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Modelling the Public’s Taste: Local Habits, Ethnic Pluralism and European Music in Bucharest (1821–1862)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2017

Haiganuş Preda-Schimek
Haiganuş Preda-Schimek*
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Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article attempts to describe the shift in the Romanian public’s musical taste brought about by musical borrowings and imports from the West. It focuses on the period between the end of Phanariot rule (1821) and the establishment of Romania’s capital in Bucharest (1862). These decades of change yielded rich intercultural encounters and fusions, whereas the years that followed – from the 1870s to the outbreak of the First World War – show a more unified phase of assimilation of Western music.

After looking at the boyar class and the bourgeoisie of Bucharest (the social segment from which an opera- and concert-going public emerged in the last quarter of the century), I move on to the everyday musical practices of the population of Bucharest, using musical examples and travellers’ accounts as a descriptive means. Finally, I analyse the shifts in musical tastes that took place in the upper layers of society as a complicated process of exclusion, inclusion and assimilation of various musical influences; as we shall see, the mixing and hybridization of musical practices not only shaped the tastes of music lovers, but also influenced the creation of Romanian music, which entered a new phase.

Type
Research Article
Information
Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 14 , Special Issue 3: Music in Nineteenth-Century Romania , December 2017 , pp. 391 - 416
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© Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 Of considerable value was permission to travel in Western countries, not granted until after 1821; see Ioncioaia, Florea: ‘Das Bild Europas in den rumänischen Fürstentümern (1800–1830)’, in Die Rumänen und Europa vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Harald Heppner (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997): 106–13Google Scholar.

2 The term ‘oriental’ is here employed in the sense usual in Romanian musicology, denoting urban musical culture prior to Europeanization and incorporating the various influences of Constantinopolitan culture, mostly the post-Byzantine, Greek and Turkish. This is discussed further below.

3 See for instance Todorova, Maria, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997): 62–88 and Bracewell, Wendy and Drace-Francis, Alex, eds, Balkan Departures: Travel Writing from Southeastern Europe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009)Google Scholar.

4 I have drawn upon travel diaries as a unitary body of sources, but my study does not set out to undertake a systematic analysis of travel literature. I had access to the travel literature held by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, thanks to a research grant from the Centre Internationale de Récherche Européene, Université de Paris, Sorbonne IV, as a stage in the research project funded by the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research: ‘Musik im Privatmilieu. Eine Untersuchung aus der Sicht interkultureller Beziehungen zwischen Mitteleuropa und dem Balkan’, based at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Vienna (2007–2010).

5 In the words of Transylvanian Ion Codru Drăguşanu, quoted in Cazimir, Stefan, Alfabetul de tranziţie (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2006): 87 Google Scholar.

6 Given that immigrants dominated the world of commerce, trades and crafts in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the multi-ethnic mix was regarded as a factor that fostered economic progress. Many travellers were therefore interested in economic and demographic statistics.

7 See Caproşu, Ioan and Ungureanu, Mihai Răzvan, eds, Documente statistice privitoare la oraşul Iaşi, vol. 1: 1755–1820 (Iaşi: Editura Universităţii ‘Alexandru Ioan Cuza’, 1997): 12 Google Scholar, n. 14.

8 ‘Plus de 80.000 individus qui sont absolument étrangers à la nation, étant la plupart grecs, arméniens, allemands, russes, juifs, serviens, bulgares, hongrois, transylvains, même français, italiens ou enfin de la race des Tziganes’. Recordon, François, Lettres sur la Valachie ou Observations sur cette province et ses habitants, écrites de 1815 à 1821, avec la relation des derniers événemens (sic) qui y ont lieu (Paris: Lecointe et Durey, 1821)Google Scholar: 1. Somewhat later, in the 1830s, Russian prince Anatol Demidov reckoned that there were 2,583 Jews living in Bucharest with their families, 1,795 sudditi (Italian suddito, ‘foreign subject’) and between 10,000 and 20,000 persons in transit through Wallachia, see de Demidov, Anatole, Voyage dans la Russie méridionale et la Crimée par la Hongrie, la Valachie et la Moldavie (Paris: Bourdin, 1854)Google Scholar. An earlier edition (1840) revises letters published in Esquisse d’un voyage dans la Russie méridionale et la Crimée (Paris, 1838); see Iorga, Nicolae, Istoria românilor prin călători (Bucharest: Editura Eminescu, 1981)Google Scholar:

