The Paradigm of a Theory. The Thinking of Composer Constantin Simionescu (1938-2014)

Abstract

This paper proposes to describe a model of structural music analysis that appeared in the last decades in the thinking of composer Constantin Simionescu. Living in utter isolation, Simionescu is hardly known to the circles of Romanian music theoreticians, composers, and musicologists, despite his being noticed as a great thinker by prominent figures of our contemporary musical life: by composer Ştefan Niculescu (his composition professor), by the composers Tudor Ciortea and Aurel Stroe. After his passing away (2014), he has the chance to be discovered, evaluated, listed where he should be, beside theoreticians like Arnold Schönberg, Heinrich Schenker, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Anatol Vieru. Simionescu’s applications cast fresh light on the vision of musical form through a series of conceptual referents like that of paradigm. I will try to delimit and (re)define the concept in order to grasp the meticulousness of the rationale, the representations resulted from his thinking, without leaving out some other concepts he introduces and which concur to articulating his domain of analysis.