Costin Moisil | National University of Music Bucharest (original) (raw)

Papers by Costin Moisil

Series Musicologica Balcanica, 1/2, 2021

The Orthodox church chant from South Transylvania is a variant of the Byzantine chant. It was tra... more The Orthodox church chant from South Transylvania is a variant of the Byzantine chant. It was transmitted almost exclusively orally until 1890, when priest Dimitrie Cunțan published a volume in Western notation containing the most used pieces. The volume was used as a handbook for the cantors ever since, but oral tradition has continued to play a very important role even today.
In this paper, I present the main issues to be investigated in order to achieve a theory of modes for the South Transylvania chant, pointing to a few particular aspects of this music. Research has to take into account both written sources and audio recordings. For the latter, one can use the database including recordings from about 100 cantors (age 29 to 87) made in 2002–2005 by Rev. Vasile Grăjdian and his assistants.
The theory of modes should not confine only to the description of scales, dominant degrees, cadences, unstable degrees etc. It would be useful for such a theory to also list the formulas of every mode and reveal the rules of concatenating the formulas in a performance, and to describe the significant variations of tempo that are embedded in these formulas and modes as well.

Journal of the International Society for Orthodox Church Music, 2020

My paper explores the hypothetical work of a musicologist of the future interested in church musi... more My paper explores the hypothetical work of a musicologist of the future interested in church music sung in Bucharest in 2019. What evidence would such an musicologist find in manuscripts and printed books in order to reconstruct the repertoire chanted? What would he think about the repertories in use? What would he be likely to miss?

Musicology Today: Journal of the National University of Music Bucharest 10/2 (38), 2018

Somehow surprisingly, Byzantine musicology flourished during the communism in Romania. How was it... more Somehow surprisingly, Byzantine musicology flourished during the communism in Romania. How was it possible to publish articles and books on a religious topic in an atheist totalitarian state with a vigilant censorship? Franz Metz (1995) and Nicolae Gheorghiță (2015) have shown that religious music research was in fact encouraged by the regime in order to support its nationalist ideology.
My paper is a revisitation of the subject, bringing new data into view.

Creating Liturgically: Hymnography and Music. Proceedings on the Sixth International Conference on Orthodox Church Music, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, 8–14 June 2015, 2017

Unlike other liturgical moments and offices, Liturgy of the Faithful requires the chanters to acc... more Unlike other liturgical moments and offices, Liturgy of the Faithful requires the chanters to accommodate the length of the chants to the rhythm of the celebrator. Even in churches where the cantor and the priest celebrate together for years it happens for some liturgical moments – mainly those connected to the Great Entrance and the Communion – to take more or less time than usual. More often than not, the cantor is supposed in such situations to fill the time with music or, on the contrary, to stop singing in no time.
My paper points to some of the techniques that Byzantine chanters in Bucharest use in order to fit the length of the hymn with the unexpected length of the liturgical moment.

Manele in Romania: Cultural Expression and Social Meaning in Balkan Popular Music, eds. Margaret Beissinger, Speranța Rădulescu, Anca Giurchescu (Lanham: Scarecrow), 2016

This is a discussion of the historic roots of manele. The author disputes the "mainstream" histor... more This is a discussion of the historic roots of manele. The author disputes the "mainstream" history of the genre, which situates the first manele already in the Romanian principalities of the eighteenth century, if not before. He systematically explores the chief sources that mention manele prior to 1960, demonstrating that "manea" was a generic term employed starting in the mid-1800s that designated various "Oriental" musics from contemporary or earlier times. (Margaret Beissinger, editor of the book.)

Musicology Today: Journal of the National University of Music Bucharest, nr. 4 (28), vol. 7, 2016

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Romanian musicians and clergy became interested in... more Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Romanian musicians and
clergy became interested in the connections between the Romanian nation and its church music. The widely shared view was that Byzantine music had been adjusted to the Romanian language and spirit, shedding its Turkish features and acquiring a national character. Between the two world wars, the thinking on this national character became more varied and nuanced. Some authors carried on the prewar discourse and sought the national character of church chanting in secular peasant music. Others placed race at the center of the debate and argued that the Romanians’ musical conception (of Latin race) is linear, and the most appropriate texture for their music is polyphonic. A third category was interested not in the national particularities of Romanian music, but in its old Byzantine roots, advocating their restoration.