528. Demidov’s data are similar to those that result from the census of 1830: Bucharest had a population of 70,000, of which 1,795 were foreign subjects: 1,226 Austrian, 236 Russian, 158 Prussian, 94 English, 80 French, and 2,301 Jewish. See Enciclopedia României, vol. 2 (Bucharest: Imprimeria Naţională, 1938): 556–7, quoted by Majuru, Adrian, Bucureştii mahalalelor sau periferia ca mod de existenţă (Bucharest: Compania, 2003):Google Scholar 152. Another pre-statistical record (catagrafie) of 1838 reveals that Bucharest had 63,644 inhabitants, see Olteanu, Radu, Bucureştii în date şi întâmplări (Bucharest: Paideia, 2002): 148 Google Scholar.

9 Laurençon, F.G., Nouvelles Observations sur la Valachie, sur ses productions, son commerce, les moeurs et les coutumes des habitans (sic), et sur son gouvernement (Paris: A. Egron, 1822)Google Scholar: 22. Most of the boyars (with the exception of the important old native families) are supposed to be Greek or Albanian. Laurençon’s impressions are not borne out by the most recent research, which shows that after 1822 the number of Greek boyars in the divan (government) of Wallachia fell from 22 per cent to 9 per cent of the total, while the percentage of native boyars remained unchanged, at 70 per cent. See Ionaşcu, Ioan, ‘L’influence des Grecs des Principautés roumaines’, in L’époque phanariote (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1974)Google Scholar, quoted by Djuvara, Neagu, Intre Orient şi Occident: Tările Române la începutul epocii moderne (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995 Google Scholar; first published in French as Le pays roumain entre Orient et Occident. Les Principautés Danubiennes au début du XIXe siècle (Cergy-Pontoise: Publications orientalistes de France, 1989)): 135, n. 47. Among the landowners of Muntenia there also were families of Serbs: the Obrenović, Simić and Ghermani families; see Poujade, Eugène, Chrétiens et Turcs, scènes et souvenirs de la vie politique, militaire et religieuse en Orient (Paris: Didier, 1859)Google Scholar, quoted by Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 584.

10 The Albanians were landowners and small traders. There were numerous German craftsmen, Armenian jewellers and Jews living in all the towns, but particularly in Bucharest. The French and Italians were too few to be worthy of mention. And finally, there were the Gypsies, some of whom formed groups of musicians, while others told fortunes or danced with a bear to music played on cheap fiddles and to the rhythm of a tambourine, see Laurençon, Nouvelles Observations, 23, 24 and 26.

11 Eugène Poujade, Chrétiens et Turcs, quoted by Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 585. Austrian and German immigrants served as skilled employees in medical, pharmaceutical, technical, musical and other professional fields; see Valjavec, Fritz, Geschichte der Kulturbeziehungen zu Südosteuropa, vol. 4 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1965): 71 Google Scholar.

12 During his sojourn in Bucharest, J.M. Lejeune, a private tutor at the court of the Prince of Moldavia, Mihail Suţu II (Soutzo) (1784–1864, r. 1819–21), remarked upon the blend of Russian and French influences that were cultivated by the locals along with oriental and, of course, native customs. The blend of influences would have been easy to observe in interior design, culinary recipes and the manner in which balls were organized. The women followed now the German, now the French fashion, dressed with taste and danced ‘avec un certain abandon qui leur est naturel’; see Raicevich, J., Voyage en Valachie et en Moldavie, avec des observations sur l’histoire, la physique et la politique, augmenté de notes et additions pour l’intelligence de divers points essentiels, traduit de l’italien par M.J.M. Lejeune (Paris: Masson et fils, 1822): 144 Google Scholar, n. 1. For Robert Walsh (1772–1852), an Anglican pastor resident in Constantinople in 1821, the Bucharest of the 1820s was already ‘a modern city, a Paris of European Turkey’; see Walsh, Robert, Voyage de Constantinople en Angleterre par les Balkans, le Danube, la Hongrie et l’Allemagne (1821–1825), in Voyage en Europe (Paris: impr. de Gaittet et Cie, n.d.): 14 Google Scholar. With a population of 80,000, according to the author, the Wallachian capital was ‘the meeting place of oriental and European manners. Half the inhabitants wear top hats and frock coats, the other half kalpaks and kaftans’, ibid., 26.

13 The Romanian word boier derived from the Slavic ‘boljarinŭ’; see Breban, Nicolae, ‘Boyars’, in Dicţionar general al limbii române (Bucharest: Editura ştiinţifică şi enciclopedică, 1987): 111 Google Scholar. Some of the official functions of the grand boyars (dregători) at the princely court were: Ban of Craiova (governor), dvornik (minister of the interior), logothete (head of chancellery, minister of justice), spatharius (head of the army), vistiernic (minister of finances), and postelnik (minister of the exterior).

14 d’Istria, Dora, Les femmes en Orient, vol. 1 (Zurich: Meyer & Zeller, 1859): 56 Google Scholar.

15 In the hierarchy of the offices of the mediaeval court, the pitar was responsible for the bread supply; in the eighteenth century the pitar was regarded as a second-rank boyar and did not fulfil any particular function. The boyar ranks and titles were gradually phased out by the end of the 1850s as a result of the Paris Treaty (19 August 1855). On Wachmann, see Cosma, Viorel, ‘Wachmann, Ioan Andrei’, in Lexiconul muzicienilor români, vol. 9 (Bucharest: Editura Muzicală, 2006): 285–289 Google Scholar.

16 Prominent among them were conductor and opera singer Pietro Ferlendis (Padova, 1800–Craiova, 1848); conductor and composer Ioan Andrei Wachmann and his son, Eduard Wachmann; opera singer, conductor and professor Benedetto Franchetti (Mantua, 1824–Bucharest, 1894); kapellmeister and virtuoso violinist Ludwig Anton Wiest (Vienna, 1819–Bucharest, 1889); music editor Alexius Gebauer (Cluj, Transylvania, now Romania, 1815–Bucharest, 1889) and his son Constantin Gebauer (Bucharest, 1846–1920); kapellmeisters Eduard Hübsch (Bitse Trenčin, Slovakia [?], 1833–Sinaia, Romania, 1894), Anton Kratochwil Senior (Brno, Moravia, now Czech Republic, 1829–Bucharest, 1920) and Anton Kratochwil junior (Brno, 1854–Târgu Frumos, Iaşi, 1917), Theodor Fuchs (Sassin, now Šaštín-Stráže, Slovakia 1873–Bucharest, 1953). Other immigrant musicians were active in Iaşi: composer and teacher Elena Teyber-Asachi (Vienna, 1789–Iaşi, 1877); kapellmeister Franz Ruzitski (Vienna, 1785–Iaşi, 1860?); kapellmeister Josef Herfner (Bratislava, 1795–Iaşi, 1865); composer Carol Miculi (Cernăuţi [now Chernivtsi, Ukraine], 1821–Lemberg [now L’viv, Ukraine], 1897); music teacher Franz Seraphim Caudella (Vienna, 1812–Iaşi, 1868) and his son, composer Eduard Caudella, kapellmeister Emil Lehr (Munich, 1848–Iaşi 1904), and others. Musicians who had been educated abroad included the Transylvanian Saxon Alexander Flechtenmacher, violonist and composer Robert Klenck (Bucharest, 1850–1921), but also composers of Romanian origin such as Ciprian Vorobchievici Porumbescu, George Stephănescu, Constantin Dimitrescu, Dumitru Georgescu Kiriac, Tudor Flondor (Storojineţ, Bukovina, 1862–Schlachtensee, Germany, 1908) and George Enescu.

17 The external signs of a move towards ‘Europe’ penetrated slowly; for example European fashions first found expression in women’s dress, and appeared more slowly in men’s, perhaps because men who held high office, in particular, were fearful of arousing Turkish suspicion, see Djuvara, Intre Orient şi Occident, 59.

18 Djuvara, Intre Orient şi Occident, 110.

19 Following the peace treaties signed by Austria, Turkey and Russia at Küçük Kaynarca (1774) and Edirne (Adrianopolis, 1829).

20 The historical province between the Danube to the south and east, the River Olt to the west, and the Carpathians and the Principality of Moldavia to the north is more frequently named Muntenia or the Romanian Land. The Rivers Siret and Milcov form a natural border with Moldavia, the principality with which Wallachia was unified in 1859 to form the modern state of Romania (a name which was adopted in 1862); beyond the Olt stretches the region of Oltenia (or Lesser Wallachia).

