Editorial: Romanian and Greek Musicians

      The portrait of a Greek composer, so far almost unknown in this country, is placed within two frameworks, both related to problems of twentieth century Romanian music performance in this issue of Musicology Today.
One particularity of Enescu’s piano creation, namely its improvisational nature, is re-examined by Alexandra Militaru in a fresh synthetic manner. The perspective of a young female pianist living in France is determined not just by the traditional Romanian bibliography, but also by updated international sources. Hence, it can only be profitable to do research focusing on Enescu. In her turn, Diana Moș uses her experience as a violin player and a member of chamber ensembles specialising in new music to offer a semantic analysis of Dan Dediu’s SonatOpera. The theoretical tools come from professor Dinu Ciocan’s writings, but also from working directly with him along her interpretive journey (as Diana Moș often performed the score she analyses here). Through pure coincidence, this issue’s book review makes reference to a volume by another disciple of Dinu Ciocan’s – Antigona Rădulescu – and to the direction of musical semiotics in Romania.

      Actually, we could add one more ‘framework’ to the the above-mentioned ones, if we count Dragoș Călin’s article under Thoughts, which describes some of the analytical workshops so characteristic to conductor and professor Constantin Bugeanu. Next to these studies focusing on Romanian musicians, George Lambelet’s portrait connects us to the Balkan space. Anna-Maria Rentzeperri makes known the ideas on ‘national music’ issued by a Greek composer who was Enescu’s contemporary, with all the attributes we find at the end of the nineteenth century-the beginning of the twentieth century in the young cultures of the east and south of Europe, including Romania. As a matter of fact, possible parallels between Greek music and Romanian music (and this is not a reference to the Byzantine background, where connections are obvious) could reveal shocking similarities. The only condition is that someone should take up the challenge of the work involved.

Valentina Sandu-Dediu
(English translation by Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru)