ID : It's a difficult one to summarize. From age 7 to 22, I went through the conventional steps of musical studies. I have a master's degree in composition from the CNSM from Bucharest. My biggest break was meeting one of my teachers, Alfred Mendelsohn, in the last years of his life. He used to be seriously involved in he ridiculous extremes of Stalinian realism. When we met he was trying to come clean by getting rid of an unnecessary heavy burden - " the language of wood" - in music. Before the War he had finished his studies in Vienna and was involved, clandestinely, of course, with alternative "modernists" and shared his knowledge with young people. With only a few chosen disciples, he took a risk by secretly introducing them to the modern writing techniques of the Schomberg or Webern heritage. Had news of what he was doing gotten around, he would have been severely punished. Of course, to those with a nature similar to my one, the things that matter the most are suppressed and controversial, because that's where we find the essence, the freedom of creation, the truth hiding. The adventure went on for several years followed by many musical scores ,recordings and books. Every bit of it was subversive and clandestine. Official art stuck in the socialism real frame. Between 1968 and 70 was a period of ideological thawing that gave me and some of my teachers, Stefan Niculescu, Aurel Stroe Anatol Vieru Tiberiu Olah - the opportunity to follow up on more personal paths of creation. Concurrently I was strongly interested in philosophy. My meeting in 1973 with Sergiu Celibidache opened me up to Husserl's phenomenology movement; I found the answers to musical application and creation in the same way as in zen or yoga. Evidently, I arrived at a point where I couldn't accept anything given to me especially composition recipes. I started on a series of personal adventures. Did you know that Diogenes the Cynic, when confronted with the impossibility of the movement would answer quite naturally by standing up and going for a walk ? In the same way, I got out of the dead and of serial thought by radically assuming the risk of a deeper research in a unique direction that still seemed possible.
JN. Could you elaborate on the contribution of phenomenology in your work ?
ID. Toward in 1973 a crucial time in my spiritual and
artistic evolution, I met Celibidache and became his disciple.
Philosophy already was one of my deep interests but he made me
understand the value of the phenomenological conception of
music, an abstract art without any natural models or matter,
where all is only to become. I might be the only one of his
disciples to apply the consequences of his teachings in my
creation. Hoes does one approach the creative act how can we
free our selves from the false ? I listen meditatively to
an acoustic phenomenon. I want to surprise its natural
direction, its noematic tendencies, the sense of its sonic
matter. I contemplate matter for a long time, a little detail;
to see understand where it is going to evolve, what it's
natural tendencies are... The intuition has to liberate itself
from factitious things. You have to leave it to operate in its
original purity. So,
you have to enter and absolute game where there is no
comparative. Nothing is purer, more real, more alive. There is
the truth or the untruth. The Husserlian sense that I'm
indicating here has become, thanks to Celibidache, a
support hardly replaceable, a cardinal support. Celibidache is
an important reformer of the artistic conception in this century
and to have had a chance to be near him for an instant gave me a
high lesson in art and at the same time in philosophic and
phenomenological thought. I've said it many times: Celibidache
is my spiritual father.
JN. How would you define "being" ?
ID. Theoretical speculations alone cannot result in anything important anymore Even at the beginning of my personal development in the writing of composition I was intimately linked to the processes of interpretation. That's Why always pursued my research in the manner of found realities as I shared them with instrumentalists. In 1976, rejecting the done and seen I founded the Hyperion Ensemble, a multimedia group dedicated to experimental music. Together we achieve a big part of my experiences and creations as well as those of my contemporaries -Miereanu, Horatiu Radulescu, Costin Cazaban and others such as Niculescu, Ioachimescu, Ana-Maria Avram. At the same time, I was always very active in criticism and musicology.
JN. Do you work more in Romania or abroad ?
