seen as a multifaceted exploration of space – understood as sound space (the sound spectrum with his infinite harmonic series), as transcendental space, as inner space of the listeners mind as well as performing space. Since his youth, till the end of his life, he was attracted from sacred spaces, especially from cathedrals. In the early 1970s the Catholic Church of Saint-Saturnin in Champigny-sur-Marne was the place where Radulescu used to rehearse his highly experimental music with the Psyche Ensemble. At that time, he had recently moved from his hometown Bucharest to Paris.

Later, he spent a remarkable creative period working in the Church of Sacré-Cœur in the small town Villeneuve-dʼAscq in northern France, where his pieces Sensual sky and Do emerge ultimate silence were performed.

Quite a few works of Radulescu were conceived for specific spaces, not least because of their architectural and acoustical qualities. The large choral piece Do emerge ultimate silence (dedicated to his “spiritual father” Giacinto Scelsi) he wanted to be performed in the Pantheon, the most famous circular temple of the ancient Rome. In this way he tried to bring music outside of the concert halls. His attempt to find new places for performing his works was also connected with the aspiration to put the listener in another state of mind, which was the “single aim and reason to exist” for music, as Radulescu pointed out in his text-composition Sound Plasma – Music of the Future Sign (Munich 1975). Similarly to Giacinto Scelsi or Karlheinz Stockhausen, Radulescu understood the performances of his works as a kind of religious rituals. According to Radulescu, music is a “ritual of all senses & of the beyond senses”.

After Radulescu moved from France to Germany in the 1980s, it was above all the Speyer Cathedral that animated his musical imagination. Apart from the architectural grandeur and the glorious history of this Romanesque basilica, Radulescu was strongly impressed by its unique acoustics. For the Speyer Cathedral Radulescu wrote a large piece Mirabilia Mundi for orchestra, but also his first work for solo organ, Christe Eleison op. 69 (1986), commissioned by the International Music Days “Dom zu Speyer” together with the German organist Leo Krämer.

Christe Eleison is not only Radulescuʼs first work for organ, but also his first work for an equal-tempered instrument after a long pause of eighteen years (his piano sonata Cradle to Abyss was composed in 1968). The fact that he avoided the equal-temperament is totally coherent with the path he had begun in 1969 with Credo for nine cellos – his first composition that is based on the proportions of the harmonic series in a systematic way.

Over the years, Radulescu refined more and more his compositional style, but remaining faithful to the very core of his early musical poetic, that is to the idea of “sound plasma”. Radulescu wanted to achieve a special state of sound beyond equal temperament and beyond the separated categories of monody, homophony, polyphony and heterophony. The sounds have not to be used as single points or lines, but as living beings, eventually as an embodiment of the acoustic Whole. This embraces all kinds of audible elements (in the large range from the sine wave to the white noise) and even inaudible elements such as poetic texts and graphic symbols, whose silent reading can nevertheless influence the sound production. Through diverse compositional and performing techniques, Radulescu was able to produce complex chords of harmonics which sometimes surpass the limits of audibility, thus entering the “ultrasonic realm”.

Anyway, the encounter with the organ of the Speyer Cathedral marks a new period of his creative life, when he began to attempt a conciliation between the equal temperament with the plasmatic (or spectral) treatment of the sound. The paradoxical character of this undertaking was surely challenging for the composer, so that in the following years he composed several works for keyboard instruments, the three organ works presented on this compact disc as well as five more piano sonatas.
In Christe Eleison Radulescu tries to confer the tempered scale with a spectral flavour through the use of special chords which approximate the harmonic series as much as possible. He used to call these chords “spectral signatures”.
The piece begins with a very solemn and transparent five-part polyphony that moves like a slow procession of sound columns. The distance between registers increases gradually, so that an expansion of the acoustic space occurs, in correspondence with the architectural proportions of the church.

The global form of the composition represents one of the typical dramaturgical gestures of Radulescu: the transition from very high, ethereal sonorities to low, telluric sound masses, seeming to be a process of gradual incarnation of nearby dematerialized tones.
The principle of the dialogue between the sounds and the performance space is also highly significant for Radulescus next composition for organ, Amen op. 88 (1994), which one could briefly describe as an interplay between the tones and their echo in the cathedral space.
The piece was commissioned by the German organist Christoph Maria Moosman, who had a long lasting friendship and artistic exchange with Radulescu and is also the dedicatee of this work.

