Mihai Cosma
Prof. Dr. Mihai Cosma
A time of severe military, political, social and cultural upheavals, the First World War years brought to Romanian society intense exposure to the art of music at multiple levels, from composition to performance, from the purlieu of musical institutions to the activity of choral societies. Although obviously a period marked by shortages and constraints, those years lend extraordinary effervescence to musical activity, viewed as a projection of patriotism and Romanian sentiments, but also as an escape from the depressing and, more often than not, demoralising everyday, particularly during the period of the evacuation to Jassy. The same as the whole of the first half of the twentieth century in general, the First World War years in particular were marked by the career (particularly as a performer) of Georges Enesco, who left France to return to Romania in order to stand alongside his people throughout the difficult trials of war and the construction of the Greater Romania.
After the glorious inter-bellum, which might be regarded as the apogee of Romanian musical life, crowned with the consolidation of the Bucharest Philharmonic’s outstanding reputation and visited by leading international figures, the period of the Second World War is notable above all for the music and concert tours of German composers. At the same time, light music might be said to have reached its peak, thanks to café concerts, operettas, comic operas, revues, cabarets, and singers of genuine talent, all of which were an expression of prosperity and the effective promotion and management provided by skilled impresarios.
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Short Biography
Prof. Dr. Mihai Cosma • musicologist, journalist. He studied Musicology at the National University of Music, Bucharest, graduating in 1989, and Musical Theatre Direction, graduating in 2005. He founded the National University of Music’s School of Scholarly Research and Artistic Projects, of which he is the director. He is the editor-in-chief of the university’s press and has been an editor of Actualitatea Muzicală (Music News) since it was founded. From 1991 to 2016 he was also an editor forMuzica magazine. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists and the Executive Bureau of the Union’s Music Criticism and Musicology section. Since 1992, he had been the head of the National University of Music’s Department of Music History and Musicology. In January 2013, he became an artistic adviser to the General Director of the Bucharest National Opera and founded the Le Grand Prix de l’Opéra international Canto Contest and the Opera’s symphonic season. Since 2011, he has been the academic co-ordinator of the International Musicology Symposium, part of the Georges Enesco International Festival.
He frequently sits as a member of the jury in national and international competitions, in Romania, Italy, Russia, Japan and elsewhere. He has been a project manager for numerous festivals, competitions, tours, musicology symposia, and academic research projects. He frequently lectures in Romania and all over the world, and sits on the panels that grant academic titles and award doctorates.
Mihai Cosma has published numerous works on musical history and the opera. His career as a journalist encompasses around one thousand articles, reviews, interviews, and broadcasts for the daily and specialist press, radio, and television, both in Romania and abroad.