Book Review: VALENTIN TIMARU - ON MUSIC AND BEAUTY IN ESSAYISTIC STYLE

Abstract

Among Valentin Timaru’s theoretical works, we encounter three volumes Aforisme: comentarii și confesiuni (Aphorisms: Comments and Confessions), Muzica noastră cea spre ființă (Our Life-Giving Music), and Frumosul artistic și fațetele sale subiective (Artistic Beauty and Its Subjective Facets), which are approached contextually, in an essayistic, personalized style. The author’s manner of speech often encloses subjective aspects gathered during his lifetime experience, but nevertheless the proposed debate involves a vast knowledge of various stringent (general) artistic, artistic-musical, philosophical, aesthetic, and psychological issues (behavioural conducts and human feelings).

In essayistic style[1] because not all aspects required in the elaboration of such a study are observed ad litteram. The large sizes of the works enable us to approach their subjects from various perspectives, advising the reader in perceiving the themes microscopically as well as synoptically.

The manner in which the presented works are approached is synonymous to a review, as it includes summarizing configurations of the revealing ideas depicted by the author. The text is scattered with the subchapters’ titles (e b) cumulated on the contextual level, or themes, expressions, terminologies which hold an evidently important role among the themes debated by the author.

[1] Essay, 1. small sized study on philosophical, literary or scientific themes, composed with original means, without undertaking to treat a subject exhaustively (Explanatory Dictionary of the Romanian Language, dexonline).