The issue of the copyright on Enescu's pieces has been a topic of multiple heated debates- they're subject to standard legal regulations, in effect for 70 years following the composer's death. Much of Enescu's work is owned by major foreign publishing houses, who receive royalties for broadcasts and performances. And not a small amount. Among those who made and continue to make real efforts for things to become normal is Matei Bănică, director of "Grafoart" Publishing House, who joined us for an in-depth talk on the subject.

Let's begin with a difficult subject: the legal status of Enescu's much-discussed scores. In your opinion, what is their situation?

In 2025 it will be the 70^th anniversary of Enescu's death. As we all know, according to the current copyright law, the copyright expires on January 1^st, after the date of the person's death, which in this case is May 4^th 1955. The state of Enescu's copyright has always been subject to discussion among musicians. The way I see it, "Grafoart" Publishing House cut the Gordian Knot and proved that, even though according to the new copyright law this is the date when Enescu's copyrighted works will enter the public domain, due to older laws taking precedence, other legal articles apply. As a result, we proved that George Enescu is already in the public domain and can be edited, which we did. Unfortunately, performing Enescu's pieces is another matter entirely, because they're likely to be rented or licensed. The scores must be rented. We're talking about the orchestra scores, not the smaller or chamber ones. As is the practice everywhere in the world, the orchestra pieces are leased and right now they're rented from the French houses that first published the pieces, even though the editions are old. We're talking '60's, '70's, so very old editions with many errors and flaws. Enescu's scores and manuscripts are very meticulously written. Enescu was a person with conscientiousness you rarely see these days. Enescu's complaints about the editors of his times are well known from his letters. But in their defense, the methods we have nowadays for transcribing or typing sheet music weren't available to them. Technology is helping us get much closer to what Enescu would have wanted and what editors couldn't achieve in his lifetime or the following period.

Back to the subject of George Enescu's copyrighted works, legally speaking they entered the public domain with the death of Maria Cantacuzino, George Enescu's wife and legal heir. Despite that, once the new editions of his works are published, they'll be under copyright laws for another 70 years. Something that might surprise you is that I've been working on a book about George Enescu's copyright for the past 10 years and I think it would shed some light on the matter, but it's been put off because other things keep taking priority, such as the scores and publishing them. They are George Enescu's actual legacy, not the biographies or any other collateral discussions.

That's why we tried to focus on publishing George Enescu's scores. We started editing a bunch of smaller works, which we managed to finish and publish, such as Poema română. We started with Opus 1, many vocal pieces, sonatas for violin and piano, all solo piano pieces, Suite of variations for two pianos, the Symphonie concertante, the Romanian rhapsodies and many other pieces that we now have available. They can be found in our book store, anyone can come look if they're interested, maybe even buy them. Foreign orchestras might also be interested, because this is the actual sensitive spot: how we'd successfully promote George Enescu in other countries. He's quite well known in Romania and very well known in other countries, but he's mythical, in a way, because it was hard to access his music andcomprehensive editions that could do him justice properly.

History teaches us that at every edition of the "George Enescu" Festival, musicians, conductors, singers come to the foyer, where they expect to find a musical publishing house's stand. As luck would have it, they run into us in the Sala Palatului foyer. Every two years they can find our stand there, we have information about George Enescu's work, and we also have some of his scores for sale. As such, they can schedule concerts or recitals depending on their specialty and instrument.

What are your plans for Enescu's scores?

We plan to have a shelf or two filled with every single piece George Enescu ever composed and finished. They should be homogenous editions, similar, that would be accessible to the public. We also work with digital publishing platforms, so that musicians who can't come here, from distant countries, such as China, which is a huge market, would be able to see and play these pieces from their tablet. The reach is huge compared to paper, which is limited by physical circulation.

This was the next question. What's the international interest for Enescu's scores from what you noticed over the last few years? What parts of the world do you receive orders from?

