Byzantium, Folklore, Race: National Church Music in Interwar Romania
Byzantium, Folklore, Race: National Church Music in Interwar Romania

Summary/Abstract: 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.

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