The Emergence of the Romanian National School of Composition in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: Between the Western Canon and the Resources of the Local Music

Abstract

This article aims to explain the rise of Western art forms in the musical creation of the Romanian Principalities in the first half of the nineteenth century, as dictated by a particular European political and economic dynamic. I analyse the spread of Western music – usually described as a consequence of the gradual modernization of Romanian society – in terms of the power relations between the European core and a newly integrated periphery at the Eastern border of the continent. To illustrate this change, I discuss Edward Said's concept of orientalism which helps describe the early interactions between Western musicians and professionals and the local music traditions and customs. I then show how these interactions gave the former access to a distinctive musical material used in compositions targeting an expanding European music market. In an age of national struggle in the Romanian Principalities, national music was both a concept and a practice in demand by the local intelligentsia and fostered by composers. However, in addition to this agreement, the concept of national music signalled some significant societal changes that I elucidate by looking at class stratification and the evolution of musical taste. In the final part of the analysis, I draw on dependency theory authors such as Samir Amin and Daniel Chirot to argue that musical life in the first half of the nineteenth century in Wallachia and Moldavia was closely mirroring the economic development of these countries. Thus, I demonstrate that the emergence of the Romanian school of composition must be understood not only at a national level but also within a broader political, economic and social context, defined by the gradual transition to capitalist modes of production and consumption that happened in the first decades of the nineteenth century.