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Andrei Covaciu-Pogorilowski

Musical time theory

About Me

SHORT BIO:

I was born in Bucharest, Romania, in February 1968. • Starting with 1982, I studied music independently, helped by several private professors. • In 1989 I started to hear in my head a strange yet beautiful music that I was unable to notate. Short excerpts were presented on the piano to my musician friends who confirmed that the temporal fabric of that music could not be rendered satisfactorily with help from the traditional, bar-rhythmical, semiography. • Between that point and 1994, I tried to formulate a theory and a notation for that music, the first result being my first published book – “Energies of musical time - essential studies of pulsatory functionalism”. • In the late ‘90s, I discovered cognitive musicology and started to merge my own discoveries with the bulk of scientific contributions from this interdisciplinary domain. After abandoning several approaches, the final result was my last book “The music of the Temporalists”, available now on Amazon Kindle. • I am currently living in my hometown, Bucharest, along with my wife Simona and my 13 years old daughter Ina.

BIO • 1982-1987 I have studied: – piano playing with professors Alexandru Dumitrescu and Verona Maier – all the academic musical disciplines (harmony, composition, solfeggio, counterpoint, orchestration etc.) with professor Marian Ionescu and composers Richard Bartzer and Anton Dogaru – I have attended three editions (1992-1994) of the Musical Composition Summer Courses held by the Romanian composer Aurel Stroe in the town of Bußteni and the 1993 edition of the International Music Summer Courses held in the town of Ivancea by composers Mark Kopytman (Rubin Academy of Music and Dance, Jerusalem), Jonathan Berger (Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts) and the German musicologist and composer Erhard Karkoschka.

• 1989-1994 I composed the first version of an alternative theory of musical time, published in 1994 with help from the Soros Foundation for an Open Society. The name of the book is Energies of Musical Time – Essential Studies of Pulsatory Functionalism. The edition is bilingual (Romanian and English) and was consequently translated into Finnish by the musicologist Timo Leisio (Tampere University).

• 2000 I completed a second book on the same subject, entitled The Story of a Journey Throughout the Temporal Dimension of Music. It represents an aesthetic approach of the implications my theory may have in musical interpretation and composition. The book remained unpublished as meanwhile I discovered cognitive musicology, which made me want to reshape my theory in its entirety.

• 2001 Following the suggestion of the American composer Jonathan Kramer (Columbia University), I applied and was consequently accepted as a member of The International Society for the Study of Time (ISST).

• 2006 My theory on musical time constituted the basis for the elaboration of pianist Verona Maier’s doctoral thesis, The Spontaneous Tempo Options in the Interpretation of J. S. Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier Preludes and Fugues.

• 2009 I completed my last book on musical time, The music of the Temporalists, published in November 2011 on Amazon Kinlde – http://www.amazon.com/music-Temporalists- ebook/dp/B006FWZLSI

• Along the years, I delivered four lectures worth mentioning: 1993 – Queen’s University of Belfast, School of Music, Northern Ireland (two different communications): Musical time functionality – and an informal presentation of Romanian music history. 2001 – University of Jyväskylä, Finland, at The Third International Conference on Cognitive Musicology: The non-durational approach to musical time. 2005 – Alden Biesen, Belgium, at the tenth edition of the Rhythm Perception and Production Workshop: Disinventing the wheel – The perceptual notation of musical time.

• Along the time I have published a few dozen articles on music in Romanian periodicals such as Luceafarul, Adevårul literar si artistic, Litere, Arte & Idei, Dilema, Idei în dialog etc. Four articles written in English language may be found at www.zeuxilogy.home.ro

• My first book, Energies of Musical Time is quoted in two several that I am aware of: —What is time? by G. J. Whitrow —Enciclopedia della musica by Jean Jacques Nattiez, Margaret Bent, Rossana Dalmonte and Mario Baroni. —Music, A brief history of Western musical thought, by Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta

• In the 57-57 issue (March 1995, pag. 11-12) of the German magazine MusikTexte – Zeitschrift für neue Musik, the German musicologist Erhard Karkoschka published and article called Ein neues Konzept musikalischer Zeit: „Seuxilogie“ von Andrej Covaci Pogorilowski.