The constitution of the academic accordion art in the Moldavian SSR in the period 1940–1960

Abstract

With the annexation of Bessarabia to the USSR, the process of professionalization of accordionists, convering all levels of artistic education in the country, is influenced by the evolution of performing arts in Eastern Europe (especially Russia, Belarus, Ukraine). The academic bases are consolidated by illustrious pedagogues, such as Iziaslav Birbraier, Valentin Zagumionov (I. Birbraier’s student), Ivan Folomkin (one of the first graduates of the Gnesin State Musical-Pedagogical Institute in Moskow) and others. Durind the years 1940–1960, the establishment of the accordion interpretive art in the Moldavian SSR was directly conditioned by the massive ideologization of the ex-Soviet cultural space, which largely blurred the national identity aspect in the accordion academization process. Based on the classical-romantic aesthetics „adjusted” by the doctrine of socialist realism, the professionalization of Bessarabian instrumentalists is distinguished by a prominent conservatism compared to other accordion schools of that period, such as German, Danish, Czech etc. (we refer primarily to the compositional domain). Even if in this time segment the accordion failed to fully integrate into the „family” of European academic instruments, taking into account some areas (organological, compositional, pedagogical, interpretive) that needed to be intensely perfected, the first postwar decades can still be considered the reference point for establishing the academic status of chromatic harmonics in the Moldavian SSR