Vol. 16 No. 16 (2016): ARTES. JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY

Romanian music – stylistic identity and context

How are Romanian music works situated in the European or worldwide context – this has been the fundamental topic of musicological research in Romania for twenty years, which is the content of issue 16 of Artes. Journal of Musicology is affiliated. By studying both historical and contemporary Romanian composition in relation to the world of music, the authors of the articles, also present in the similarly-themed symposium at the 19th edition of the FESTIVAL OF ROMANIAN MUSIC, Iaşi, October 2016, intended to overcome the paradoxical peak stage of 1970 to 1990. On the one hand, that period was characterized by an eruption of substantial information, on a scientific level, and the originality manifested especially in the study of George Enescu's works. On another hand, however, a nationalistic ideology coupled with an increasingly abstract/conceptual analysis of musical language and the lack of translations into European languages determined the composition of a unilateral partial picture and deepened the low level of knowledge of our music available in the international artistic and scientific world. Varying in range, the studies featured in this issue offer novel topics in the announced thematic area: rediscussing old Romanian music from the perspective of relativity in contemporary historical research, reassessing works or texts about music by connecting them to the European sources of the time, specific contributions to the knowledge about certain compositions, theoretical concepts belonging to Romanian composers from neighboring territories, premiere analyses of recent works, etc. We continue to present volumes of musicology by reviewing substantial and significant restitution to the research of Romanian folklore. Ph.D. candidates, developing musicologists or personalities of musical research from Iaşi, Bucharest, Chişinău, and Braşov propose a dialogue of ideas about and images of the Romanian art of sound through the contemporary means and directions of the science of music.

Editor-in-chief,
Prof. Laura Vasiliu, PhD