ID. Today it's impossible to be stuck somewhere without having to deal with a certain provincialism of thought. We live in a time of researchers experiments and rediscovery. It's difficult to find solutions in only one place. It can be Paris, London or New York. It's only with circulation, confrontation and contact with others cultures sometimes believed peripheral that you can transcend present limitations. I try to perform whenever possible with Avram it's in Austria, Italy, France, Holland, Germany and England where We know our music generates a certain level of interest. With the Hyperion Ensemble we performed at Radio France in Paris, Vienna, Rome. Alicante as well as Bucharest and small provincial towns. I already said this but will say it again : to tell you the truth " the provinces" are not necessarily a notion, geographically speaking. If you aren't connected to the rhythm of wonderful Swiss city in the centre of Europe, it's simply more apparent than if you are disconnected in a secluded village in Eastern Europe. This is not where the problem is. The situation of not location - specific and neither region is responsible. The answer is only an option of choice, having the courage to live authentically in the centre of one's life wherever that may be. Therefore, what I find fundamental is living in time, the joy of living perpetually in the present.
JN : What is the situation of contemporary musician your country ?
ID: There is a generation currently around the age of 65 - I already named Niculescu, Stroe, Vieru, Olah - who had the opportunity to directly create Ana alternative way of thinking, particularly in the pedagogical opinion. A new way of looking at thing, although already dated today. Because of that generation, we witnessed in the '70s a change that was quite unexpected. A new School of composition developed almost instantaneously, filled with spontaneity, innovation, ambition, as well as indignation and arrogance, all in a considerable variety. Within a younger generation who's age today would be 45 to 50, Radulescu, Cazaban, are the most interesting. We could also add Ioachimescu, C. Cezar; they found new synergical solutions together with their European and Japanese colleagues. The use of electro-acoustic origins, spectral influences, utilization of " factures archetypales" from primitive folklore... all of that formed a modern type of music always with considerable freshness, complemented by good work and remarkable energy without superfluous speculation. In the young generation, Avram has a singular position due to her refusal of dogma. She posses a well fed, exceptional gift that has allowed her to discover remarkable personal solutions. She is quite a force ! Generally, contemporary music is infested with retro - this or neo-that, which to me doesn't say anything good.
JN : You often use the term acousmatique to describe your music, which has been used since the '70s by some composers of music on tape to separate their work from its source, " to listen without seeing". What interest do you have in electro-acoustics and more particularly music on tape? You have on occasion used both in your compositions.
ID: I use acousmatique in a very different way from the GRM in France. In fact, " acousmatique" is from the pre-Socratic Greek and has a deep philosophic meaning, signifying the occultation of a source, thus rendering it inaccessible to profanity. If electro-acoustics is an art form, to which one listens without seeing, that indicates to me the possibility of a metaphorical sound. Even if you can see its source on stage, you still cannot recognize the results. I think of acousmatique as a technique of ecstasy. It's rather difficult to explain. It's abstract and concrete at the same time. For example ," Movemur et Sumus" or "Aulodie Mioritica" and even "Cogito Trompe l'oeil" are all liked to the acousmatic principle. They rebuild " da capo" the marvellous road of music, the genesis of sound. The Pythagorean principles of the sound system's rediscovery, even if they bring together the imagination of the electro-acoustic listener, at the same time leave the music far away from its artificial point. What others produce its electric instruments I find cold, impersonal, without mystery. I attempt in a natural way, using classical instruments, to rediscover the incantatory, Orphic spirit. Not only with the help of this instruments but also with the souls of artists who accompany me in my sound adventures.
JN: What are your principle reasons for using electroacoustics or magnetic tape ? Is it to extend the instruments or is it more to reach sounds that are otherwise impossible to create ?