21 See Oprea, Gheorghe and Agapie, Larisa, Folclor muzical românesc, vol. 1 (Bucharest: Editura didactică şi pedagogică, 1983): 14–15 Google Scholar. The exception to urban collection is Teodor T. Burada, who collected peasant folklore in villages.

22 The structural features of Romanian folk music are far too complex to be summarized here. I shall outline, below, a few features of tonality that reveal a regional individuality in the samples of Wallachian melodies notated in albums for piano.

23 Widely found in Wallachia, Moldavia and Bukovina, the cobza was a stringed accompaniment instrument in traditional fiddler music. The instrument was played by pressing the strings with all fingers of the left hand, and simultaneously plucking them with a goose feather in the right hand. See Alexandru, Tiberiu, ‘Cobza’ in Dicţionar de termeni muzicali (Bucharest: Editura ştiinţifică şi enciclopedică, 1984): 103–104 Google Scholar. For information about the professional groups of lăutari on the boyar and monastic estates of Wallachia and Moldavia, and about psalţi (church cantors in the post-Byzantine tradition of ecclesiastical chant), see Gheorghiţă, Nicolae, ‘Secular Music at the Romanian Princely Courts during the Phanariot Epoch (1711–1821)’, in Byzantine Chant between Constantinople and The Danubian Principalities: Studies in Byzantine Musicology (Bucharest: Sophia, 2010): 57–64 Google Scholar.

24 Filimon, Nicolae, ‘Lăutarii şi compoziţiunile lor’, Buciumul 2, no. 311 (21 November–3 December 1864): 1241–1242 Google Scholar, reprinted in Baiculescu, George, Activitatea folcloristică a lui Nicolae Filimon (Bucharest: Editura Bucovina, 1941): 60–66 Google Scholar.

25 Non-religious songs recorded in psaltic notation occur in numerous manuscripts and printed works from the first half of the nineteenth century preserved in Bucharest. As late as 1860, songs were still being printed in psaltic notation, and alongside Romanian melodies there may also be found Italian arias and Arabic songs. See Ciobanu’s, Gheorghe introductory essay to Anton Pann, Cîntece de lume – transcriere din psaltică în notaţie modernă (Bucharest: Editura de Stat pentru Literatură şi Artă, 1954): 41 Google Scholar. Ciobanu refers to Dumitrescu’s, Oprea Melodii romîne, italiene şi arabe, Brochure 1 (Bucharest, unknown publisher, 1860): 86,Google Scholar n. 55.

26 One famous eighteenth-century example is Dimitrie Cantemir (1673–1723), Prince of Moldavia in March–April 1693 and 1710–1711, a theorist of Turkish classical music and a renowned performer on the Turkish long-necked lute, the tanbȗr. On the connection between musical culture in the capitals of Wallachia (Bucharest), Moldavia (Iaşi) and Constantinople, see Gheorghiţă, ‘Secular Music’, 38–56.

27 Many of the ‘worldly songs’ handed down via printed works and manuscripts are accompaniments to lyrics written by famous poets of the time (the Văcărescu Brothers, Costake Conaki). The term had previously been literary; see Ciobanu, Gheorghe, Izvoare ale muzicii româneşti , vol. 1: Culegeri de folclor şi cîntece de lume (Bucharest: Editura muzicală, 1976): 219 Google Scholar.

At Note 1 the author mentions the difference between the ‘worldly song’ and the ‘folk song’ (cîntecul popular, the term used in the 1840s by the 1848 revolutionaries to refer to music and lyrics created in the villages) and the difference between the ‘national arias’ (which also came into use before the 1848 Revolution) and the term folklore, which was not introduced until the end of the nineteenth century. On the authors of the lyrics to the songs in Romanian and Greek manuscripts and printed music, see Gheorghiţă, ‘Secular Music’, 64–6.

28 Anton Pann, Spitalul amorului sau Cîntătorul dorului, brochures I and II (Bucharest, 1850) and brochures I–VI (Bucharest, 1852).

29 Cornea, Paul, ‘Un Anacreon în papuci’, in Anton Pann: Spitalul amorului sau Cîntătorul dorului (Bucharest: Compania, 2009): vii Google Scholar.

30 Ciobanu, Izvoare ale muzicii româneşti, vol. 1, 220.

31 199v–200r. The manuscript is described by Gheorghe Ciobanu in Izvoare ale muzicii românești, vol. 1, 221. According to the author, the manuscript was bound in 1835 and includes religious songs, the majority in Greek; between 198v and 202v are notated six worldly songs, included that reproduced here.