We receive orders from all over the world. There's some inconveniences with transport for physical orders, because sometimes it can be as much as 10% of the shipment price, which is very scary for musicians and orchestras abroad. The delivery time is also very long, so sometimes our presence on online libraries is a blessing, but there's also disadvantages. Some musicians like paper or would rather have a paperback edition and that's why we must ship them.

We regularly get orders from Japan, we get orders from Australia, we even get orders from America, not many, unfortunately, but often enough, and not from the same people, so there's great interest. As the amount of pieces increases, so too does their diversity, there will be a lot of demand and Enescu's works will be performed much more. We need to restore him to his rightful place, one that is unfortunately acknowledged more by foreigners than our fellow Romanians, who consider him inaccessible, unapproachable or indecipherable. "Indecipherable", is something I agree with to an extent and it is a result of our unfortunate lack of knowledge. The way talks have been going with the Ministry of Education these days about the removal of music classes from middle school curriculums, I think this is very dangerous in the context of George Enescu and understanding classical and complex music. We should be moving towards introducing instrument classes in middle schools, like in civilized countries, not moving away from music.

You had an important collaboration with conductor Cristian Măcelaru, artistic director of the "George Enescu" International Festival and author of a complete Enescu symphony distributed by Deutsche Grammophon. What did it consist of?

Our score editing process is usually split into two steps. First is the initial theoretical part, in which we transcribe the score and decipher the manuscript or other sources we have. The problem is that the product of our work must be practical, the score must have a practical element. An orchestra, a musician or a quartet must be able to play the piece we're editing. This is the reason why it must satisfy certain needs, certain practical difficulties that we, sitting in front of a computer with the manuscript and our sources, can sometimes barely notice. That's where the orchestra or the intended player of the score comes in, working with a draft of the score and offering feedback, telling us what we can improve, pointing out potential errors that we can't notice on paper, errors that proliferated in existing editions. And we go back to our sources, check, draw parallels, see if the fragment repeats, if it's moved from one part to another, if the theme is for another instrument. We try to solve these suggestions, including the ones about page turning, which are very important for the musicians and conductor. To that end, maestro Măcelaru, who printed a series of Enescu works and will print more, graciously helped us for free, with his great skill, to move forward and solve these problems that we couldn't have noticed just sitting in front of a screen. We achieved a fortunate symbiosis between theory and practice.

Let's finally talk about what Enescu's manuscripts look like, because you mentioned in an interview that they're similar to paintings. How so?

Enescu's manuscripts were very carefully drawn, which is probably why the word "engraving" is used in English, it might be closer to the practical truth of George Enescu's manuscripts. Unfortunately, we've had difficulties collaborating with the "George Enescu" National Museum about making some manuscripts available to us because of certain legal terms, but most of the issues were eventually solved and they offered us digital scans of those manuscripts. They're jewels. Looking at these manuscripts and studying them is such a joy. Beyond the positive first impression, the more we work with these manuscripts, we discover hidden dimensions to Enescu's music. And we try to convey these hidden dimensions as much as we can and as much as technology can help us, though sometimes it hinders us too. Unfortunately the manuscript is always denser and when we edit it we need to space it out, the published score must be more spaced out than the manuscript, which has both pros and cons. On one hand, it has a much higher page count, but on the other hand it's easier to read.

For example, the score for the opera Oedipus: we considered editing it. In this case, given that we didn't manage to finish it in the end, we decided to publish the manuscript as a reproduction, exactly as it was written by Enescu, to give the public access to this beauty. You can find it at our store, "Librăria muzicală", anyone who wants it can buy it, and there were many people who bought it, both at the "Enescu" Festival, and from our store, just for its beauty, because they weren't composers, they were musicians, some amateurs, who just wanted to have such a jewel in their house. It's an A3 paper book with approximately 460 pages, so it's quite large, about as big as an A3 paper ream, but incredibly beautiful.