Church Music and Icons: Windows to Heaven. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Orthodox Church Music, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, 3-9 June 2013, 2015

This paper focuses on a pilgrimage that takes place every year in North Transylvania. It starts f... more This paper focuses on a pilgrimage that takes place every year in North Transylvania. It starts form the village of Derșida (Sălaj county) and goes to Nicula Monastery. I begin my presentation with the history of a wonder-working icon, then I describe the pilgrimage to that icon, and finally I discuss the music that accompanies the pilgrimage.

Musicology Today, Jul 2014

The most widespread variant of Orthodox Church music in Transylvania is the so-called cunțană cha... more The most widespread variant of Orthodox Church music in Transylvania is the so-called cunțană chant. Its name comes from Dimitrie Cunțan, who was the first one to notate and print a collection of chants then prevailing in Transylvania (Cântări bisericești, 1890). Cunțan’s volume quickly became authoritative and is still today regarded with high respect by Transylvanian cantors.
Despite their declared attachment to the scores of Cunțan, cantors often distance themselves from the written musical text. What are the differences between the notated and the performed variants of a chant? What role does the score play in the performance? Can present-day performance help in the understanding of the church music of the past? My paper is a work-in-progress which tries to answer these questions.

New Europe College Ştefan Odobleja Program Yearbook 2012-2013, 2013

This paper is the result of an ethnomusicological field research study carried out in several pha... more This paper is the result of an ethnomusicological field research study carried out in several phases in cities, villages, and monasteries from Transylvania in 2012 and 2013. I classified the various musics performed in the Orthodox churches of this region and I tried to find out how these musics were connected to different group identities (of region, age, national etc.) and how they contributed to the construction of these identities.

Simpozionul Internațional de Muzicologie Bizantină. 300 de ani de românire (1713–2013), (ed. Nicolae Gheorghiță, Costin Moisil, Daniel Suceava), Editura Universității Naționale de Muzică București, 2013

The present paper aims to shed a new light on the adaptation of Byzantine chants into Romanian (a... more The present paper aims to shed a new light on the adaptation of Byzantine chants into Romanian (also known as ‘romanianization’) before the Chrysanthine reform. The research is almost exclusively based on catalogs published by other Romanian musicologists, mainly by archdeacon Sebastian Barbu-Bucur. The author analyzes the chronological distribution of 50 manuscripts containing pieces in Romanian with Middle Byzantine notation, the number and the genre of chants in Romanian included in these manuscripts. The conclusion of the paper is that romanianization before 1820 was rather an individual project, a lot of chants in Romanian having a very limited circulation.

Muzikologija, vol. 11, 2011

Romanian cantors, clergymen and musicologists debated the problem of a national church chant from... more Romanian cantors, clergymen and musicologists debated the problem of a national church chant from the late 19th century onwards. Amongst other things, they tried to define the specific traits of Romanian chant, to place these traits in opposition with Turkish and Oriental ones, and to show that traits of Romanian chant bore witness to a European and not an Oriental identity. This paper discuss various views on the traits of Romanian chant and the composing techniques of the “Romanianization” of Greek pieces, and points to the connections between these traits and national myths and symbols shared by Romanians.

As with other parts of the cultural life of Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century, Romani... more As with other parts of the cultural life of Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century, Romanian church music felt the influence of the nationalism. The state had an important role in the processes of imaging a national music, creating a repertoire and spreading it through all the Romanian churches.