32 Reproduced from Ciobanu, Izvoare ale muzicii româneşti, vol. 1, 243.

33 In Byzantine music the êikhos (Romanian: eh) was ‘the model melodic schema proper to each of the eight groups of Byzantine chants, and might be defined as a complex of elements: a musical scale with its own structure, system of cadences, specific melodic formulas. This system originates in ancient practice and Hellenic theory, in combination with and augmented over time by the practice of the Middle East’, see Necula, Nicolae, ‘Eh’, in Dicţionar de muzică bisericească românească (Bucharest: Ed. Basilica, 2013): 258 Google Scholar.

34 The steps of the Byzantine êikhoi are named as follows in psaltic music: ni (c), pa (d), vu (e), ga (f). di (g), ke (a), zo (h).

35 See Lungu, Nicolae, Costea, Gr. and Croitoru, I., Gramatica muzicii psaltice: Studiu comparativ cu notaţia lineară (Bucharest: Editura Institutului biblic şi de misiune ortodoxă, 1969): 96 Google Scholar.

36 In psaltic music the phthora (Greek: ϕθορα=alteration) is a sign that indicates an alteration in the intonation of the notes or a modulation from one mode to another.

37 Nicolescu, Vasile D., Manuscrisul Ucenescu: Cânturi (Bucharest: Editura muzicală, 1979): 49 Google Scholar.

38 The major modes on F (ga in the psaltic scale) and minor modes on D (psaltic pa) are called agem and hisar respectively, from the phthorai agem and hisar (signs used in ecclesiastical chant to indicate the alteration of a step by half a rising tone).

39 Ciobanu, Anton Pann: Cîntece de lume, 45.

40 Ciobanu, Izvoare ale muzicii româneşti, vol. 1, 220

41 Brochure 4: 134, see Ciobanu, Izvoare ale muzicii româneşti, vol. 1, 251 and 258.

42 de Lagarde, Auguste, Voyage de Moscou à Vienne, par Kiew, Odessa, Constantinople, Bucarest et Hermannstadt ou lettres adressées à Jules Griffith (Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1824)Google Scholar, quoted by Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 455. ‘Ban’ is the title of a high administrative post among the ranks of the high boyars.

43 Macmichael, William, Journey from Moscow to Constantinople in the Years 1817, 1818 (London: John Murray, 1819)Google Scholar, cited in Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 462.

44 Laurençon, Nouvelles Observations, 35–6.

45 Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 492.

46 He makes the following observation with regard to cultivated Romanians: ‘Here [in Bucharest] French is spoken better than in Brussels.’ He writes that in Iaşi there was a French theatre and that in Wallachia the educational system was based on French, which was taught as a classical language, see Girardin, Saint-Marc, Souvenirs de voyages et d’études (Paris: Amyot, 1852–1853): vol. 1, 280–282 Google Scholar.

47 ‘Les boyards valaques ont emprunté aux Français tout ce qui les rapproche des peuples de l’occident’. Rey, William, Autriche, Hongrie et Turquie, 1839–1848 (Paris: Joel Cherbuliez): 207 Google Scholar.

48 Bellanger, Stanislas, Le Kéroutza. Voyage en Moldo-Valachie, vol. 1 [the only volume published] (Paris: Librairie française et étrangère, 1846): 367 Google Scholar.

49 Perrin, Raoul, Coup d’oeil sur la Valachie et la Moldavie (Paris: A. Dupont, 1839): 39 Google Scholar, in Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 526.

50 Ciobanu, Izvoare ale muzicii româneşti, vol. 1, 17.

51 The oldest manuscript of this type in linear notation that records Romanian and Western songs would seem to date from 1819; see Ciobanu, Izvoare ale muzicii românești, vol. 1, 18. The same author mentions Dionisie Fotino, a musician who settled in Bucharest around the year 1800, and who played oriental instruments (the tambur and keman), as well as the piano.

52 Preserved in the Library of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest, Musical Collection, MS Rom 2575.

53 Oprea and Agapie, Folclor muzical românesc, 395.

54 Oprea and Agapie, Folclor muzical românesc, 393.

55 In the theory of the modes in Romanian folk music, the acoustic modes constitute a separate system, as they are regarded as originating from natural resonance. The base mode (acoustic 1) is constructed on F with a lowered seventh (E♭). The other scales (acoustic 2–7) are built on natural scales based on G, respectively A, B, C, D, and E♭, each having an altered lowered note, namely an E♭.