The title “Amen” goes back to Radulescu’s admiration for the Amen formula in Guillaume de Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame. (Indeed, Radulescu had a great passion for the masters of Medieval and Renaissance polyphony). Radulescu’s Amen can be understood as a pure embodiment of musical static, in which the sound masses figure out as huge monolithic blocks of a sonic architecture. The piece consists of 27 repetitions of the same fragment along the span of twelve minutes. The pitches of this central chord (which has much in common with the initial gesture of the Second Piano Sonata) are always the same, only dynamics and timbre have to be changed. With every new repetition, the narrow chord expands in a fulgurous way over eight octaves. This rapid and reiterated expansion can remind of the gleaming sonority of the shō, the mouth organ of the Japanese tradition. Each repetition of the musical cell is followed by measures of pause, in order to give the sound time for reverberating in the space. The number of these “void” measures increases continuously up to the golden ratio and than decreases again. Other interludes consist of small, improvised “micro-melodic” passages in the extremely high registers of organ, as well of two fragments with a so called “diffracted canon”, based on a colinda (a Romanian Christmas carol) of pure and simple melodic beauty in Lydian pentatonic mode. Since the beginning of 1990s Radulescu became more and more attracted by the traditional music of his homeland. Several colinde, doinas (other Romanian typical tunes) and even Byzantine hymns are to find in the compositions of that period, above all in his piano sonatas and in the concert for piano and orchestra The Quest. Once said Radulescu in a conversation: “I am more and more attracted from ancient sources. […] They are archetypes, sounding genetics. Certain melodies, which are “verified” by million people and by the history, are so beautiful… Like a stone, that has been caressed by the sea for ten thousand years. Its surface is smooth, perfect. […] The nature of acoustical phenomenons lives in the folklore”

Radulescu had a unique approach to folkloristic material, which can be followed on the example of Amen. He put the monodic line as a base of a canon, in which the same melody is to be performed with time shift in five different tempi according to five voices of the heterophonic texture. Thanks to this phase shifting, unexpectedly new melodic lines of alien beauty appear.

Radulescu wrote for Christoph Maria Moosman also another organ work as a part of the large composition Cinerum op. 108 (Liturgy for the Ash Wednesday) with the enigmatic title You tree kalorope III (1984-2004). As a part of the liturgy it has a dramaturgical function of “Sub communionem”, but is also performable independently.

Unlike Christe Eleison, where the spectrality is just an allusion, in You tree kalotrop III Radulescu goes back to the elder method he already used in some earlier piano compositions, namely to a partially spectral tuning of the organ. That means, that only certain tones of organ are in just intonation, and this “mixed temperament” produces the unique harmonic dimension of the work. But the most characteristic element of You-tree kalotrop III is the dazzling metrical dimension which changes almost in each measure, evoking a sensation of permanent tension and incertitude, which is interrupted only at the end, with the sudden fanfare-like final statements of affirmative perfect fourths.
Cinerum is the only work of Radulescu that is explicitly bound to a Catholic ritual in the strict sense of the word. His interest for the ritual dimension was rather pan-religious, having nothing to do with concrete confessions of faith. He was mainly interested in the spiritual power of the sound itself. In this regard, one has to think immediately to Intimate Rituals op. 63 for string instrument and sound icons, one of Radulescu’s most significant compositions. In the case of the present recording, we have a version III for cello from 1989, played by Radulescu’s wife Catherine Marie Tunnell, one of the most profound interprets of his music. (Later in 2003, Radulescu wrote a similar version XI for viola and sound icons, dedicated to Vincent Royer).

Intimate Rituals is a series of eleven works for different instruments, which are all based on the same pre-recorded tape. During the years 1965-1969, which were marked by an intensive search for alternative tuning possibilities, Radulescu has transformed his Bösendorfer in a kind of harp, putting it vertically on the side and without cover. This image of a standing grand piano with the naked interior can evoke some associations with aeolian harp. Later in 1969, he baptized this new instrument as “sound icon” in remembrance of the ancient Byzantine icons. In this way the musical instrument got for him also a cultic meaning, hence, as explained the composer: “At a time when religion was only possible in Romania through music, I called this instrument the ʻSound Iconʼ”.3 But beside the impressive visual appearance, the most significant quality of the sound icon is its unique sonority, thanks to the special preparation and the performance technique. The strings have to been tuned spectrally in correspondence to the harmonics of one infrasonic fundamental and to be played with V-form bow from horse hair or with other objects like silver coins, spheres etc. (The keyboard is not used at all). Due to the special tuning and the bowing technique, it is enough to touch only one string, so that all other strings begin to resonate, creating a vibrating, rich harmonic halo around each sound, far reminding of the timbre of the tampura, the sacred instrument of Indian music, with which one can play only drones.