Studii şi cercetări de istoria artei, seria Teatru, Muzică, Cinematografie, serie nouă, nr. 3 (47), 2009

The paper outlines a method of reconstructing chants in Byzantine notation from late-18 th to ear... more The paper outlines a method of reconstructing chants in Byzantine notation from late-18 th to early-19 th centuries. The method is based on the comparison of pieces recorded both in Middle Byzantine and Chrysanthine notations. It consists in selecting a group of pieces with a high grade of similarity (same mode, same style, same composer etc.); segmenting every piece in syntactical units; creating an Old notation-New notation "dictionary" of formulas; determining rules of transcription for nonformulaic units; and checking the validity of the results in groups formed by gradually enlarging the initial group. This method is applied in the paper for the particular case of 24 stichera from the anastasimatarion of Petros Lampadarios Peloponnisios. The rules of transcription are verified by transcribing a few Romanian stichera in Middle-Byzantine notation and by comparing them with similar stichera in Chrysanthine notation.

Studii şi cercetări de istoria artei, seria Teatru, Muzică, Cinematografie, serie nouă, nr. 2 (46), 2008

Papers Read at the 12th Meeting of the IMS Study Group Cantus Planus, Lillafüred/Hungary, 2004. Aug. 23–28 (ed. László Dobszay), Budapest, 151–170, 2006

Zbornik Matice Srpske za scenske umetnosti i muziku, 32–33 (2005), 217–234, 2005

If during the communist regime Romanian research was oriented toward the oldest musical documents... more If during the communist regime Romanian research was oriented toward the oldest musical documents written by the Romanians (the Putna schoolthe 16 th century, the first compositions in Romanian-the 18 th century), the situation has changed after 1989. 4 In the early 1990s, the studies on the Putna school signed by Titus Moisescu 5 continued to prevail. In parallel, however, articles on music in Chrysanthine notation began to make their way, which until then had only been published in theological magazines, sometimes under a pseudonym. Beginning with 1995, neo-Byzantine music in Romanian has been predominant in publications about chanting; most articles are monographs, catalogs or descriptions of manuscripts, often concluded with one or two musical examples in neumatic and staff notation. Recent years have seen an opening to other issues (musicological analyses, oral traditions, exegesis, mathematical patterns, gender studies) and increased reference to the international bibliography. The most prestigious periodical after 1989 has remained Studii ¤i cercetºri de istoria artei, seria Teatru, Muzicº, Cinematografie (abbreviated: SCIA), next to its French counterpart, Revue roumaine d'histoire de l'art. Série Théâtre, Musique, Cinéma (abbreviated RRHA). The two publications were issued annually until 1997, when they were discontinued for financial reasons. Muzica, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists' Association quarterly, is another publication where articles on chanting are fairly frequent. The first specialized periodical on chanting 6 appeared in 1995 at Jassy: Byzantion, (since 1997, Byzantion Romanicon). Another publication of the kind, Acta Musicae Byzantinae (abbreviated to AMB), has been published at Jassy too, beginning with 1999. The magazine publishes the papers of the international symposia organized yearly by the Center for Byzantine Studies in Jassy, in addition to a few other articles. Edited by Gabriela and Traian Ocneanu, AMB became before long the most important (post-) Byzantine music magazine in Romania. 7 Almost all the articles are in Romanian, aside from those published in RRHA (all of them in French), and a few from AMB (in English or French). The older articles from Muzica, some of those from Byzantion (Romanicon), and all those from AMB have English or French summaries.

The Past in the Present. Papers Read at the IMS Intercongressional Symposium and the 10th Meeting of the Cantus Planus, Budapest & Visegrad, 2000 (ed. László Dobszay), vol. 2, Budapest, 89–101, 2003

