Here are the discrete, identifiable components of his style:
1) Faurean predilection for conjunct, modal, chant-like melodic lines
2) Brahmsian "musical prose": achieved through constant variation and transformation of melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic units.
3) Romanian folklore - ornamentation, dance elements, modality, heterophony
4) French harmonic vocabulary (Chausson, Faure, but not Debussy!)
5) Incessant contrapuntal activity - Bach
6) Use of signature micromotifs, or "musical syllables" - units that, like alliterative devices in a poem, can migrate from word to word, line to line without having independent status. They are found, unchanged, in almost everyone of his mature pieces.
7) Obsessive avoidance of symmetry
How does one begin to understand this exceedingly beautiful, but difficult-to-digest music?
Enescu's music is, at its heart, idyllic. He is either recalling an idyll, or searching to recapture it. Counteracting this quest for a still, eternal Arcadia is the incessant, almost obsessive process of "revisionism": no sooner does an idea appear, it immediately becomes reinterpreted, varied, developed, changed. No moment is ever replicated in its exact, original form. Perhaps, it is a metaphor for our experience of the passage of time? The two forces battle with one another: every moment is beautiful in some way for it recalls Arcadia, but cannot ever stay or linger there; thus the argument is propelled forward, again and again, and if anything is ever recaptured, it is no longer the same, changed by the forces of time. Often, one wonders if the original ever existed; even in opening themes, development usually overpowers presentation. Here is one reason why Enescu's music is difficult: it requires the listener to supply the usually missing repetition of basic ideas - and repetition, after all, is the prime vehicle of intelligibility! In this (as well as in the Brahmsian "developing variation" tactics, in the prose-like character of melodic line and rhythmic ideas, in the incessant contrapuntal spinning-out, and - in the very late works - an almost serial avoidance of pitch repetition) there is a hidden parallel to Schoenberg. Indeed, this music is hard!
Yet there are other features that compensate for its density. The sheer sensuous sheen of the instrumental writing is hard to resist; the total immersion into each instrument's idiom (something that, for instance, can not be said about Bach, whose abstractly motivated pitch choices consistently challenge voices, strings, fingers) makes for a sound palette that is blinding in its variety of colour and texture. Enescu, of course, played piano and every string instrument except the bass; and through his conducting experience, knew every orchestral instrument intimately. The harmonic language, although contrapuntaly motivated (like Faure's), offers tremendous variety, from diatonic folk-like simplicity, to almost atonal complexes; and its appeal is striking and immediate, making each moment a discrete, irreplicable sensual experience. The long-range harmonic progressions and bass lines (as in the 3rd Violin Sonata) are usually very simple - thus, the "profound pulse" rings true and makes long sections, though diverse and dense on a thematic and harmonic level, convincing and well-directed. He certainly knew his craft as a composer!
Enescu's music demands an absolutely continuous concentration from the listener, for the subjective thread of the argument (and it is an argument, and not merely a sucession of variously colored sensual impulses, as some people, used to Scriabin, unfortunately make it sound) weaves its way through a landscape almost dangerously overladen with implications. Yet it is precisely that factor that makes the listening experience so vital and exciting. In its richness and multitudiousness of meanings, it seems, like Bach, inexhaustible, an endless vista (put on Bartok or Stravinsky afterwards, you will see what I mean!). The variety of connections that a listener, a performer, or an analyst can make in his music is such that the line between the act of composing and the act of receiving can almost become blurred. Enescu's music is more than just intricate storytelling; it is also a livable, and living, space - to be inhabited by those who are not afraid to be demanding of themselves.
