Composer Eugen Wendel was born on December l8, 1934 in Valea Rea, Romania. He studied in Bucharest at the Technical University (electronics, acoustics and electroacoustics) and at the Music Academy – the current National University of Music (composition). He has a doctoral degree in aesthetics and science of arts at the University Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris. Besides composing, Eugen Wendel was also a sound engineer at the Electrecord recording label in Bucharest. He also contributed and researched as a musicologist in the domains of room acoustics and the acoustics of musical instruments. He has frequenty collaborated with performers while investigating about new instrumental technics.

Eugen Wendel has been living in Germany since 1975 and has a German nationality. He is member of the Society of German Composers and of the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists. He was an engeneer and producer at Radio societies, first at Deutschlandfunk and then, since 1977, at West German Radio (WDR) in Cologne.

He has written works for a solo instrument (with or without tape or electroacoustic transformations), collaborating, as mentioned, with various performers; works for various chamber music ensembles, also with voice (soloist or as part of a  choir); works for symphonic orchestra. His pieces are performed in concerts and festivals, as well as recorded by different Radio societies and published on CDs.

MUSIC on internet: Aulodia

Cătălin Creţu (b. September 8, 1971, Petroşani) is a Romanian composer of orchestral, chamber, choral, piano, electroacoustic, and multimedia works that have been performed in Europe. He is one of the few Romanian composers specialised in electroacoustic music.

Creţu went to a music school in Petroşani from 1977–85 and studied electromechanics at the Technical University of Petroşani from 1990–95. He studied musical pedagogy at the Western University of Timişoara from 1993–95 and then at the National University of Music in Bucharest from 1995–98; at the latter, he also took composition classes with Dan Dediu and Adrian Iorgulescu from 1996–2001 and he earned his PhD under Octavian Nemescu in 2008. He studied with Peter Michael Hamel at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg in 2001–02, as part of the ERASMUS programme, and multimedia composition with Georg Hajdu there from 2005–07. He took post-graduate studies at the Institute for Advanced Study of the New European College in Bucharest in 2004–05 and then, at Český Krumlov in 2000, Bayreuth in 2001 and Darmstadt in 2002. Cătălin Creţu graduated post-doctoral studies (2011-2012) at the National University of Music in Bucharest, as part of the MIDAS (Musical Institute for Doctoral Advanced Studies) programme.

He was a resident at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2009), on a George Enescu grant from the Romanian Cultural Institute. His music has been performed in France, Germany and Romania.

He worked at the National University of Music in Bucharest  as music secretary (2002-08) and, since 2008, as researcher at the Center for Electroacoustic Music and Multimedia. He currently teaches at the same University.

Cătălin Creţu is the Chairman of OPUS Association.

Official website, here.

MUSIC on internet: Entfremdetes Ich oder die Anatomie des Shattens, Lüneburg Soundscape

Iulia Cibişescu-Duran (b. May 2, 1966, Deva) is a Romanian composer of mostly orchestral, chamber, choral, and vocal works that have been performed in Europe. She studied piano with Zoita Sfarlea at the Lyceum of Music in Cluj-Napoca from 1972-84 and there graduated with a diploma. She studied composition with Cornel Taranu at the Gheorghe Dima Academy of Music in Cluj-Napoca from 1985-90, where she then studied orchestral conducting with Petre Sbarcea and Emil Simon from 1991-96 and earned diplomas in both subjects, as well as her DMus in musicology in 2001. She also attended masterclasses in France and Germany from 1995-97, on scholarships.

