Our journal’s last issue capitalised on the idea of bridging gaps. In it, the authors launched connections in time so as to be able to look closely at personalities from the past (Chopin, Brăiloiu, Schumann) from a contemporary perspective. In this issue we would like to bridge different gaps, between various fields. I am not sure whether interdisciplinarity is still a trend, but a comparative analytical look upon distinct artistic experiences often leads to fresh perspectives.
In music, the relationship between performance, creation and pedagogy seems to remain a topic of choice, and Maria Brzuchowska (a violinist in an orchestral ensemble and a professor) resumes it from a very well-documented position. Conductors and instrumentalists may be the most interested in reading the evidence behind this theory of orchestral practice,conducting curricula, musical partnership etc., matched by references to famous conductors, repertoire, psychology and sociology.
Among the writers who chose to integrate music within narrative in the novel form, Thomas Mann was probably the most curious to discover and dissect musical mechanisms that seemed complicated to other people. Iulia Micu (a philologist living in Cluj) resumes the productive relationship between Mann and Adorno in outlining the character Leverkühn in Doktor Faustus. The philosophy of new music, sociological approaches and techniques of the novel add up to what we, musicians, know about Schönbergian dodecaphonism and its transposition in the famous novel.
Among the many parallels between various trends in visual arts and music attempted throughout time, the one proposed by two Polish composers represents the topic of the study signed by Anna Granat-Janki (a professor of musical analysis). Adapting aspects of surrealism to the "surconventionalism" defined by Paweł Szymański and Stanisław Krupowicz can lead to surprising sonorous results.
We would like to invite you to read these essays on musical suggestions in literature, on the suggestions of visual arts in music and on psychological suggestions in musical performance. To them we encourage you to add the pages dedicated by Liviu Dănceanu and Despina Petecel-Theodoru to a composer who would have turned 75 in 2010: George Draga.
Valentina Sandu-Dediu
(English translation by Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru)