Death of an adventurous composer, 55

Death of an adventurous composer, 55

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norman lebrecht

August 07, 2017

Ana-Maria Avram, whose death on August 1 has been posted online by her close collaborators, came out of the Romanian avant-garde to become a leading figure in the spectral music movement.

She composed both for traditional ensembles and electronic media.

A regular conductor of Ensemble Hyperion International, she was married to the composer Iancu Dumitrescu.

Comments

  • RODNEY GREENBERG says:

    What’s going on? I see practically no correlation between her flailing arms and the racket that’s being produced.

  • Christopher Culver says:

    Sorry to hear this. I’m well-acquainted with French spectralism but have kept putting off exploring Romanian spectralism. Maybe now it’s time to dive into all this, and the fact that Stephen O’Malley collaborated with her and was one of the first to eulogize her, definitely piques my interest.

  • Rod Stasick says:

    This news is especially sad and surprising.
    Loved her work for the past 25+ years
    and was looking forward to hearing new work.
    Such a young age and amazing talent.

  • John Borstlap says:

    What adventurous is there in only producing sounds that do not carry any musical meaning? Xenakis did that already in the sixties and that was equally silly. Sorry that the composer had to die much too young, but the ‘music’ in the video is merely the pathetic echo of useless stuff that has been done half a century ago elsewhere. And then: why use musical instruments? The same sonic romanticism as Lachenmann c.s., the more crazy it sounds, the more ‘adventurous’, ‘cutting edge’, ‘daring’ etc. but in fact it is extremely boring. And at 7:20 we have the obligatory ‘accident in a boiler factory’. Is it art? If you think Marcel Duchamp and Damien Hirst is art, then certainly you will be happy with this renewal of that dull, bourgeois tradition (Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Mahler etc. etc. etc.).

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