Among her many honors are four prizes in the Gheorghe Dima competition in Cluj-Napoca (Second Prize, 1987, for Sonata [piano]; First Prize, 1989, for Trio; First Prize, 1990, for Cantata No. 2; Prize of the Romanian Composers Union, 1991, for String Quartet No. 1). More recently, she received First Prize in the Iasi competition and the Romanian TV Prize in Iasi (both 1996, both for Aegean Melancholy) and two prizes in the competition of the Lucian Blaga Festival in Sebes (Lucian Blaga Prize, 1996, for Three Lieder [soprano, small orchestra]; Second Prize, 1999, for Three Lieder [tenor, viola, piano]). She also earned two prizes as a conductor in the Craiova competition (Constanin and Jean Bobescu Prize, 1995; Filip Lazar Prize, 1996). Her music has been performed in Germany and Romania.

Iulia Cibisescu-Duran is also active in other positions. She worked as a critic for four Romanian newspapers in Cluj-Napoca from 1990-96 and later wrote the book Structuri polimorfe în postmodernismul muzical românesc – Polymorphic Structures in Postmodern Romanian Music (2002, Editura Media Musica). Moreover, she has written much poetry, including the books Ascunzisuri de masti – The Hiding Places of Masks (1995, Editura Mesagerul) and Taina egipteana – The Egyptian Secret (1997, Editura Cogito). She founded the contemporary music ensemble Art Contrast in Cluj-Napoca from 1992, which she conducted from 1992-97. Since then, she has conducted orchestras throughout Romania. She has been a member of the Professional Women’s Advisory Board of the American Biographical Institute since 2000.

She taught counterpoint, harmony, music history, and music theory at the Lyceum of Music in Cluj-Napoca from 1990-95. She then taught score reading as an assistant at the Gheorghe Dima Academy of Music in Cluj-Napoca from 1995-98, where she has been a professor of the same subject since 1998. In addition, she has given conferences in Germany, Moldova and Romania. (source)

Corneliu Dan Georgescu (b. January 1, 1938, Craiova) is a Romanian composer, also active as a musicologist and ethnomusicologist. He studied with Mihail Andricu, Alfred Mendelsohn, Tiberiu Olah, George Breazul at the National University of Music in Bucharest from 1956-61. He attended Darmstadt in 1970 and 1974, where he studied with Kagel, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Wolff, Xenakis, as well as a traditional music workshop and seminar at Slanchev Brjag and Amsterdam in 1977 and 1990, where he studied with Ton de Leeuw, Dimiter Christoff, William Malm.

He was active as a researcher at the Institute of Ethnological and Dialectical Research in Bucharest from 1962-83 (where he was also director of the music department from 1976-80) and at the History of Art Institute in Bucharest between 1984-87. After his emigration in 1987 he worked at the Internationales Institute für traditionelle Musik in Berlin from 1989-91, on a Thyssen-Scholarship, and at the Freie Universität in Berlin from 1991-94. From 1993-2008 he also collaborated to German encyclopaedia Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart and from 2012 hold the seminar Computer-assisted composing. Algorithmic Music at the University in Heidelberg. He was distinguished with prizes for composition and musicology of the Romanian Composers Union (1969-70, 1978, 1982, 1984-85), the George Enescu Prize of the Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences (1974) and the Prize of Romanian Radio and TV (1974).

As an ethnomusicologist, his principal books are Romanian Folk Dance – A Typology of Instrumental Tunes, The Alphorn Signals – A Musical Typology (1984-87, Editura Muzicala, Bucharest), and Improvisation in der traditionellen rumänischen Tanzmusik (1995, K.D. Wagner, Eisenach).

