Musicologist Viorel Cosma Was Awarded Saints Emperors Constantine and Helen Order of the Romanian Patriarchate

On 29 March 2013, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel awarded, at the Patriarchal Residence, musicologist Viorel Cosma the Saints Emperors Constantine and Helen Order for laics of the Romanian Patriarchate, for his entire activity as professor, historiographer, lexicographer and musical critic. The members of the Standing meeting of the Church National Council of the Romanian Orthodox Church attended the ceremony.

Mr Viorel Cosma was born in Timisoara, on 30 March 1923, and studied at specialised schools in Timisoara, Craiova, Bucharest, Erlangen-Nurenberg with great personalities of the time, among whom we mention Sabin Dragoi, Nelu Ionescu, Mihail Jora, Martian negrea, Dimitrie Cuclin, Dumitru D. Botez, George Georgescu, Constantin Silvestri, Theodor Rogalski, Martin Runke etc. Master Viorel Cosma used to be professor at the Academy of music of Bucharest for over 50 years.

Mrs Ruxandra Arzoiu sums up the master’s life and activity in the book entitled “Present and future in the Romanian musicology. A portrait sketch”, as follows: Glancing synthetically over Viorel Cosma’s career we can say that he promoted four disciplines in parallel: musical criticism, musicology, didactics and lexicography. He is the author of over 100 books and of about 3500 essays and specialised studies.

Some of his works of reference are on Dimitrie Cantemir, Nicolae Filimon, Ciprian Porumbescu, Gavriil Musicescu, Eusebie Mandiceschi, Ion Vidu, Teodor Burada, George Enescu, etc. Here are some of the lectures delivered at international specialised meetings: Aspects of the musical culture in Romania’s territory in the 14th – 17th centuries; Romanian historical attestations on performance in the Byzantine music (14th – 18th centuries); Romanian musical culture in the Renaissance epoch; Romanian musical manuscripts at the Conservatoire Library of Bucharest; musical school at Putna; Antologhion manuscript 56/544/575 from Putna; Two millennia of music in Romania, etc.

Very important for the Romanian musicology and especially for the religious one are the ten volumes of the Lexicon entitled Musicians of Romania, printed in 1965, 170 and 1971, and completed from 1989 – 2006. They include in over 2800 pages cca 1500 names of Romanian musicians, composers, musicologists, folklorists, musical critics, professors, copyists, editors. Among these personalities there over 250 names of expert musicians in Byzantinism, professors, historians, musicologists, creators of psalmic music, composers of religious chants and especially translators who contributed to the “Romanisation” of the religious music of Byzantine origin or have always enriched the religious repertoire.

Many of these ones were priests, deacons, singers, hierarchs, hieromonks, hierodeacons or simple monks and nuns. Besides them there are musicians, university or secondary professors, conductors, who have composed both laic and choral religious music.

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