Tim Benjamin

In late summer 2018, one evening in Bucharest, I was told the full story of how the Romanian dictator Ceaușescu built his vast "People's Palace" in the city, destroying the Uranus district of old Bucharest and displacing many people. The brutal building - inspired by the Socialist realist architecture of North Korea - remains, even after the revolution which removed Ceaușescu, dominating the landscape: a reminder and lesson from history. The story moved me deeply and ultimately resulted in this symphony - composed for the George Enescu Festival, and performed for the first time in the 2021 Festival.

I wanted to capture the essence of a culture, story of a place, or memory of a people subject to forceful destruction and displacement: but also to tell the more hopeful and optimistic story of that culture and idea living on through stories tied to place.

This symphony tells a story, and asks the question the building itself raises: what endures, what remains, after such an act of destruction? As living memories of location and custom fade, and the concrete Palace slowly crumbles, what was before lives on in the imagination, in stories, and in music.

Beginning and ending with the open strings of a solo violin, the symphony tells a story as if it were a single unbroken thread of memory. An invocation to the listener’s imagination rather than a literal narrative, it weaves through vivid musical images of creation, nightmare, celebration, and finally acts of destruction and the echo of military parades, leaving at last only the voice of the memory with which the symphony began.

Appearing out of nowhere, the initial idea is seized upon, elaborated, pulled every which way, and celebrated. Night falls; a nightmare disturbs pleasant rest. But the idea resurfaces, and with it, the disturbing vision is banished. A new day; a bucolic, Arcadian festival: innocent fun – over which hangs the shadow of the nightmare. It is made manifest. Fear and terror ensue. But against suppression, against wanton destruction, and despite the depredations of power and even time itself, that old memory of the place remains, unchanged, at the last.

I wrote this Symphony for the George Enescu Festival, where it received its first performances and broadcasts in September 2021 with the Banatul Philharmonic conducted by Rumon Gamba, in both Timisoara and Bucharest.

Movements

The symphony is in four movements of roughly equal duration. Together, the movements suggest a story, but it's a story that is more symbolic than a literal narrative. The themes of the story are creation and destruction (of ideas), and "change" - how some things can remain constant and somehow true, even in the face of destructive forces.

The first movement consists of an extended theme and development, and concludes with a Ballo, a depiction of a celebratory event. The second movement, Nocturne, is a nightmare rather than a pleasant piece of "night-music", but the nightmare is driven off by the musical force of the theme heard during the first movement. The third combines dances which are given the names Rustick, Alegrias, and Bal musette, and which are imaginary dances, suggestive of traditional European forms. Finally, the fourth movement is at first nostalgic and full of pathos, but becomes violent as a musical destruction is unleashed upon the various dances and celebrations which have been heard up to that point.

Ultimately, the original theme of the first movement returns as a memory left behind after the violence and destruction. It represents the idea which cannot be destroyed - an extremely simple idea, perhaps an axiom - which is given to the listener at the beginning and end of the piece by the open strings of a solo violin.

1. Lento - Andante, tranquillo - Allegro - Ballo, con brio

2. Nocturne. Mysterioso - Molto tranquillo - Agitato - Calmo

3. Rustick. Molto vivo - Alegrias. Molto allegro - Rustick. Meno mosso - Bal musette. Grazioso - Alegrias

4. Poco adagio - Presto, agitato - Molto agitato - Triste, rubato - Molto allegro - Molto meno mosso

Composition during the 2020-2021 Covid Pandemic

The work was composed during the 2020-2021 Covid pandemic and lockdown. Working on such a large project, adding a little every day, sustained me through the many months of lockdown and depressing daily news. While the piece is not intended as a direct commentary on this time, nonetheless my strong feelings and emotions experienced during this period in history must inevitably be bound up in the piece: the curtailment of freedom, the seemingly unstoppable spread of the disease, the deaths, the false dawns - and for me, acutely, the loss of live music, especially singing. It is therefore perhaps natural for the listener to project their own feelings about that terrible year onto the music, and if so I hope that within the music, they will to find reassurance, meaning, and answers to their private questions about this time.