Continuities and Discontinuities in Romanian Music

Abstract

The Romanian music has many histories. From composer George Enescu to Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Romanian music reflected multiple faces of becoming and corresponding, streaming from a varied cultural diversity and gravitating towards the central European canons. The process of creating the Romanian music shaped a dynamic and fluid image of the place and people it represents, balancing its pendulum between the western aspiration and the eastern inspiration. Moreover, it has not just one history, but many ones because the Romanian music is not a monolithic tradition, but a fusion of various customs and influences that fluctuated their presence more or less obvious along this time of becoming. Seen in a long run framed between the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, folk music reveals as the constant component of each ideological narrative that emerged from both nationalism and socialism. This span of time is vital to understand the complex and mercurial nature of the popular or the folk that has a relation to music and song not because it describes a historical reality, but because it has been used historically. Keywords: Romanian music, Nationalism, Socialism, Leninism, folk music, progressive music