Valentina Sandu-Dediu's guest lecture in musicology Presented by Liszt Academy

"Emerging from the almost seamless isolation imposed by Nicolae Ceausescu's repressive regime, Romania tried to make its voice heard in the world after 1990. More than three decades later, many artists still complain of a certain marginalisation. I will try to discuss such issues from the examples I am most familiar with – those in the field of academic music.

The title of a new music festival, Wien Modern in 1998 – An den Rändern Europas –, where Romanian music was also portrayed, shows quite clearly that Western eyes were still looking at a marginal Romania. The concept of margin was extensively debated in the programme of the festival, in public discussions, in such a way that we Romanians present there had no doubt that we were still perceived as provincials, and somehow encouraged to exploit our own exotisms (folklore, Byzantine music, etc.). In Europe, there was a strong interest (during the Iron Curtain separation and after its disappearance) in Russian and Soviet music, and traditional links were maintained with Polish (the Warsaw Autumn festival, for example) or Hungarian institutions. Romania was left to consolidate its cultural position in the Balkan context. And so, many of us have developed the same "strong love-hate, fascination-repulsion complex" for the Balkans, as the writer Mircea Cărtărescu says.

In the programme-catalogue of the Wien Modern festival, composer Ștefan Niculescu challenges fellow Westerners to ask themselves why the Romanian composer is determined to feel like a second-class European. Nor does he, like Mircea Cărtărescu, want to be labelled an Eastern European (or Balkan) author. So far, the situation has changed for Cărtărescu (translated into countless languages all over the world and a Nobel Prize aspirant), for some soprano and visual artist, much more visible today and in free competition in the world; not for Ștefan Niculescu or any other contemporary Romanian composer.

I cannot offer explanations, but I can outline a political, ideological and aesthetic landscape of Romanian composition in the 20th century, which can at least partially explain such situations."

Prof. Valentina Sandu-Dediu graduated in musicology from the National Music University of Bucharest in 1990. She has been teaching at the same institution since 1993 as professor of musicology and stylistics.

She wrote over 30 studies, 300 articles, and 10 books (see Rumänische Musik nach 1944, Pfau Verlag, Saarbrücken, 2006; Alegeri, atitudini, afecte. Despre stil și retorică în muzică, Ed. Didactică și Pedagogică, București 2010; Octave paralele, Humanitas, București, 2014; În căutarea consonanțelor, Humanitas, București, 2017; co-editor of Noi istorii ale muzicilor românești, Ed. Muzicală, București, 2020).

She has authored series of programmes for Radio Romania. She also plays the piano in chamber music (CDs released in Romania with Aurelian Octav-Popa, in Germany / Neos with Dan Dediu, and in Boston / Albany with Ray Jackendoff).

Valentina Sandu-Dediu was a fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, she is Rector of New Europe College, Bucharest, and received the Peregrinus-Stiftung Prize of Berlin-Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften in 2008.