"Between the Times" - the border crosser Paul Juon

The musicological classification according to styles, epochs and lines of development clouds the view of the "in-between", the mixing zones where old and new overlap, latecomers meet visionaries and the individuality of the artist becomes recognizable far away from the official historical and aesthetic classification. The universe of Paul Juon exemplifies this: geographically, temporally and stylistically, Juon appears as a self-determined border crosser between different cultural areas and in times of radical artistic upheaval.

Through an in-depth musical analysis of "Theme with Variations", we shed light on the dazzling aesthetics of Juon's symphonic language. At the beginning there is a small booklet with 83 pages: Paul Juon's "Theme with Variations" is probably Juon's earliest composition for orchestra. There is a great deal of mystery surrounding the work: it does not bear an opus number, the time of its composition is not known, it is not mentioned in the composer's personal catalogue raisonné, and the title of this score is written in Russian script - in contrast to those of the later compositions, Тема с вариациями для оркестра соч. Пав. Юон, the movement names and the instruments are notated in Italian. The work marks the auspicious beginning of Juon's lifelong engagement with the symphonic form and opens up an unusual view of the beginnings of an extraordinary artist's biography.