Acta Musicae Byzantinae, 2003

Intonation in Byzantine chant was a very disputed topic for musicologists in both Western and Eas... more Intonation in Byzantine chant was a very disputed topic for musicologists in both Western and Eastern Europe. The discussions were often limited to the core of the problem: the presence or absence of chromaticism in the medieval chant. The author of this paper does not plead for one theory or another but only makes remarks concerning the arguments used by some musicologists.
The first observation refers to the fact that the terms diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic have different significance in the 'classic' West-European musicology, in the ancient Greek theory and in the New Method theory of the Neo-Byzantine chant (sometimes a term could even have an ambiguous significance in one theory). It is important to specify which significance is used along with a demonstration, in order to avoid reaching a false conclusion.
The second observation concerns the fact that a large class of diatonic (in the Western acceptance) scales does exist, including the well-tempered and Zarlino's scales. Some judgements could work in the case of one diatonic scale and fail in the case of another. For example, Raasted's demonstration concerning the chromatic structure of the 2nd mode could encounter some difficulties in the case that the starting point is a diatonic scale having major and minor tones and semitones.
A third remark shows that the Byzantine chant had a strong oral component. It is very likely that a hymn may be identically written but sung differently in time and space. The coincidence between formulas in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine manuscripts does not imply that the scale used for a formula today was also used for the same formula some centuries ago. The author also discusses how a new scale could come into use and be accepted by chanters in performance.
Finally, the author discusses the hypothesis that medieval scales contained not only fixed degrees – as he has presumed until this point of the paper – but also mobile degrees. Description of scales in contemporary Greek books and results obtained by field recording of the Arab Orthodox in Israel are also discussed.

Acta Musicae Byzantinae, vol. 2, Apr 2000

The Theoriticon of Macarie the Hieromonk appeared in 1823. The book presented for the first time... more The Theoriticon of Macarie the Hieromonk appeared in 1823. The book presented for the first time in Romanian the theory of the neo-Byzantine echoi proposed by archimandrite Chrysanthus. His model dividing the octave into 68 intervals was changed twenty years later for the one created by Anton Pann, which divided the octave into 22 intervals. The paper shows that the system presented by Macarie was a non-tempered one and it mainly used non-octaviant scales. The system is compared to the other theories, particularly to the theory of Pann in attempting to find the reason why the octave becomes divided into 22 intervals.

PhD thesis by Costin Moisil

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Philosophy, Faculty of Music Studies, 2012

I examined in this thesis the matter of the national church music in Romania, in the prewar perio... more I examined in this thesis the matter of the national church music in Romania, in the prewar period. The first part of my research (Chapter 3, “'Romanian national church music' in musicological writings") focused on the way in which the chanters, bishops, historians or musicologists regarded the Romanian church music before WW1. I showed that the image of this music changed in time—since the emergence of the Romanian modern state until today—not so much due to the discovery of new scientific evidence, as to the ideological and political changes.
In the next stage (Chapter 4, "A critical reading of some common opinions on Romanian national church music") I probed the validity of the contemporary musicologists’ statements—which are also supported by statements of the chanters before the Second World War—regarding the Romanian chant characteristics. The compared analysis of the Romanian chants with their Greek equivalents has shown that many of these assertions are false. I did not find in the creations and adaptations of the Romanian chanters any reduction of chromatic passages, any consistent abridgement of the chants or a preference for the syllabic style.
I showed then that pieces considered as examples for their national spirit prove devoid of the characters declared as specifically Romanian (conciseness, lack of melismas etc.) or reveal a foreign origin—Greek (e.g. the Palm Sunday Canon) or Western (tonal choral compositions).
I tried, in Chapter 5 ("The construction of the Romanian national church music"), to offer an alternative to this theory, taking into account the transformations that took place in the Romanian society and in its music in the 19th century (presented in Chapters 1 and 2) and the current theories regarding the nation (outlined in the Introduction).
I presented in detail the mechanisms for adapting the stichera in the first mode from three anastasimataria adapted by the most important Romanian chanters before 1860. The research explained the differences between the Greek and the Romanian versions and confirmed the statements of the chanters in this time period according to whom there was no essential difference between the Romanians’ chant and that in Greek.
National church music is thus not a creation of the chanters from the first half of the 19th century, but rather, it was constructed together with the Romanian nation, starting with the second half of the same century. The national chant was first imagined as an element of national identity, with specific features, distinct from those of the other nations, taking and reinterpreting myths present in the writings of chanters before 1860. Then, action was taken so that a number of pieces considered congruent with this image should be transposed in a “civilised” version in parts, and disseminated, in both forms, all over the country.