ID. As with the classical instruments, I often use electro-acoustics to fulfil the sonic metaphor, the search for the new lease of life, the unwanted this gives the impression of electroacoustics and also obscures the identity of electronic sources. I create a sound alchemy where different sources are intermingled. I felt the exigency imposed upon my music's originality early on. A radical definition and a different modality in music - simultaneously different from the present enigmatic and, if possible, without connotations. A mysterious genre, personal, but also with deep foundations in objectivity. In this way I chased my research not only in direction of modernism but toward ancestral resources, toward the noetic, the seed of signification, the essence of music. Musical instruments from India, Japan, Tibet and Africa interested me. I went to concerts, watched films progressively and with intuition I found Orphism which similar to my thoughts and experiences, represented the highest most enigmatic, immanent, imponderable, and some times cryptic degree of sound art! It's a hi Solicitation of art, has a transcendently degree, is the performances of an abyssal initiation with the use of sound. It's the magic of music. To me Orphism isn't only a question of legend; it created for us Romanians, Heirs of Thrace, a particular mode to listen to the sound. It's hard to define: between ecstatic and dynamic. The sound object is adored, visualized, lived, in a plurality of superimposed planes. From here concretely the search of sound alchemy. The savant and refined combination of dissimilar origins. Lastly, this I create with a concentration on phenomenologies and yogics.
JN: Would you say you've part of the current spectral school of music ?
ID: Yes, I think of myself as a spectralist, but in completely different way from the French. The spectral dimension of my music is in the synergy with Orphism and acousmatique. I will repeat myself : I created a modern novelty in music, like a return to archaic origins, to a "prima verba" of music, through the Jungian search for archetypes. Talking the experiences of Pythagora's, reinventing the multiple aspects that hold traditional music together, my music utilizes harmonics and resonance in a natural way, alive and intuitive. Sonorous and refined, I believe. Though abstract, symbolic and in search of archetypes, its complex acoustic origins come from archaic sources which one can quickly assimilate. Also, I think that a new music that utilizes new materials, in this case the specter, needs new instrumental techniques, new principles in organization of the sound source, a new dialectic of the form, a new aesthetic... and other conceptual criteria, none of which I find in other spectralists. They use the specter with principles and techniques linked to the serial system. I don't believe they tale it to the extreme.
JN: Will Edition Modern release work by composers other than yourself, Avram or Cazaban ?
ID: From the artistic point of view, Avram and myself are the most deeply involved. There is a little "club" that helps us with distribution as well, especially in Romania. It's an adventurous label, particular and sectarian. It's difficult to predict what the future holds. We are open to those with similar impulses.
JN: Do you agree with the affirmation in the booklet with CD EDMN 1007, "Sound is an indeterminate, music is another thing"?
ID: Completely ! It's in t he spirit of phenomenology, as I understand it. Even though extremely attached to the way sound lives, if the root of my work at first aims at the carnal anvelope of sound that is the timbre and the structure, I'm aware that music never begins nor finishes with sound. It uses the sound but is not it. It is only a state of grace that suddenly appears from the sound. It's the transcendence of the object. Through pure intuition. It's exactly like Husserl. Paradoxically, when it comes to music, according to Bergson, well, Husserl is not in the actuality of philosophy anymore. The problems haunting the spirits of today are different. But in music, there is not another way that can explain musical phenomena.
JN: Is here a certain liberty left to the interpreter in your scores?
ID: The interpreter has no freedom! When listening to my
music, you might believe otherwise, you could see a
certain degree of improvisation. In fact, it is not the case.
The phenomenological concept determines the sound evolution, the
bow's movement, the change in harmonics.... The musician finds
himself chained inside an obligatory role, always in proportion,
always logical. If thing suddenly intervenes, you can feel it
immediately. I perceive freedom to be synonymous with error.
Paradoxically, the way inside is the discovery of a superior
freedom. It's the intrinsic spirit of my music. The adventure.
The scorching ands frenetic research. It has in its core the
primordial mystery of sound. The interest in my music is created
by a fresh opening that doesn't belong to freedom in the first
degree. It's a directed freedom going toward one goal: the
mystery of music's life.