Music Writing by Carson Arnold

 


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[photo from Lieder of N.B.]

 

FOOTPRINTS OF NICOLAE BRETAN

Here's a little music for all you dreamers mad with silence and in love with mystery.

 

And as the whole world claimed to be watching, far away, Nicolae Bretan died through the pillow as a 1968 old man, healthy in spirit and completely unknown to the western world wrapped in the patrol of fame, poverty and prosperity. What's left behind is a small yearling of compositions that live the shining air and soak the heart like some bottom sun washing the crystals of the sea. The destiny of Bretan is not entirely sure. More like a poet than a composer, his fertile sense of the heavenly opera in Vienna was slowly rising his stature to be an eventual god in the granite of music history. However, the bashing of WWII draped and closed all such essential wishes and wallowed him away into the stream of obscurity and oblivion as an angel relishing his halo, never once parting beyond a hundred miles of his homeland in the pathways of Transylvania.

 

The footprints that Bartok and Kodaly were following throughout the rolling outback of the Hungarian and Rumanian folk-hills were exactly what Bretan could already whistle naturally within the weeping nucleus of his operas. Luceanfarul (The Evening Star), captures the entire nebula of an enduring age of conflict and distress, solitude and the looking eye, spilling through you in a snowing gallop of mind. Alienation and the beckoning of love of course would always be one of Bretan's serene emotions throughout his work, in conclusion probably why the royalty of the symphonic constellation never appealed to him quite so magnificently. He was instead lost in the rapture of the lungs, the fluttering mantis of the voice that bloomed in the eternal gaze of operas like Golem/Arald and Horia. Far, far more passionate and indefinite than all of his flirted contemporaries at that point, the illuminating melodies in Bretan's string and brass sections are beloved to the flush, rugged country-side and feminine in similarity to Bruckner's often fantasy-swan-tear crescendos. Yet out of the few individuals who uniquely pruned the cypress of last century's opera-leaf, Bretan's sense and garden of both region and desolation allowed him to blow through the free hearts and minds of all who were alive, being and well aware.

 

Even more impressive and eclectic of Bretan was, of course, his requiems and psalms, however his persona was charmed at a clear hour under the lonesome flounder within the "Mein Liederland" songs. Similar in feeling to Yiddish folk, often accompanied by a spared piano and a single voice, his roughly 230 songs present the composer drifting in a somewhat beautiful despair as the music beckons, sorrows and sways in a sensitive intimacy, calling forth, flying from. His viva devotion of the voice is lushly soaked all throughout as each little note is carefully felt and tasted for the unfolding melodies that seem to ride into the gush of a pouring horizon and then gently let you back down for once more. Bretan's clover of isolation and tranquility falls through these compositions like many lovely petals, more notoriously is the question of whom is indeed plucking them away...

 

The impact of Ralph Vaughn Williams and the European ivy of Ravel, Debussy and Satie glazed romanticism in a gorgeous spell of flesh in sound. Schubert, too, had done all this long ago within the crashing waves of "Ava Maria", as did Elgar in his swallowing opus "In Moonlight". It's all a type of keen sensuality that cuts, sinks and rises all in one delicate, sincere sweep and moment, where the silent hymn of touch is so strong we find ourselves in the radiance of both tears and beaming joy for the goodness of the "heaven's bride", the solitaire for her, and the overall Ava Maria fortune and hard gamble of life itself all at once crying. Not too many pieces yet have been able to distract Schubert's tora-loom of love in his particular opera. However, Bretan's gentle steps into seclusion were as if he had almost found the golden locks of the bride herself; the maiden and the virgin somewhere; within the sage and thicket of the dark forest, but he was left spending a lifetime retracing his lost footprints back to tell the story to us. 

 

--Carson Arnold - May 10, 2003

copyright 2003 Carson Arnold


 

H(ear) is an online music column consisting of interviews, articles, and investigations written by Carson Arnold. As a freelance writer for various magazines and liner notes, living in the woods of Vermont with his family, Carson widely encourages one to submit their art, writing or any interesting piece of material that you would like to share. H(ear) is accepting both promos and demos for review or any other valuable music-related subjects. If you wish to make a comment or would like to receive H(ear) weekly by email please contact Carson at [email protected]

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