Series Musicologica Balcanica, 1/2, 2021

The Orthodox church chant from South Transylvania is a variant of the Byzantine chant. It was tra... more The Orthodox church chant from South Transylvania is a variant of the Byzantine chant. It was transmitted almost exclusively orally until 1890, when priest Dimitrie Cunțan published a volume in Western notation containing the most used pieces. The volume was used as a handbook for the cantors ever since, but oral tradition has continued to play a very important role even today.
In this paper, I present the main issues to be investigated in order to achieve a theory of modes for the South Transylvania chant, pointing to a few particular aspects of this music. Research has to take into account both written sources and audio recordings. For the latter, one can use the database including recordings from about 100 cantors (age 29 to 87) made in 2002–2005 by Rev. Vasile Grăjdian and his assistants.
The theory of modes should not confine only to the description of scales, dominant degrees, cadences, unstable degrees etc. It would be useful for such a theory to also list the formulas of every mode and reveal the rules of concatenating the formulas in a performance, and to describe the significant variations of tempo that are embedded in these formulas and modes as well.

Journal of the International Society for Orthodox Church Music, 2020

My paper explores the hypothetical work of a musicologist of the future interested in church musi... more My paper explores the hypothetical work of a musicologist of the future interested in church music sung in Bucharest in 2019. What evidence would such an musicologist find in manuscripts and printed books in order to reconstruct the repertoire chanted? What would he think about the repertories in use? What would he be likely to miss?

Musicology Today: Journal of the National University of Music Bucharest 10/2 (38), 2018

Somehow surprisingly, Byzantine musicology flourished during the communism in Romania. How was it... more Somehow surprisingly, Byzantine musicology flourished during the communism in Romania. How was it possible to publish articles and books on a religious topic in an atheist totalitarian state with a vigilant censorship? Franz Metz (1995) and Nicolae Gheorghiță (2015) have shown that religious music research was in fact encouraged by the regime in order to support its nationalist ideology.
My paper is a revisitation of the subject, bringing new data into view.

Creating Liturgically: Hymnography and Music. Proceedings on the Sixth International Conference on Orthodox Church Music, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, 8–14 June 2015, 2017

Unlike other liturgical moments and offices, Liturgy of the Faithful requires the chanters to acc... more Unlike other liturgical moments and offices, Liturgy of the Faithful requires the chanters to accommodate the length of the chants to the rhythm of the celebrator. Even in churches where the cantor and the priest celebrate together for years it happens for some liturgical moments – mainly those connected to the Great Entrance and the Communion – to take more or less time than usual. More often than not, the cantor is supposed in such situations to fill the time with music or, on the contrary, to stop singing in no time.
My paper points to some of the techniques that Byzantine chanters in Bucharest use in order to fit the length of the hymn with the unexpected length of the liturgical moment.

Manele in Romania: Cultural Expression and Social Meaning in Balkan Popular Music, eds. Margaret Beissinger, Speranța Rădulescu, Anca Giurchescu (Lanham: Scarecrow), 2016

This is a discussion of the historic roots of manele. The author disputes the "mainstream" histor... more This is a discussion of the historic roots of manele. The author disputes the "mainstream" history of the genre, which situates the first manele already in the Romanian principalities of the eighteenth century, if not before. He systematically explores the chief sources that mention manele prior to 1960, demonstrating that "manea" was a generic term employed starting in the mid-1800s that designated various "Oriental" musics from contemporary or earlier times. (Margaret Beissinger, editor of the book.)

Musicology Today: Journal of the National University of Music Bucharest, nr. 4 (28), vol. 7, 2016

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Romanian musicians and clergy became interested in... more Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Romanian musicians and
clergy became interested in the connections between the Romanian nation and its church music. The widely shared view was that Byzantine music had been adjusted to the Romanian language and spirit, shedding its Turkish features and acquiring a national character. Between the two world wars, the thinking on this national character became more varied and nuanced. Some authors carried on the prewar discourse and sought the national character of church chanting in secular peasant music. Others placed race at the center of the debate and argued that the Romanians’ musical conception (of Latin race) is linear, and the most appropriate texture for their music is polyphonic. A third category was interested not in the national particularities of Romanian music, but in its old Byzantine roots, advocating their restoration.