In 1985 Radulescu, together with Petra Junken, recorded two improvisations, each of them on two sound icons. Through the alternating fast and slow pressure of the strings, it was possible to achieve an inexhaustible versatility of harmonics. The tape of Intimate Rituals was realized through the superimposition of these two improvisations, so becoming a sort of consistent sound carpet used as a burden. Although the works is mostly performed with tape and not with live sound icons, Radulescu pointed out that it is essential for the performance to reach an atmosphere of spiritual intimacy in correspondence to the intimacy of the original improvisations.

Intimate Rituals III (XI) is maybe one of the most charming works of Radulescu in which he discloses the inner life of the sounds, their transformations, achieving unimagined areas of the audible. At the same time, this composition is a kind of summary of all essential extended techniques for string instrument which Radulescu has elaborated in order to enrich the means of expression of the instrument and to embody his acoustic visions. In this case, he used a special scordatura, tuning the strings in accordance to the 20th, 13th, 4th and 3th harmonics of the fundamental Fa monesis. Special kinds of sound production, that he calls in his favourite figurative manner “u dhu u dhu” (bowing technique, elaborated together with cellist Rohan de Saram) or “little devils” (a manner of playing melody on very high harmonics) enable the realization of a floating sound continuum, that in the most intense moments melts with the harmonic waves of the sound icons, creating a plasmatic state of sound.

Simultaneously with the rising interest for the equal-tempered instruments since the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, Radulescu had begun to deal intensively with the Tao te Ching, the ancient Chinese text of Lao-Tzu, in the idiosyncratic English translation by Stephen Mitchell. Several titles of Radulescu’s late works are indeed derived from this translation. The most extreme connection with this text is to find in Before the universe was born op. 39, his Fifth String Quartet, in which the English verses are not only used as titles of the sections, but also as means for the rhythmical articulation of the sound material.

Furthermore, there are numeric correspondences between the works and the sentences from Tao te Ching. For example, the title of the Second Piano Sonata corresponds to the second sentence of Tao te Ching (“Being and non being create each other”). This sentence goes further in the following way: “Difficult and easy support each other. / Long and short define each other. / High and low depend on each other. / Before and after follow each other”.4 One can interpret this apparent oppositions as kind of mirror of the two different musical principles that Radulescu tried to bring together during the last period of his life: the spectral and the equal tempered one.

Immersed in the wonder II op. 96 (1996) for cello and trombone (the piece which gives the overall title to the present compact disc), is an emblematic example of the confrontation of these two principles. The title is taken from the sixteenth chapter of Tao te Ching: “Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, / you can deal with whatever life brings you, / and when death comes, you are ready”.

This small jewel from the mature years of Radulescu, written in memory of Toru Takemitsu (dedicated to Robert Aitken and Catherine Marie Tunnel), is an intimate dialogue between trombone and cello. It has a simple A-B-A form. The frame parts are shaped as a “distracted heterophony” of two (and later three) voices with simultaneous performance of the same descending melody in different tempi. While this section is a mixture of well tempered tuning by trombone and spectral tuning by cello, the culmination of the work (its middle part) consists only of the natural harmonics of a fundamental note, with a use of spectral cello scordatura. The high emotional tension, which emerges through the upraising harmonic row by trombone and renaissance-like arpeggios of cello, is sharply interrupted by the return of the initial melody. The listener, after being taken in the vivid sonorous waves only for a short time, is immersed again in the world of static, ascetic sounds of the beginning. The end of the work transmits a subtle feeling of being unfinished, as if the cycle could be repeated over and over again. Return is the movement of Tao.

Shushan Hyusnunts

About the recording

There are very few places in the world where Radulescu’s multifaceted exploration of space meets an organ providing all the exotic colors he demands with high technical quality. As the organ at Speyer Cathedral being replaced by another instrument, I was searching all over Europe until I found the perfect place in the Cathedral of Rottenburg with its three beautiful organs ( Sandtner ). Thanks to sound engineer Moritz Wetter’s mastery, a second organist ( Alexander Dittmann ) and considerable technical effort for perfect synchronisation and the spectral tuning of the little organ I believe we managed to get the listener immersed in the wonder of an intimate ritual.

Chr. M. Moosmann