Waves in the ‘Iron Curtain’: An Introduction to Music and Politics in 1960s Romania

Abstract

In 1960s Romania, the politics of music composition involved a highly-debated question: should Romanian composers pay tribute to the Soviet-dominated East, the capitalist West, or to their homeland? Compared with other socialist decades in Romania, the 1960s brought a greater degree of political and cultural openness that allowed the issue of music's political allegiance to be debated more publicly and intensely. This issue gained heightened prominence primarily through its association with a renewed, official championing of Romanian nationalism. The major effects of this pairing on composers' lives, and the strategies used by composers to traverse such changes, constitute the main focus of this article. Many Romanian composers who were highly active in the 1960s contributed immensely to the country's school of composition, and my discussion presents an introduction to the various opportunities and challenges they faced as the country's ‘iron curtain’ successively waved open and closed.

Notes

 1 A widely-circulated Cold War joke.

 2 Winston Churchill introduced the term ‘iron curtain’ during his address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946. See ‘Winston Churchill and the Sinews of Peace Address’ (accessed 7 September 2009), http://www.hpol.org/churchill/

 3 I would like to thank the composers Gheorghe Costinescu, Dinu Ghezzo, Sabin Pautza, Cornel Ţăranu, and Sever Tipei, who generously shared their insights.

 4 Anonymous, ‘În pas cu viaţa’ (‘In Step with Life’), Muzica 8 (August 1960), 3.

 5 Anonymous, ‘Opinii despre noi creaţii româneşti’ (‘Opinions about New Romanian Creations’), Muzica 5 (May 1965), 4. Used to praise the ‘songs of the masses’ composed by Dumitru Bughici, these terms aptly describe songs of this type.

 6 Teodor Bratu, ‘Trăiască România socialistă’ (‘Long Live Socialist Romania’), Muzica 8 (August 1965), 1–4.

 7 Nicolae Parocescu, ‘Pentru un nou avînt al educaţiei muzicale de masă’ (‘For a New Momentum in the Music Education of the Masses’), Muzica 8 (August 1960), 4–8.

 8 Ibid, 7–8.

 9 Valentina Sandu-Dediu, Muzica românească între 1944–2000 (Romanian Music, 1944–2000) (Bucharest: Editura Muzicală, 2002), 20.

10 Cornel Ţăranu, interview with the author, 17 June 2009.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Gheorghe Costinescu, email communication, 10 February 2010.

14 For a more in-depth discussion of Andricu's trial, see Joel Crotty, ‘A Preliminary Investigation of Music, Socialist Realism, and the Romanian Experience, 1948–1959: (Re)reading, (Re)listening, and (Re)writing Music History for a Different Audience,’ Journal of Musicological Research 26 (2007), 166–8.

15 Sabin Pautza, interview with the author, 25 March 2009.

16 Iosif Sava, Ştefan Niculescu şi galaxiile musicale ale secolului XX (Ştefan Niculescu and the Musical Galaxies of the Twentieth Century) (Bucharest: Editura Muzicală, 1991), 41.

17 Pautza interview, 25 March 2009.

18 Ibid.

19 Ţăranu interview, 20 August 2009; and Dinu Ghezzo, interview with the author, 24 August 2009.

20 Sandu-Dediu, Muzica românească, 21.

21 Viorel Cosma, 40 de ani în fotoliul de orchestră (Forty Years in the Concert Seat) (Bucharest: Editura Muzicală, 1986), 184.

22 Ibid, 185.

23 Florin Constantiniu, O istorie sinceră a poporului român (A Sincere History of the Romanian People), 3rd ed. (Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 2009), 309. Also see Sabina Păuţa Pieslak, ‘Lenin in Swaddling Clothes: A Critique of the Ideological Conflict Between Socialist State Policy and Christian Music in Cold War Romania’, Current Musicology 78 (fall 2004), 7–30.

24 Paul E. Michelson, ‘Romania: History’, in Richard Frucht (ed.), Encyclopedia of Eastern Europe: From the Congress of Vienna to the Fall of Communism (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000), 688. Also see Vladimir Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (New York: The Free Press, 1992), 82–4.

25 Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics, 80–1.