Church Music and Icons: Windows to Heaven. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Orthodox Church Music, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, 3-9 June 2013, 2015

This paper focuses on a pilgrimage that takes place every year in North Transylvania. It starts f... more This paper focuses on a pilgrimage that takes place every year in North Transylvania. It starts form the village of Derșida (Sălaj county) and goes to Nicula Monastery. I begin my presentation with the history of a wonder-working icon, then I describe the pilgrimage to that icon, and finally I discuss the music that accompanies the pilgrimage.

Musicology Today, Jul 2014

The most widespread variant of Orthodox Church music in Transylvania is the so-called cunțană cha... more The most widespread variant of Orthodox Church music in Transylvania is the so-called cunțană chant. Its name comes from Dimitrie Cunțan, who was the first one to notate and print a collection of chants then prevailing in Transylvania (Cântări bisericești, 1890). Cunțan’s volume quickly became authoritative and is still today regarded with high respect by Transylvanian cantors.
Despite their declared attachment to the scores of Cunțan, cantors often distance themselves from the written musical text. What are the differences between the notated and the performed variants of a chant? What role does the score play in the performance? Can present-day performance help in the understanding of the church music of the past? My paper is a work-in-progress which tries to answer these questions.

New Europe College Ştefan Odobleja Program Yearbook 2012-2013, 2013

This paper is the result of an ethnomusicological field research study carried out in several pha... more This paper is the result of an ethnomusicological field research study carried out in several phases in cities, villages, and monasteries from Transylvania in 2012 and 2013. I classified the various musics performed in the Orthodox churches of this region and I tried to find out how these musics were connected to different group identities (of region, age, national etc.) and how they contributed to the construction of these identities.

Simpozionul Internațional de Muzicologie Bizantină. 300 de ani de românire (1713–2013), (ed. Nicolae Gheorghiță, Costin Moisil, Daniel Suceava), Editura Universității Naționale de Muzică București, 2013

The present paper aims to shed a new light on the adaptation of Byzantine chants into Romanian (a... more The present paper aims to shed a new light on the adaptation of Byzantine chants into Romanian (also known as ‘romanianization’) before the Chrysanthine reform. The research is almost exclusively based on catalogs published by other Romanian musicologists, mainly by archdeacon Sebastian Barbu-Bucur. The author analyzes the chronological distribution of 50 manuscripts containing pieces in Romanian with Middle Byzantine notation, the number and the genre of chants in Romanian included in these manuscripts. The conclusion of the paper is that romanianization before 1820 was rather an individual project, a lot of chants in Romanian having a very limited circulation.

Muzikologija, vol. 11, 2011

Romanian cantors, clergymen and musicologists debated the problem of a national church chant from... more Romanian cantors, clergymen and musicologists debated the problem of a national church chant from the late 19th century onwards. Amongst other things, they tried to define the specific traits of Romanian chant, to place these traits in opposition with Turkish and Oriental ones, and to show that traits of Romanian chant bore witness to a European and not an Oriental identity. This paper discuss various views on the traits of Romanian chant and the composing techniques of the “Romanianization” of Greek pieces, and points to the connections between these traits and national myths and symbols shared by Romanians.

As with other parts of the cultural life of Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century, Romani... more As with other parts of the cultural life of Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century, Romanian church music felt the influence of the nationalism. The state had an important role in the processes of imaging a national music, creating a repertoire and spreading it through all the Romanian churches.

Studii şi cercetări de istoria artei, seria Teatru, Muzică, Cinematografie, serie nouă, nr. 3 (47), 2009

The paper outlines a method of reconstructing chants in Byzantine notation from late-18 th to ear... more The paper outlines a method of reconstructing chants in Byzantine notation from late-18 th to early-19 th centuries. The method is based on the comparison of pieces recorded both in Middle Byzantine and Chrysanthine notations. It consists in selecting a group of pieces with a high grade of similarity (same mode, same style, same composer etc.); segmenting every piece in syntactical units; creating an Old notation-New notation "dictionary" of formulas; determining rules of transcription for nonformulaic units; and checking the validity of the results in groups formed by gradually enlarging the initial group. This method is applied in the paper for the particular case of 24 stichera from the anastasimatarion of Petros Lampadarios Peloponnisios. The rules of transcription are verified by transcribing a few Romanian stichera in Middle-Byzantine notation and by comparing them with similar stichera in Chrysanthine notation.

