Viorel Cosma

Viorel Cosma (30 March 1923 – 15 August 2017) was a Romanian musician and teacher who came to wider prominence as an exceptionally prolific musicologist and a pioneering lexicographer. Through his scholarship he also achieved distinction as a teacher, researcher and music critic. Between 1989 and 2012 he produced a ten volume lexicon, running to 2,800 pages, entitled "Muzicieni din România", providing extensive information on approximately 1,500 Romanian composers and musicians, musicologists, music critics, music teachers, folklorists and other contributors to Romanian music and musicianship.

Biography Viorel Cosma was born at Timișoara, the multi-ethnic economic and administrative capital of Banat, in the western part of the recently expanded Kingdom of Romania. In 1929, despite being just 6, he was accepted as a pupil at the Timișoara Municipal Music Conservatory, where for the next two years he learned to play the violin. He was taught by the violinist Eugen Cuteanu, while Sabin Drăgoi took care of the necessary Solfège and other aspects of music theory knowledge.

Cosma was 18 in 1940/41 when Romania became entangled in the war. He fought for his country in a guards regiment and was seriously wounded twice. His status as a war veteran would remain unpublicised and unknown for more than half a century, but during the final decade of his life, official and public attitudes towards Romania's role in the war grew more nuanced. He became a regular participant at events arranged by the Ministry of Defence to honour surviving war heroes, even taking part in television shows involving war veterans. In 2015, two years before he died, he was promoted to the rank of General (retired).

Back in 1945, after the war ended he progressed his music education between 1945 and 1950 at the National University of Music in Bucharest.

Between 1945 and 1947 he taught at the "Alberto della Pergola" conservatory in Bucharest. Later, still in Bucharest, he taught at the "Dinu Lipatti" and "George Enescu" musical secondary schools. At the university level he also taught, between 1951 and 1966, at the National University of Music and the Hyperion University. He delivered academic papers and contributed fully in various other ways at many of the symposia and conferences devoted to musicology, both in Europe and in the United States, at which he participated. More than half a century later many of Dendrino's are overlooked, but the central themes of "Lăsați-mă să cânt!" are relatively timeless: it was revived most recently at in 2018, at Cluj-Napoca.

As a musicologist Viorel Cosma published over 100 volumes, many of which appeared not just in Romanian, but in German, Russian, English, Bulgarian and Japanese. His works were a combination of monographic, historiographic, lexicographic and epistolatory. There were works of music criticism, comparative musicology, study guides and anthologies. Of particular note, he produced no fewer than 14 books devoted to Romania's best known composer-polymath, George Enescu (in Romanian, English, Russian, Japanese and Bulgarian).

Viorel Cosma was a member of various professional associations and foundations, both inside Romania and beyond its borders. He was a member of the Georg Friedrich Händel Society in Halle, of the Basel-based International Musicological Society, and the Société Fryderyk Chopin in Warsaw. His musicological research spans five centuries, between 1500 and 2000, discovering or rediscovering the names of hundreds of Romanian artists who made musical careers in Romania and/or abroad. Inspired by his involvement in the folk music revival, which emerged with particular force in Romania during the first half of the twentieth century, Cosma played a central role in rediscovering connections between Romanian tradition and the more widespread music cultures of and beyond the European continent: he is credited with having identified more than 100 non-Romanian works inspired by Romanian folklore. He received the "Artisjus [international music critics' Award] Prize" in 1984. Muzicieni din România – Lexicon vol. IX – 2006 Istoria muzicilor militare – 2006 60 de ani în loja Operei: cronici muzicale de operă, operetă, musical, balet – Vol. 1–2, 2007–2008 București, citadela seculară a lăutarilor români: (1550–1950) : cârciumi, birturi, bodegi și restaurante, racherii și berării, parcuri și grădini cu muzica, dinastii de lăutari – 2009 Dirijorul Marin Constantin – Portret eseistic – 2011 100 portrete sentimentale – vol. 1 – 2011 De la Cantemir și Enescu până la Lipatti și Ursuleasa – Copiii-minune ai muzicii românești (1673–2013) – 2013 125 – Ateneul Român în oglinda istoriei... – 2015 George Enescu. Muzicianul de geniu în imagini – George Enescu. The musical genius in pictures – Le musicien de génie en images, selecția, introducerea și legendele fotografiilor de Viorel Cosma – 2015 Florilegiu enescian – 2016 Enciclopedia muzicii românești – Vol 1:(A-B); vol. 2 (B) – 15 vol.(2005 -)