| For a long time Romania was culturally and politically isolated and the country's borders would have been closed to all but a trickle of closely monitored official delegations. Now the cultural life of Romania is flourishing once again and the rest of the world is discovering the riches it contains. Among those riches is a shining priceless diamond, an unjustly neglected treasure in the inheritance not only of Romania, but of Europe too---the music of George Enescu.; Enescu often stressed that the culture to be promoted among the broad masses should be of the highest class which would require prolonged educational work. He believed that the art for the people must precede popular art. He realized the need to gather and study popular music not as a result of pure scientific curiosity, but in direct consequence of the essence of his activities. Enescu was convicted that a thorough knowledge of the artistic wealth accumulated by the people was essential for the development of a progressive professional art. He saw in folklore, and particularly in its rural specimens, a force which could counteract the growing commercialization of the Romanian bourgeois art in the thirties. Enescu's Third Violin Sonata is a chining proof of this credo. The melodic themes he created represent an amalgamation of folk intonations generalized in his own individual manner.; Enescu chose three main elements of the Romanian folklore, and composed a unique, original work, that combined the rhythmical and intonational characteristics of the Romanian folk music with the structural features of the genre sonata. These elements are: the doina, the pastoral shepherd's song, and the dance hora. In this sonata, Enescu as an expert violinist with fine artistic taste and great ingenuity, also makes extensive use of other characteristic features of the popular interpretative tradition, such as placing the bow in various sections of a string, and expressive portamento, notes without vibrato and, finally, an increase of intonational intensity as a result of a given note being heightened or lowered in accordance with the modal structure of the music. |
