Romanian Musical Culture, post-1945
Participants: Joel Crotty and Tamara Smolyar
Aims
To study new Romanian music and the impact of communism on music from the 1940s to the early 1960s.
Partnerships
This research cluster has ongoing relationships with the University of Music, Bucharest and Spiru Haret University, particularly with colleagues in musicology and composition.
Staff and their Research Outcomes
Tamara Smolyar has been active in the performance of new music composed for solo piano and for piano with chamber and orchestral forces, with a particular interest in the music of Livia Teodorescu-Ciocǎnea (University of Music, Bucharest).
In 2008, Tamara travelled to Bucharest to perform the world premiere of Teodorescu-Ciocǎnea’s Piano Concerto, which was especially composed for her.
Teodorescu-Ciocǎnea has also composed other works for Monash staff including Endeavour Bells (Smolyar), Romulus and Remus (for Smolyar, Fintan Murphy and Elizabeth Sellars, violins) and Polyspectralia (for Smolyar and David Griffiths, clarinet). Smolyar has also given the Australian premiere of Teodorescu-Ciocǎnea’s Sonatina.
Tamara’s future endeavours includes the continuation of the engagement with Teodorescu-Ciocǎnea’s music; performance over time of the complete works for solo piano by Mihail Andricu as well as selected chamber and solo piano scores by Tiberiu Olah; and with Joel Crotty they will work on a combined musicological-performance project pinpointing the formalist-socialist realist synergies in the Sonatas by Andricu, Mihail Jora and Alfred Mendelsohn, composed between 1948 and 1965.
Former Head of School Peter Handsworth also had the honour of having music especially composed for him, namely, Austral for solo clarinet by Sorin Lerescu (Spiru Haret University) and Concerto for Clarinet and Strings by Maia Ciobanu (Spiru Haret University). Both these scores were performed by Handsworth in Bucharest, and for a time he placed on his repertoire music by Cornel Taranu and Tiberiu Olah.
Joel Crotty has worked with Romanian musicologists Ruxandra Arzoiu, Alina Ghiga, and Laura Manolache (National University of Music, Bucharest) to produce a collection of essays in MikroPolyphonie and with Kay Dreyfus (Music, Monash) the pair commissioned articles by Valentina Sandu- Dediu (National University Music, Bucharest) and Marin Marian-Bǎlaşa (C. Brăiloiu Institute of Ethnography and Folklore, Bucharest) for the Journal of Musicological Research.
Joel has published research in MikroPolyphonie on Maia Ciobanu’s Ostinato II¸ Loose Canons (Southern Voices, 2004) on Romanian women composers, Journal of Musicological Research on the intersect between music and communism in the 1940s and 50s, and in Music and Politics (in press) on marketing Romanian music abroad in the 1950s.
Other musicological investigations have working titles of ‘Composing Communism: the prismatic dimensions of memory in the post-communist era’ and a larger project, ‘Romancing culture in the borderlands, 1900-1965: the use of travel writings as a way of re-contextualising Romanian music’.
Joel is a member of the Editorial Board of Analele Universitatii Spiru Haret—Seria Muzica, and both Joel and Tamara worked closely with Teodorescu-Ciocǎnea while she was resident in the School Music-Conservatorium on an Australian Federal Government Endeavour Fellowship in 2008.
Other Research Outcomes
In 2003 the Move label released a CD (MD 3281) that featured music by Australian, Korean and Romanian composers with performers including Smolyar, Handsworth and Murphy. Lerescu’s Austral, Teodorescu-Ciocǎnea’s Tentazione (Handsworth, Murphy and Smolyar), and Dan Dediu’s Lévantiques, Nos. 1, 2 and 5 (Smolyar) are the Romanian composers represented on the disc. An excerpt of the performance of Tentazione can be found at http://wpool.com/move/snd/tentazione.mp3 Student Participation Students have also been encouraged to explore Romanian music, and so far Doina Rotaru’s Fum (clarinet solo), Livia Teodorescu-Ciocanea’s Piano Sonatina and George Balant’s Suita pentru pian pe teme de colinde populare românesti (piano solo) have been selected for performance.