Aurel Vlaicu in Romanian folk songs
Aurel Vlaicu in Romanian folk songs

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the 20th century, more precisely starting in 1913, just a few years before the Great Union of 1918, a song was circulating in all Romanian territories, reminiscing of the daring attempt of the first Romanian aviator, Aurel Vlaicu, to fly across the Carpathians with an aircraft of his own build. The song soon became well known and close to people’s hearts, for two main reasons: first, because the young aviator died in this attempt, and secondly, because the whole event touched upon the old wish to see Transylvania united with the Romanian Kingdom. In this paper, we analyze comparatively melodic variants from several musical collections, in order to identify shared elements and differences, both from a musical and from a literary standpoint. The finding of a variant recorded in 2017 during a field research carried out in the Land of the “Pădureni” (Forest Dwellers) in Hunedoara County ascertains once again how deep of an impact this historical event had upon the collective mind of the Romanian people.

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