Dimitrie Cuclin (1885-1978)

[doctorpresume]

I think my account must have been deleted last week (certainly I didn't do it myself!).

Anyway, I've re-registered, and want to return to Cuclin for the benefit of anyone here who might be interested in the following:

Cuclin's 16th!!!

I haven't got the disposable cash right now to pick this up, but figured that someone here might want to grab it while it's there... (it's the only time I've ever seen a copy for sale anywhere).

[mikehopf]

A million thanks to those members - you are ALL heroes to me! - for those marvellous " monumental " symphonies by Cuclin.

Anyone have a recording of his No.12.... I believe it lasts just over 6 hours!

[eschiss1]

No idea if it's been performed...

[malito]

I am absolutely amazed that there are so many fans of the music of Cuclin.  I have written to various companies (notably nAXOS) hoping that someone will release some of his music.  To see the 9th and piano concerto here just blew me away.  Also, just discovered the two cantatas by Miaskovsky which I never thought I'd hear in my lifetime.  I could go on and on and say how much joy UNSUNG COMPOSERS has brought to me in the past two weeks since I discovered this site.  Thanks so much!
Mal

[Alan Howe]

You are welcome. Glad to have you on board.

[malito]

I cannot get the Cuclin 9th to record.  Is there something wrong with the download?  I am a real Cuclin fan and have no idea how to add this to my list...any help out there.  5th graders are better with computers than I am!  Malito

[Dundonnell]

The download plays ok for me.

Do you mean that you are having trouble downloading the file?

[malito]

I have the Cuclin 16th (Triumful Pacii) but I have no idea how to upload it.  I made a copy for A.S. and hope he will make it available!  Malito

[lechner1110]

  OK! I will upload it soon

[Jacky]

Stunning for me.Hardly someone here in Romania remembers Cuclin-and of course I speak about musicians.I think that you won't be able to find more Cuclin recordings.AFAIK no international label as CPO,Naxos or Marco Polo recorded it.Secondly,one does not play his music.It's better to have a Tchaikovsky symphony than a Cuclin one.Finally there are no recordings in Romania.He was banned by the communists-he was a member of a fascist party and also he was a very free and opened minded person.In the early 50's he was for 2 years in a labor camp.He was then.65 yers old.I use to say he is a kind of Romanian Sorabji.In a way he knew that he has no posterity.I read somewhere that he wrote his works painstakingly:his manuscripts are clear,lucid,clean and the measure bars are drawn with a ruler.How could he belive that a six hour symphony could be played,let it alone in a poor communist Romania?
Here http://www.estcomp.ro/eminescu/cuclin.html you can find translations he made from the poetry of Mihai Eminescu,Romania's national poet.

[ahinton]

I use to say he is a kind of Romanian Sorabji

Why and on what specific grounds?

[Jacky]

Well,for the fact that he wrote a music that is virtually unperformable-a six hours symphony for example.It's a very peculiar kind of music It's not the problem of playing or listening but that the music ilustrates a system of thinking,which,instead of being written, is composed.It's music for the sake of music,in a way.

[malito]

I couldn't disagree more.  OK, there is supposedly the 12th symphony which is between 4 and 6 hours from what I hear but who has heard it or seen it performed?  The 1st symphony is an early work but shows the future Cuclin in his symphonies, the 9th has delightful moments, the 11th is really a lot of fun, the 16th is beautiful and triumphant especially in its closing pages.  Only the 13th is a bit boring.  I have all these works and most of them are not helped by Electrecord's terrible sound.   Also, I don't care about politics, just the music and I happen to like Cuclin's music.

[doctorpresume]

Stunning for me.Hardly someone here in Romania remembers Cuclin...

But then, isn't the "arts college" in Cuclin's home town of Galati named after him? I don't think educational establishments tend to get named after people no-one regards as worthy of being remembered, or even who were persona non grata in the eyes of the state.

If anything, I suspect Cuclin's apparent obscurity is mostly down to a sort of "wrong place wrong time" situation. Let's be honest, his music is a tad conservative (I don't mean that as a criticism!), and if we consider the case of Kabalevsky in relation to Shostakovich, perhaps that might go some way to explaining why Cuclin has fallen out of favour. Also, I suspect, the apparent lack of availabilty of scores might have something to do with it. When I first encountered Cuclin's name a little over 18 months ago, I did a whole heap of research on him, and could only find evidence of the physical existence of a mere handful of scores in libraries around the world (well, lbraries with a web presence, at least!). Even the USA's Library of Congress database (the world's biggest library) only had two or three references to him; and a work colleague's partner was recently in Romania on business and I asked him to see if he could find any scores in Romania, and he returned empty handed. In some ways, that absence of scores is not dissimilar from the position Sorabji's music was in some 30 years ago (a handful of published scores that started to finally sell out after 40 or 50 years in print as an ironic consequence of a growing interest in his music), except unlike Sorabji, Cuclin hasn't yet acquired any indefatigable champions to doggedly work on his music in spite of a general lack of commercial interest. If Cuclin had people like Ogdon, Powell, Ullen and Bowyer striving to make his music better known, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now!

Unfortunately, we don't, and all we've currently got are the old Electrecord records, which really aren't very good. Enough of the quality of the music shines out, I think, to show it's worth exploring, but the sound quality and the performances are terrible. Particularly in the 13th, which I think is one of the worst performances of any work committed to vinyl I've ever come across. I respectfully disagree with Malito about it being a boring work - I think it sounds like it's got potential, but that record is simply terrible, and doesn't really allow for a fair assessment of the work.

Anyway, thanks for Malito and AS for making the 16th available - about to download and give it a spin.

[eschiss1]

The New York Public Library Lincoln Center Research Division keeps changing its policies I think but they do have his symphony 14 in E minor in score I think (the E minor I'm definite about, the number I'd have to double-check; I skimmed it awhile back. It--much of that part of the library, I mean- may require advance request-before-visit now in a way that it did not then and could just turn in small pieces of paper and usually retrieve scores to peruse etc. ...)