Studii şi cercetări de istoria artei, seria Teatru, Muzică, Cinematografie, serie nouă, nr. 2 (46), 2008

Papers Read at the 12th Meeting of the IMS Study Group Cantus Planus, Lillafüred/Hungary, 2004. Aug. 23–28 (ed. László Dobszay), Budapest, 151–170, 2006

Zbornik Matice Srpske za scenske umetnosti i muziku, 32–33 (2005), 217–234, 2005

If during the communist regime Romanian research was oriented toward the oldest musical documents... more If during the communist regime Romanian research was oriented toward the oldest musical documents written by the Romanians (the Putna schoolthe 16 th century, the first compositions in Romanian-the 18 th century), the situation has changed after 1989. 4 In the early 1990s, the studies on the Putna school signed by Titus Moisescu 5 continued to prevail. In parallel, however, articles on music in Chrysanthine notation began to make their way, which until then had only been published in theological magazines, sometimes under a pseudonym. Beginning with 1995, neo-Byzantine music in Romanian has been predominant in publications about chanting; most articles are monographs, catalogs or descriptions of manuscripts, often concluded with one or two musical examples in neumatic and staff notation. Recent years have seen an opening to other issues (musicological analyses, oral traditions, exegesis, mathematical patterns, gender studies) and increased reference to the international bibliography. The most prestigious periodical after 1989 has remained Studii ¤i cercetºri de istoria artei, seria Teatru, Muzicº, Cinematografie (abbreviated: SCIA), next to its French counterpart, Revue roumaine d'histoire de l'art. Série Théâtre, Musique, Cinéma (abbreviated RRHA). The two publications were issued annually until 1997, when they were discontinued for financial reasons. Muzica, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists' Association quarterly, is another publication where articles on chanting are fairly frequent. The first specialized periodical on chanting 6 appeared in 1995 at Jassy: Byzantion, (since 1997, Byzantion Romanicon). Another publication of the kind, Acta Musicae Byzantinae (abbreviated to AMB), has been published at Jassy too, beginning with 1999. The magazine publishes the papers of the international symposia organized yearly by the Center for Byzantine Studies in Jassy, in addition to a few other articles. Edited by Gabriela and Traian Ocneanu, AMB became before long the most important (post-) Byzantine music magazine in Romania. 7 Almost all the articles are in Romanian, aside from those published in RRHA (all of them in French), and a few from AMB (in English or French). The older articles from Muzica, some of those from Byzantion (Romanicon), and all those from AMB have English or French summaries.

The Past in the Present. Papers Read at the IMS Intercongressional Symposium and the 10th Meeting of the Cantus Planus, Budapest & Visegrad, 2000 (ed. László Dobszay), vol. 2, Budapest, 89–101, 2003

Acta Musicae Byzantinae, 2003

Intonation in Byzantine chant was a very disputed topic for musicologists in both Western and Eas... more Intonation in Byzantine chant was a very disputed topic for musicologists in both Western and Eastern Europe. The discussions were often limited to the core of the problem: the presence or absence of chromaticism in the medieval chant. The author of this paper does not plead for one theory or another but only makes remarks concerning the arguments used by some musicologists.
The first observation refers to the fact that the terms diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic have different significance in the 'classic' West-European musicology, in the ancient Greek theory and in the New Method theory of the Neo-Byzantine chant (sometimes a term could even have an ambiguous significance in one theory). It is important to specify which significance is used along with a demonstration, in order to avoid reaching a false conclusion.
The second observation concerns the fact that a large class of diatonic (in the Western acceptance) scales does exist, including the well-tempered and Zarlino's scales. Some judgements could work in the case of one diatonic scale and fail in the case of another. For example, Raasted's demonstration concerning the chromatic structure of the 2nd mode could encounter some difficulties in the case that the starting point is a diatonic scale having major and minor tones and semitones.
A third remark shows that the Byzantine chant had a strong oral component. It is very likely that a hymn may be identically written but sung differently in time and space. The coincidence between formulas in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine manuscripts does not imply that the scale used for a formula today was also used for the same formula some centuries ago. The author also discusses how a new scale could come into use and be accepted by chanters in performance.
Finally, the author discusses the hypothesis that medieval scales contained not only fixed degrees – as he has presumed until this point of the paper – but also mobile degrees. Description of scales in contemporary Greek books and results obtained by field recording of the Arab Orthodox in Israel are also discussed.