56 Oprea and Agapie, Folclor muzical românesc, 96–7.

57 Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 455.

58 Recordon, Lettres sur la Valachie, 93–4. The moment signifies the bride’s assumption of the status of wife; in Moldavia, rather than the alteration of the bride’s coiffure, her veil was removed and replaced with the headscarf befitting a married woman. The ceremony was accompanied by singing and dancing; see Oprea and Agapie, Folclor muzical românesc, 230.

59 Ker Porter, Robert, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, ancient Babylonia etc., etc., during the years 1817,1818, 1819 and 1820, vol. 2 (London : Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821)Google Scholar, in Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 465.

60 Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 466.

61 Perrin, Coup d’oeil, cited in Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 526

62 Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 532.

63 Stanislas Bellanger, Le Kéroutza, 373–4. Le Follet, Courrier des Salons was a fashion journal published from 1829 in Paris.

64 Bellanger, Le Kéroutza, 387, 394.

65 Alexandru Ghica (1796–1862) was Prince of Wallachia between 1834 and 1842 and caimacam (locum tenens of the Prince) between 1856 and 1858.

66 Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 528–9.

67 Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 529. The beniș is a long, fur-lined, ceremonial coat with large split sleeves worn by boyars and their wives; see Busuioc, Monica-Mihaela, Dicţionar de arhaisme (Bucharest: All educational, 2005–2007): 31 Google Scholar.

68 Recordon, Lettres sur la Valachie, 90–91.

69 Laurençon, Nouvelles Observations, 37.

70 ‘An extreme dissoluteness of morals’; Walsh, Voyage de Constantinople en Angleterre, 26.

71 Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 528.

72 The first theatre in Bucharest was known as the ‘Theatre by the Red Drinking Fountain’ and was built in 1817 at the behest of Ralu Caragea (the youngest daughter of Prince Ioan Caragea). After the building was destroyed in a fire in 1825, Saxon upholsterer Friedrich Bossel built an inn on Podul Mogoșoaiei, which had a ballroom and theatre known as the Salle Bossel, where masked balls were held two or three times a week in the late 1830s; the theatre had 22 boxes, 330 places in the stalls and a balcony; see Olteanu, Bucureştii în date şi întâmplări, 131–2, 137, 150.

73 The name given to the Momolo Theatre, after the name of Iordache Slătineanu, head of the prince’s chancellery, and the owner of the land on which it had been built.

74 Olteanu, Bucureştii în date şi întâmplări, 152.

75 Recordon, Lettres sur la Valachie, 54.

76 In the large towns of the Ottoman Empire there is frequent mention of acrobats, clowns and jesters at fairs and courts, a species of entertainment apparently adopted from the Byzantine Empire, where it had been widespread; see Brandl, Rudolf M., ‘Türkische, armenische, griechische und aromunische Hochzeiten in Reiseberichten des XVIII. und XIX. Jahrhunderts’, in Contexts of Musicology, ed. Maciej Jablonski, et al., vol. 1 (Poznan: Ars Nova, 1997): 127 Google Scholar.

77 Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 458.

78 Iorga, Istoria românilor prin călători, 528.

79 ‘malgré l’heure avancée il s’y faisait un vacarme impossible à décrire; des Turcs, des Albanais, des Valaques, des Bohémiens jouaient du violon, du tambour de basque, de je ne sais quelle infernale cornemuse, chantaient, hurlaient, gloussaient des choses qui ne peuvent avoir de nom dans aucune langue’; Pigéory, Félix, Les Pèlerins d’Orient. Lettres artistiques et historiques sur un voyage dans les provinces danubiennes, la Turquie, la Syrie et la Palestine avec mission du Gouvernement (Paris: E. Dentu, 1854): 11 Google Scholar. Pigéory had been entrusted with the mission of studying monuments from the time of the crusades in the Middle East and Greece.

80 ‘millier de personnes’; François Recordon, Lettres sur la Valachie, 92.

81 The Theatre by the Red Drinking Fountain; see note 72.

82 Almanach de la cour et de l’Ètat de la Principauté de Valachie pour 1838, 3ème année (Bucharest: Frédéric Walbaum, 1838): 309.