The idea of the objective power of some archetypal musical structures as carrying the collective subconscious, an idea adapted from the psychology of C. G. Jung, has preoccupied Corneliu Dan Georgescu since his first compositions. He treated this idea in the five-article series The Study of Musical Archetypes (about symbolic numbers, repetition, births/death and Yin/Yang archetypes) for Revue Roumaine d‘Histoire de l‘Art (1982-87). In the cycle of orchestral pieces Plays he searched the archaic folklore for primitive, elementary structures, which he then treated as components of a palimpsest in an “atemporal” musical form. This kind of music (as theoretized in „Considérations sur une ‚musique atemporelle’“, 1979) “narrates” nothing, but generates a statically, internally vibrating construction. In the next cycle Models the subject of music is constantly the “contemplation of an archetype”, such in the opera Model Mioritic. Another cycle is dedicated to Piet Mondrian, a symbol of a radical aesthetic of simplicity and objectivity, of a strong reduction of colours and forms to elementary structures which do not allow any regional or temporal appartenence, but may have some mystical resonance. This idea was systematically treated in the cycle Atemporal Studies, electronic music (also seen as ambiental music), where repetitive elements as well as consonances or harmonic functions blend together with geometrical symmetries and principles of proportion. In the latest works – electronic, chamber, organ music, most of them with a tape background – the computer is used to control the musical construction as well as to generate the sound. Since 2003, the composer has tried to express his musical ideas also through visual means. He is detaching himself from the avant-garde vs. tradition “competition” or opposition.

SELECTED WORKS:

STAGE: Model Mioritic (opera, libretto by the composer), 1973; ORCHESTRAL and CHORAL-ORCHESTRAL: the cycle Plays I-IX, 1962-80 (Dances; Peisaj; Festive Plays; Collages; Refrains; Pianissimo; Long Songs; Variants of a Dance; Echoes of Plays); the cycle Models, 1967-73 (Alb-Negru; Continuo; Rubato); the cycle Homage to Tuculescu (3 symphonies), 1975-85 (Simple Harmonies; Horizontals; The Regards of Colours); the Cycle Outlines for a Fresco: Colinde, chorus and orchestra (text on folklore carols), 1987; Hymns, 1988; Et Vidi Caelum Novum, chorus and orchestra (text from Apocalypses), 1996; Elegia, chorus and tape (vocalizes), 1999; Ex Aeterno Tempore, orchestra, 2004; Prelude to Columna Infinita, orchestra, 2011; CHAMBER MUSIC: the cycle Homage to Piet Mondrian, 1980-2003 (Composition in a Square with Red, Yellow and Blue; Composition with Tons of Pure Colour on White Background; Composition in Grey and Black; Composition in Black and White; Composition with Straight Lines; Composition with Triangles and Squares; Composition with Discontinuous Lines; Composition with Elementary Colours, Dialog Major-Minor, In Perpetuum, Contemplating the Triton). Other works (2003-2011): Dialog with D Minor, A-Minor Obsession; Cum Statua; Omnia Unus Est; VOCAL: Where the Irony Ends (text by Heinrich Heine), speaker, flute, viola, tape, 1997; Clouds-Waves-Sand (on poems in haiku-stile of Christoph Niess), mezzo-soprano, piano, perc., tape, 2001; Ritual for the Silence (on vocalizes), 6 mezzo-sopranos, percussion, tape, 2001; In Lucem Sempiternam, soprano, baritone, organ, 2004; PIANO: Sonata, 1958; Eight Static Compositions, piano, tape, 1968; Signs, piano+tape, 1978; Drei Steinsymbole, piano+tape, 1997; Transsilvanische Motive (3 vol.), 2001-2003; Dialog mit CIS moll, 2002; ORGAN: Contemplative Preludes, 1991-2000 (Ascendo; Spatium; Orbis I-IV, Orbis V: Motus Verticalis); Reflecting J.S. Bach, 1999; B-Minor Fixation, 2010, etc.; ELECTROACOUSTIC: Atemporal Studies, 1980 (Corona Borealis; Aequillibrium); Crystal Silence, 1989; Sketch for a Spiritual Building, 1994; New Zealand Meditations, 1998; NordSeeHorizonte, 1999; Music for a Illuminating Conversion, 2000; End-a-Beginning (on poems in haiku-stile of Christoph Niess), 2002; Ritual for the Harmony, 2006

FILMS (2003-2012): Silberklang; NordSeeHorizonte; Resonanzen; Ostern Meditation; Sliding; Atemporal Landscapes; Waves; De Sublimi Finis

Official website, here.