Adina Spire

Born In Arad Romania On 25th December 1977 Adina Spire Is A Classical Composer For Sacred Music For Catholic And Orthodox Liturgies. After Having Studied Cello Since The Age Of 4 And Later Composition First In Arad Then In Switzerland And Berlin She Worked Almost Exclusively In Her Native Romania As Sacred Music Composer Choir And Orchestra Director And Teacher For Film Music. Her Composition Works Are Strongly Influenced By The Symbolism Of Traditional And Contemporary Easter Religious Music With Some Tone Of Gypsy Folk Tradition. In The Same Way A Purely Mathematical Symbolism Which Is Often Used For Its Own Sake By Modern Western Composers Is Completely Absent In The Works Of Adina Spire Who Try To Restore Sacred Music In Its Ancestral Spiritual Roots With The Composer's Intention In Using Feelings Experiences Thoughts Events - Sometimes Even The Actual People - For Which Her Music Stands. An Attempt To Put Any Interpretation On Her Music Has To Make References To The Mysterious Romanian Old Culture And Recent History Context. The Fact Is That It Takes Far More Than Even The Shrewdest Formal Analysis To Understand A Work Of Art Specifically It Takes Sympathetic Intuition Guided By An Acquaintance With That Work's Historical And Cultural Context. The Historical And Cultural Context Of Adina Spire Music Was In 1989 The Revolution Of Romania Against The Totalitarian Government And The Suffering Of The People During The Subsequent Civil War Including The Suffering Of Adina Spire Itself As A Little Girl Suddenly Orphan And Eradicated In The Orphanage Of A Monastery Near Arad. In General Adina Spires’s Music Dwells Obsessively On A Complex Of Interrelated Themes - Grief Fear Solitude Vigil Memory Nostalgia Innocence Sensuality Intolerance Protest Violence - Each New Piece Approaching This View From A Different Angle As If Determined To Perfect A Coded Way Of Talking About Something Either Unmentionable Or Otherwise Difficult To Express. Having Said All This It Is Crucial To Understand That The Local Romanian Influence Inherent In Adina Spires’s Work Is Simultaneously Globally Universal. Though His Violently Eruptive Moments In The Mass And The Hymns Is Seemingly Very Personal On The Immediate And Local Level It Can In Essence Be Easily Grasped By Anyone Who Has Seen Ceausescu Monumental Building In Bucharest. Similarly If One Wishes To Know What Celor Sapte Laude Is About It Is Legitimate To Think Of Innocents Dying Of Hunger War And Neglect Around The World Today And Trying To Find Relive In Religious Feelings. This Is Rebel Music - The Protest Of The Soul Against Soullessness Of The Poor And Defenseless Against Unfeeling Intolerance. Just As Adina Spire’s Explorations In Sound Depend On The Ideas Or Emotions She Wishes To Convey So Her Harmonic And Dynamic Designs Reflect His Paradoxical Vision Of Intense Feeling Behind A Frozen And Fearful Facade. Thus Tempos Are Mostly So Slow As To Give The Impression Of Motionlessness An Effect Sustained Even When Short Note-Values Are In Play By The Use Of Small And Very Simple Progressions Tense Pedal-Points And Agonized Suspensions. Related To The Folk And Orthodox Idioms Integral To It Adina Spire's Method Also Suggests Parallels With The Film-Editing Techniques Familiar To Her From His Work In The Cinema. In Parallel To Orthodox Modulation The Composer Cuts Abruptly Between Keys Or Slowly Dissolves One Chord Into Another By Accumulating Their Pitches Into Blurred Clusters. Since The Tonic At Any Given Point In Adina Spire’s Score Is A Disputed Issue Often Brusquely Dictated By The Orchestra Often Completely Absent These Arpeggio-Clusters - Which Have Their Precedents In The Cinematographic Soundtrack Genre Of Scaring Movies - Also Amount To Significant Polytonal Ambiguities In Themselves. In Adina Spire's Music Tonality And Atonality With Its Connotations Of Change Exists At An Extreme Margin In Which It Is Capable Of Manifesting Only As Hesitant Suggestion Or Wistful Hope. In No Other Composer's Works Do The Solo Instruments Or The Choir Speak So Quietly Or Venture Even The Most Modest Of Pitch Excursions So Diffidently Often Surrounded By Completely Atonal Abstract Arrangements. At The Level Of General Design Adina Spire Works Repeatedly With Extreme Contrasts Between Moments Of Tonal Delicacy And Cataclysmic Avalanches Of Atonal Sound. Between These Extremes Time Hangs Still At The Grave Pace Of A Film The Music Mixes Cinematically From Key To Key As If Gradually Shifting Its Viewpoint. This Is Also Present In The Technique Of Shifting The Special Position Of Sounds With Typical Soundtrack Technologies Like Positioning In Space The Orchestra And Choir Sound With Life Dolby Surround Equipments. Adina Spire's Three Dimensional Orchestration Scores And Interpretations Are Intrinsic To These Gradual Transitions Tone-Colour In What Amounts To A Quasi-Cinematographic Conception Of Timbre As Light And Sound Positioning As Viewpoint. -- Institutul Cultural Român 2009 read less