THE RESEARCH OF BYZANTINE MUSIC IN ROMANIA. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS?
THE RESEARCH OF BYZANTINE MUSIC IN ROMANIA. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS?

Summary/Abstract: The research of the Byzantine music started in Romania during the first decades of the twentieth century, especially due to priest Ioan D. Petrescu’s studies. A restricted group of researchers continued this work within the second half of the last century, thus making way to important paths of research, particularly oriented towards the musical manuscripts belonging to the Romanian archives. Following 1990, together with the change of the political regime, much was written on the Byzantine music in Romania. Our paper aims at succinctly unveiling these concerns which have sprung out of the legitimate questions mostly related to the age of the Byzantine music within the Romanian space, to the Romanian contribution to the perpetuation of the Byzantine tradition, and to the peculiarities of the pew music form the different areas of Romania. A presentation of the most important themes of research tackled within the last decades in Romania is given, together with the scientific manifestations and the categories of papers published within the given amount of time. Numerous are the questions that have troubled those interested in the Byzantine music over the years. Now, many of these questions belong to the young people willing to revive the ancient Byzantine music in the pews of the Romanian churches. The perplexities and difficulties the young are confronted with when adequately interpreting the specific semiography are briefly presented in the final part of our paper, a section dedicated to the questions which are still waiting for an answer.

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