26 Ibid, 82.

27 Robert R. King, ‘Romania’, in Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone and Andrew Gyorgy (eds), Communism in Eastern Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), 163.

28 Zeno Vancea and Ştefan Niculescu, ‘Raportul între naţional şi universal în lumina dezvoltării istorice a muzicii’ (‘The Rapport between National and Universal in Light of the Historic Development of Music’), Muzica 3 (March 1966), 6.

29 Ţăranu interview, 20 August 2009.

30 Ibid.

31 Gheorghe Costinescu, email communication, 10 February 2010.

32 Ibid.

33 Sever Tipei, interview with the author, 27 August 2009.

34 Ibid. The library is currently the National Library of Romania.

35 Gheorghe Costinescu, email communication, 10 February 2010.

36 Ghezzo interview, 24 August 2009.

37 Tipei interview, 27 August 2009.

38 Ibid.

39 Ţăranu interview, 20 August 2009.

40 Ghezzo interview, 24 August 2009.

41 Ibid.

42 Anonymous, ‘Opinii despre noi’, Muzica 5 (May 1965), 2.

43 Ibid. The mathematical idea was based on the Fibonacci sequence.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 Tipei interview, 27 August 2009.

47 Costinescu, email communication, 10 February 2010.

48 Anonymous, ‘Opinii despre noi’, Muzica 5 (May 1965), 2–3.

49 Nicolae Constantinescu, ‘Lecţiile trecutului: Folclorul şi folcloristica în totalitarism şi după’ (‘The Lessons of the Past: Folklore and Folkloristics in Totalitarianism and After’), Sinteze 4 (1997), 27–32.

50 Marin Marian Bălaşa, Studii şi materiale de antropologie muzicală (Studies and Materials of Musical Anthropology) (Bucharest: Editura Muzicală, 2003), 63–72.

52 Ibid, 8.

51 Vancea and Niculescu, ‘Raportul între naţional şi universal’, 10.

53 Tiberiu Olah, ‘Folclor şi esenţă, şcoală naţională şi universalitate’ (‘Folklore and Essence, the National School and Universality’), Muzica 5 (1974), 4.

54 This current intensified in the 1970s and 1980s and came to be known as ‘protochronism.’ See Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 168.

55 Doru Popovici, ‘Sonata pentru vioară de Dan Constantinescu’ (Sonata for Violin by Dan Constantinescu), Muzica 8 (August, 1965), 29.

56 Vancea and Niculescu, ‘Raportul între naţional şi universal’, 5.

57 Cosma, 40 de ani, 205.

58 Doru Popovici, ‘Concert Carougeois de A.F Marescotti and Simfonia Brevis de Cornel Ţăranu’ (‘Concert Carougeois by A.F Maerscotti and Simfonia Brevis by Cornel Ţăranu’), Muzica 3 (March 1965), 41–2.

59 Ibid, 42.

60 Vancea and Niculescu, ‘Raportul între naţional şi universal’, 9–10.

61 Ibid, 4.

62 For detailed accounts of these performances, see Cosma, 40 de ani, 171–252; Louis Armstrong's visit was reviewed in Muzica 5 (1965), 41–2.

64 Cosma, 40 de ani, 170.

63 Tipei interview, 27 August 2009.

65 Ibid., 253.

66 Composers, like Leon Klepper, were allowed to attend the Warsaw Autumn festival in 1957, but they were not official participants. See Sandu-Dediu, Muzica Românească, 24.

67 Sabina Păuţa Pieslak, ‘Romania's Madrigal Choir and the Politics of Prestige’, Journal of Musicological Research 26 (2007), 215–40.

68 Pautza interview, 25 March 2009.

69 Mihai Plămădeală, Horia Diaconescu and Ioan Cora, ‘Interview with Dimitrie Cadere (Entuziaştii)’ (12 December 2005) (accessed 5 June 2009), http://www.muzicisifaze.com/interviu.php?id=5/

71 Ghezzo interview, 24 August 2009.

70 Liviu Antonesei, ‘De la rock'n roll la implozia comunismului’ (‘From Rock'n Roll to the Implosion of Communism’) (accessed 12 June 2009), http://www.romaniantimes.org/