Acta Musicae Byzantinae, vol. 2, Apr 2000

The Theoriticon of Macarie the Hieromonk appeared in 1823. The book presented for the first time... more The Theoriticon of Macarie the Hieromonk appeared in 1823. The book presented for the first time in Romanian the theory of the neo-Byzantine echoi proposed by archimandrite Chrysanthus. His model dividing the octave into 68 intervals was changed twenty years later for the one created by Anton Pann, which divided the octave into 22 intervals. The paper shows that the system presented by Macarie was a non-tempered one and it mainly used non-octaviant scales. The system is compared to the other theories, particularly to the theory of Pann in attempting to find the reason why the octave becomes divided into 22 intervals.

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Philosophy, Faculty of Music Studies, 2012

I examined in this thesis the matter of the national church music in Romania, in the prewar perio... more I examined in this thesis the matter of the national church music in Romania, in the prewar period. The first part of my research (Chapter 3, “'Romanian national church music' in musicological writings") focused on the way in which the chanters, bishops, historians or musicologists regarded the Romanian church music before WW1. I showed that the image of this music changed in time—since the emergence of the Romanian modern state until today—not so much due to the discovery of new scientific evidence, as to the ideological and political changes.
In the next stage (Chapter 4, "A critical reading of some common opinions on Romanian national church music") I probed the validity of the contemporary musicologists’ statements—which are also supported by statements of the chanters before the Second World War—regarding the Romanian chant characteristics. The compared analysis of the Romanian chants with their Greek equivalents has shown that many of these assertions are false. I did not find in the creations and adaptations of the Romanian chanters any reduction of chromatic passages, any consistent abridgement of the chants or a preference for the syllabic style.
I showed then that pieces considered as examples for their national spirit prove devoid of the characters declared as specifically Romanian (conciseness, lack of melismas etc.) or reveal a foreign origin—Greek (e.g. the Palm Sunday Canon) or Western (tonal choral compositions).
I tried, in Chapter 5 ("The construction of the Romanian national church music"), to offer an alternative to this theory, taking into account the transformations that took place in the Romanian society and in its music in the 19th century (presented in Chapters 1 and 2) and the current theories regarding the nation (outlined in the Introduction).
I presented in detail the mechanisms for adapting the stichera in the first mode from three anastasimataria adapted by the most important Romanian chanters before 1860. The research explained the differences between the Greek and the Romanian versions and confirmed the statements of the chanters in this time period according to whom there was no essential difference between the Romanians’ chant and that in Greek.
National church music is thus not a creation of the chanters from the first half of the 19th century, but rather, it was constructed together with the Romanian nation, starting with the second half of the same century. The national chant was first imagined as an element of national identity, with specific features, distinct from those of the other nations, taking and reinterpreting myths present in the writings of chanters before 1860. Then, action was taken so that a number of pieces considered congruent with this image should be transposed in a “civilised” version in parts, and disseminated, in both forms, all over the country.

Editura Universității Naționale de Muzică București, 2018

Editura Muzicală, 2016

Mi s-a părut important să cercetez mai amănunțit imaginea românilor despre propria lor muzică bis... more Mi s-a părut important să cercetez mai amănunțit imaginea românilor despre propria lor muzică bisericească și modul în care s-a schimbat această imagine. Pe de o parte, pentru că sunt convins că imaginarul muzicii bisericești este în sine un subiect demn de a fi studiat, oricare ar fi raporturile sale cu realitatea. Pe de altă parte, fiindcă am realizat că modul în care românii și-au imaginat muzica lor bisericească a determinat, într-o măsură importantă, evoluția acesteia în secolul XX.