Archdeacon Sebastian Barbu-Bucur PhD – Researcher of the Byzantine Musical Tradition across the Romanian Territory

Abstract

Professor Archdeacon Sebastian Babu-Bucur PhD is one of the most prominent representatives of Romanian Byzantology with a tireless activity spreading throughout different fields – research, psalmic musical creation, teaching, performing. Our study focuses briefly on several of the researcher’s achievements, some of his main concerns having been the Romanianisation process of the church chant in the 18th century and the manuscripts elaborated by Romanians. We highlighted the merits of the Byzantinist musicologist who contributed to the discovery of most of the Romanian manuscript no. 61 in the Romanian Academy Library, who tracked down and catalogued over 250 Romanian manuscripts to be found in the libraries from Mount Athos, who demonstrated through documenta and transcripta editions the significance of the activity of various Romanian psalm readers whose contribution to the translation of chants in Romanian had been, up to that moment, almost unknown. Archdeacon Sebastian Babu-Bucur’s tireless work as a researcher of Byzantine music contributes to a better knowledge and understanding of the evolution of this type of music in the 18th and the 19th century and leads the way towards new investigations in the years to come.