83 Constantin (Costache) Aristia (1800–1880) was a Greek actor, writer, drama teacher and translator who took part in revolutionary activities of 1821 and 1848.

84 Thouvenel, Èdouard-Antoine, La Hongrie et la Valachie, souvenirs de voyage et notices historiques (Paris: A. Bertrand, 1840)Google Scholar, republished by Philippe Gardette in Les cahiers du Bosphore XXXIII (Istanbul: Les Éditions Isis, 2004): 90.

85 The auditorium Thouvenel describes has the appearance of being makeshift. It was probably the Momolo Theatre, built by Italian Eronimo Momolo in 1828, on Bucharest’s most elegant street, Podul Mogoșoaiei. Momolo had been cook to Prince Grigore IV Ghica between 1822 and 1828, and was an entrepreneur and director of the Italian theatre company. The Momolo Theatre, also known as the Old Theatre and the Small Theatre, had a small box by the stage for the prince, an upper-storey row of boxes for members of high society, and 15 rows of benches covered with cambric in the stalls. There was also a gallery of seven steps with bare benches. In 1836–37, Momolo built a ballroom next to the theatre, a ‘club’ that would remain fashionable for decades (in the 1840s a tax was even levied on public balls) and was later rivalled by the Salle Bossel. Around the same period, work began on the building of a new theatre, designed by Viennese architect Josef Heft in an imposing historicist style. The Grand Theatre was inaugurated in 1852 in the presence of Prince Barbu Știrbei (r. 1848–53 and 1854–56), with a performance of original pieces composed and conducted by kapellmeister Ioan Andrei Wachmann.

86 ‘parfaitement organisée à l’intérieur; le foyer surtout, sans posséder un luxe inutile et couteaux, a été décoré avec un goût qui ne laisse rien à désirer … Les décors sont faits de main de maître. Les opéras italiens ont le privilège d’y être seuls joués … M-lle Corbary, comme première chanteuse, a été jugée et appréciée dans tout son talent par le publique valaque, qui pousse jusqu’au fanatisme l’amour de l’art’; Hénocque-Melleville, E.N., Six mois en Valachie, (1854–1855): mœurs, coutumes des principautés; La Grèce; L’influence de la Russie en Orient; Souvenirs (Compiègne: E. François et F. Valliez, 1855): 16 Google Scholar.

87 E.N. Hénocque-Melleville, Six mois en Valachie, 17.

88 A street fringed with woods at the entrance to Bucharest, where the elite used to take carriage rides.

89 See Nicolescu, Manuscrisul Ucenescu: Cânturi.

90 The coiffing of the bride was an old Romanian custom accompanied by songs (practised in villages at peasant weddings). Another source records the custom of the marriage procession, matchmaking and strewing the road to the bride’s house with fir branches (see Djuvara, Intre Orient şi Occident: 128). The fir branch symbolizes eternal life in rites of passage (weddings, funerals, the New Year).

91 See Brandl‚ Türkische, armenische, griechische und aromunische Hochzeiten, 115–34.

92 Ciobanu, Anton Pann: Cîntece de lume, 29–30.

93 Ghica, Ion, Scrisori către Vasile Alecsandri (Bucharest: Editura pentru literatură, 1967): 155 Google Scholar. Vasile Alecsandri in Zimbrul, vol. 1 (Iaşi, 1850–51): 249, quoted from Nicolae Gheorghiţă, ‘Anton Pann şi zvonul oriental al cântecelor din străvechiul Bucureşti’, in Anton Pann, Spitalul amorului, xi.

94 Djuvara, , O scurtă istorie a românilor povestită celor tineri (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1999): 141 Google Scholar.

95 The Societatea Filarmonică was a cultural group founded by the future revolutionaries of 1848 and run by Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Ion Cîmpineanu and Costache Aristia.

96 A generation before, beards and oriental costume were the preserve of the high boyars. Now, oriental costume found favour with the middle class and petty bourgeoisie: for example, the beniş began to be worn by merchants, servants and Gypsy musicians. Likewise, the anteriu, the caftan previously worn only by boyars, became an archaic-looking costume characteristic of lăutari. By 1834, Prince Alexandru Ghica had established the new vestimentary regime for high dignitaries. Those who possessed the old costume, continued to wear it; those who did not, dressed in the European style. It was also in this period that the boyars who held high offices (ministries) were required to shave their beards, which ceased to be a privilege and a status symbol, see Olteanu, Bucureştii în date şi întâmplări, 144.

