Perceptions of Music in Communist Romania and Their Impact on an Emigrant Generation. Case Studies: Costin Miereanu and Mihai Mitrea-Celarianu
Perceptions of Music in Communist Romania and Their Impact on an Emigrant Generation. Case Studies: Costin Miereanu and Mihai Mitrea-Celarianu

Summary/Abstract: While researching several archives, the author retraced the short Romanian careers of the composers born between 1935 and 1945 who settled in France in the early 1970s. In chronological order, the first names that the research focused on were Mihai Mitrea-Celarianu and Costin Miereanu. This paper gathers data about their studies at the Bucharest Conservatory, about recordings and radio broadcasts, and the most revealing information that were discovered pursuing the thread of the entries about the two composers in the minutes of the Symphonic and Chamber Music Section’s Bureau of the Union of Composers, from 1960-1970. The debate on aleatorism and experimentalism in composition that took off at the Union in 1970, following the analysis of a work by Costin Miereanu, is representative. This, together with the changing attitudes in the press and in the minutes of the Union, offers us a starting reflection point on the mentality of Romanian musicians in the 1960s and 1970s. The study aims to make an objective “inventory” of the realities of a professional path that preceded the decision of composers Costin Miereanu and Mihai Mitrea-Celarianu to redirect themselves towards the French musical landscape.

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