Page 139 - Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2020. Konservatoriji: profesionalizacija in specializacija glasbenega dela ▪︎ The conservatories: professionalisation and specialisation of musical activity. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 4
P. 139
towar ds a genuine university status ...
servatory suspended its classes, because of the war. Foreign teachers remo-
ved, others are called to enlist in the army, some of them would fall pris
oners, other would seek refuge and turn to safer places.
After the war, Romania’s destiny changes – the country has a new king,
Ferdinand I, and fulfils its dream of national unity by the union with Tran-
sylvania, on December 1, 1918. Bucharest is still the capital, now ablaze with
the effervescence of modernisation, in line with the European atmosphere.
It would develop at a dizzying speed, and new social and cultural structures
come into being at a fast pace. The city turns into a cosmopolitan metropo-
lis, which offers its inhabitants an exciting lifestyle, and signs of technolog-
ical progress are everywhere to be seen. The interwar period is the time of
an unprecedented flourishing of literature and the arts. Patriarchal values
are eclipsed by the rush of the currents intersecting in artistic thought and
production, even if, for some, they already proclaimed, in the third decade
of the 20th century, “the global moral crisis”7. Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran,
Eugen Ionescu are some of the young incisive writers of the time, the world
is more and more familiar with the name of Constantin Brâncuși, pioneer
of modernism in sculpture, and versatile George Enescu becomes an exem-
plar of Romanian music and its ambassador abroad.
Between the two wars, the Conservatory would again stabilise, wel-
coming these new values in well-defined setting. This stability is to a great
extent owing to composer and conductor Ion Nonna Otescu, its director
from 1919. Graduate of the institution he was now leading and strongly sup-
ported from his student years by his teacher Alfonso Castaldi, graduate also
of the Paris Conservatory, Otescu regenerated the way the establishment
was organised. The confidence in his powers is great from the very start:
With Mr Nonna Otescu, the eminent musician, in charge of this
institution, a new atmosphere of rejuvenation and recreation has
started to replace the outmoded, rigid system of the past.8
The strategy of the first decade after Otescu’s appointment aimed at
raising the standards as to both teaching and artistic performance. The
Royal Academy wanted to provide its students with a multilateral educa-
tion, and specialisations cater to the different needs of the future teach-
ers, instrumentalists, singers and actors. New disciplines are constantly in-
7 Nicolae Iorga, quoted by Ioana Pârvulescu, Întoarcere în Bucureștiul interbelic [A
Return to the Interwar Bucharest] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2006), 48–49.
8 Cosma, Universitatea Națională de Muzică din București la 140 de ani, 194.
137
servatory suspended its classes, because of the war. Foreign teachers remo-
ved, others are called to enlist in the army, some of them would fall pris
oners, other would seek refuge and turn to safer places.
After the war, Romania’s destiny changes – the country has a new king,
Ferdinand I, and fulfils its dream of national unity by the union with Tran-
sylvania, on December 1, 1918. Bucharest is still the capital, now ablaze with
the effervescence of modernisation, in line with the European atmosphere.
It would develop at a dizzying speed, and new social and cultural structures
come into being at a fast pace. The city turns into a cosmopolitan metropo-
lis, which offers its inhabitants an exciting lifestyle, and signs of technolog-
ical progress are everywhere to be seen. The interwar period is the time of
an unprecedented flourishing of literature and the arts. Patriarchal values
are eclipsed by the rush of the currents intersecting in artistic thought and
production, even if, for some, they already proclaimed, in the third decade
of the 20th century, “the global moral crisis”7. Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran,
Eugen Ionescu are some of the young incisive writers of the time, the world
is more and more familiar with the name of Constantin Brâncuși, pioneer
of modernism in sculpture, and versatile George Enescu becomes an exem-
plar of Romanian music and its ambassador abroad.
Between the two wars, the Conservatory would again stabilise, wel-
coming these new values in well-defined setting. This stability is to a great
extent owing to composer and conductor Ion Nonna Otescu, its director
from 1919. Graduate of the institution he was now leading and strongly sup-
ported from his student years by his teacher Alfonso Castaldi, graduate also
of the Paris Conservatory, Otescu regenerated the way the establishment
was organised. The confidence in his powers is great from the very start:
With Mr Nonna Otescu, the eminent musician, in charge of this
institution, a new atmosphere of rejuvenation and recreation has
started to replace the outmoded, rigid system of the past.8
The strategy of the first decade after Otescu’s appointment aimed at
raising the standards as to both teaching and artistic performance. The
Royal Academy wanted to provide its students with a multilateral educa-
tion, and specialisations cater to the different needs of the future teach-
ers, instrumentalists, singers and actors. New disciplines are constantly in-
7 Nicolae Iorga, quoted by Ioana Pârvulescu, Întoarcere în Bucureștiul interbelic [A
Return to the Interwar Bucharest] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2006), 48–49.
8 Cosma, Universitatea Națională de Muzică din București la 140 de ani, 194.
137
