Stylistic Confluences: the National Ethos and the Universal in the Artistic Development of Chopin, Enescu and Silvestrov

Abstract

The model of Creation is one that reveals the usefulness, meaning, and beauty of “sharing”. Artistic creation, in the present study the musical one, is explained at least by the understanding, or knowledge beyond the individual limit of the creator, or by the precept of externalization, even if this is a revelation to a single being or to God. Frédéric Chopin, George Enescu and Valentin Silvestrov are composers who, in different periods, seek, in their artistic development, to value national elements, but also a way of integrating them into what is called „universal,” therefore an addressability that crosses country borders, towards a human space, that of the soul. Of different nationalities, Polish, Romanian and Ukrainian respectively, these musicians know and live in other cultures (Chopin and Enescu in Vienna and Paris, Silvestrov in Berlin), which help them to create in the spirit of a synthesis, a reinterpretation, a metaphor. In this way, we point to a mutual way of understanding the composition, determined by an informational-spiritual interchange, dialogue and national feeling. The confluences of knowledge and dialogue build personality, and the accumulation gives rise to the desire for a choice, to obtain one's own expression. The national feeling is the element that in this unique synthesis is an emblematic shade which transmits identity data in music, such as a physical location or one related to the sensibility of a people. The processing of national symbols does not constitute a constraint in the creation of the mentioned composers, because this transformation relates to a reception of the “other” who can come from any ethnicity or represent it in any place in the world. These observations can be explained in relation to the scores of some instrumental works (for solo piano and for violin and piano) by Chopin, Enescu, Silvestrov. The biographical data and the analysis of the works lead to the understanding of the musical style of each one, built from within itself, through the proximity of the self – “the other”, and in itself, through reformulation and rediscovery; but one's own style, which defines the self, also reveals itself to the “other”.