97 The costume gives rise to confusion, comical situations exploited in the theatre of the 1830s–1850s: dressed in the European style, the boyars no longer have the stately gait or presence their servants were used to; the masters are taken for carters, functionaries or tutors. Clothes as an ‘instrument of deception’ make it hard to distinguish at first sight between the ‘true’ noble and the parvenu, between the boyar and the tradesman, between men of ‘standing’ and arrivistes, fraudsters, adventurers etc.; see Cazimir, Alfabetul de tranziţie, 43–4.

98 Djuvara, Neagu, O scurtă istorie a românilor (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1999): 141 Google Scholar.

99 In the mid-1860s it is observed that the ‘social [layer] of the oriental-style tradesmen and merchants of the previous epoch was dissolving; a part of the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and Albanians repatriated themselves … a part was assimilated by the Romanians and together with them constituted the political and administrative class of the new Romanian state’, quoted from Enciclopedia României, 556–7.

100 Boia, Lucian, Istorie şi mit în conştiinţa românească (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2011): 70 Google Scholar.

101 Boia, Istorie şi mit, 66.

102 Alecsandri, Zimbrul, vol.1 (Iaşi, 1850–51): 249.

103 See for example, Wachmann, Ioan Andrei, Roumania: Recueil de Danses et d’Airs Valaques originaux (Vienna: H.F. Müller, [no year])Google Scholar; L’Echo de la Valachie. Chansons populaires Roumains (Vienna: H.F. Müller, [no year]); Les Bords du Danube. Chansons et Danses Roumains (Vienna: Wessely & Büsing, [no year]).

104 Elena Zottoviceanu argues that such a stratification is inaccurate: ‘there was actually a non-homogeneous and diverse public, whose stratification resulted from many other factors, besides the class to which one belonged’; see ‘Reflecţii pe marginea procesului de constituire a unui public muzical românesc în secolul al XIX-lea’, in Popasuri în trecutul muzicii româneşti: Studii (Bucharest: Editura muzicală, 2006): 199–202.

105 An analysis from 1938 describes the changes as follows: ‘The economic sector becomes almost exclusively foreign, being left in the hands of elements brought to Romania by the westward turn of the economy: Jewish, German and Hungarian immigrants from Austria’, who replace the predominantly Balkan minorities of previous decades, which had in the meantime been partly assimilated, partly repatriated. Enciclopedia României, vol. 2, quoted Majuru, Bucureştii mahalalelor, 152.

106 Besides Romanian theatre professionals Costache Caragiale, Costache Aristia, Costache Halepiu, Matei Millo and Mihail Pascaly, there were also French opera directors in Bucharest (Paul Hette, the brothers Baptiste and Joseph Fourreaux), Italian impresarios (Basilio Sansoni, Paolo Papanicola), and German-speaking natives (Johann Gerger, Eduard Kreibig, Theodor Müller, Josephine Uhlich, Maria Theresa and Ignaz Frisch, Henrietta Karl).

107 Cosma, Octavian Lazăr, Hronicul muzicii româneşti , vol. 3, Preromantismul, 1823–1859 (Bucharest: Editura muzicală, 1975): 269 Google Scholar.

108 Majuru, Bucureştii mahalalelor, 8.

109 Creţu, Nicolae, ‘Balcanism’, in Dicţionarul general al literaturii române, vol. A/B (Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, 2005): 330 Google Scholar, column 1.

110 For example, in the tableau of the ball in Coana Chiriţa la Iaşi (Lady Chirița in Iaşi) by Alexandru Flechtenmacher, after the play by Vasile Alecsandri. See Cosma, Hronicul muzicii româneşti, vol. III, 294.

111 Jora, Mihail, ‘Constantin Silvestri, laureatul premiului de compoziţie “George Enescu”’, in Momente muzicale (Bucharest: Ed. muzicală, 1968): 87–88 Google Scholar.

112 Junimea was a literary society founded by intellectuals from Iaşi in 1863, which launched the literary and intellectual movement of the same name; the society was also active in Bucharest as well as Iaşi from 1874, and in Bucharest alone from 1885 until its disestablishment in 1944. Literary critic Titu Maiorescu, one of its leading members, put forward in his theory of ‘forms without content’, a passionate critique of the institutions that aimed to modernize Romanian culture in that period.