TROUBADISC composers

biography

"Strictly speaking there is nothing in music that has not been said in some way before. If one looks closely at radical avant-garde practices, extreme estrangements of instrumental and vocal sounds, they could appear less innovative than a major third in a certain constellation.”
Violeta Dinescu

Violeta Dinescu was born in Bucharest, Romania on 13 July 1953. She was educated at the Ciprian Porumbescu Conservatory of Music, Bucharest, studying composition under Myriam Marbe, counterpoint under Liviu Comes, harmony under Alexandru Pascanu, theory under Alexandru Giuleanu, folklore under Emilia Comisel, instrumentation under Aurel Stroe and form analysis under Stefan Niculescu. In 1978 she earned her master’s degree (Composition with distinction).

She has been residing in Germany since 1982. She began her doctoral studies in Heidelberg in 1984, but never completed them. She has worked as a special correspondent for music, Romania, Literara, Muzica, Scinteia Tineretului, in Bucharest.

She has held the position of teacher of harmony, theory and counterpoint at the Conservatory for Church Music, Heidelberg from 1986-90, at the Conservatory for Music, Frankfurt since 1989, and at the Conservatory for Church Music, Bayreuth since 1990.
She has been working as a European correspondent for Living Music, California, and International League of Women Composers, New York, since 1987.
Many international awards and prizes have been awarded to her.
In 1996 she became a professor at the University of Oldenburg.

“Of great importance to Violeta Dinescu are two folklore parlando-rubato techniques, Doina or Cantec Lung, which incorporate a gradual transformation over long static distances – to a certain extent analogous to minimal music – and a very pronounced heterophony typical of the folk music of Balkan countries (including Southern France and Northern Italy), a strong independence of parallel developing voices during which the individual lines can appear in total, self-forgetting autonomy within certain ‘island’ moments. This has a striking modern effect: the song of Bulgarian farm women, for example begins to sound like an avantgarde setting.”
Gabor Halasz

book tips

Houben, Eva-Maria (ed.)
"Violeta Dinescu"
PFAU-Verlag Saarbrücken, 2004 
http://www.pfau-verlag.de 

Janshen, Doris (ed.)
"Lichtwellen. Violeta Dinsecu trifft Elke Seeger"
EKfG, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, 2005

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