The entry of the boyars
The entry of the boyars

Summary/Abstract: In 1893, the Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen, who had just been appointed as musical director at the theatre Den Nationale Scene in Bergen, received an offer. An offer to become professor at the Conservatory of Music in Bucharest, and head of a quartet. The pay was three times as high as the one he had just accepted in Bergen. He was intrigued and flattered. He eventually turned down the offer, but not before having found out more about this far, but still European, country. What he found out inspired him to write a march, The Entry of the Boyars, which has become one of the most beloved and popular pieces of Norwegian classical music. This story is used as a point of departure for a survey of Romanian history in the 1800, a time when society and private life underwent thorough changes. To quote the writer Radu Rosetti, “I do not think that there is any other country in which all public and private life changed so rapidly and thoroughly as with us, and even more all traces of a past so relatively recent disappeared some completely and quickly as by us.”

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