CORNELIU DAN GEORGESCU (b.1938): Model Mioritic for Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra.

Description: Model Mioritic is the composer's hour-long exposition and interpretation of an ancient Rumanian folk tale, superficially simple but susceptible to multiple possible meanings concerning questions of the nature and meaning of death, how to prepare for it, and other matters that have occupied philosophers since there have been philosophers to be occupied by them. The story exists in many versions, all with different details, and Georgescu assembled his libretto from ten of them. A central theme of the ballad is its setting in the natural world, while the story itself is extremely malleable. The piece is actually an audio-visual work; a quarter-hour fragment on YouTube is accompanied by images of natural landscapes, some of them computer-manipulated, dissolving into one another; this could well be (but is not stated to be) the 'official' visual part. In any case, it is a visual analogue of what happens in the music; the textures may be complex, but there is no argument, narrative or development; the piece functions like a huge sound-sculpture which could easily go on indefinitely - presumably that is part of the point. The textures are built up of sonorous choral drones, surges of thunderous percussion and electronics, sustained planes of orchestral chords, recorded nature sounds and birdsong, and intermittent loops of instrumental gestures, some of which have a folk-like melodic contour. Against this background, the texts periodically emerge from the texture, intoned, chant-like or in folk style by subsections of the chorus. Chorus and Orchestra of the Cluj State Opera; Petru Zbârcea and Emil Maxim.