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Ion Nonna Otescu

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ion Nonna Otescu (15 December 1888 – 25 March 1940) was a Romanian composer and head of the Bucharest Conservatory (now the National University of Music) from 1918 until 1940. He was born in Bucharest and died there at the age of 51, having played an influential role in the musical life of his native country. Life and career Otescu was born in Bucharest and studied at the Conservatory there from 1903 to 1907 under Dumitru Georgescu-Kiriac and Alfonso Castaldi (1874–1942). He then went to Paris where he stayed until 1911 studying at the Schola Cantorum de Paris with Vincent d’Indy and at the Paris Conservatory with Charles-Marie Widor. He began teaching at the Bucharest Conservatory in 1913, and in 1918 he became its head, a position he held until his death in 1940. Otescu played an active role in the musical life of Romania and was instrumental in the founding of the (the precursor of the Romanian National Opera), the Romanian Composers Society, and the music journal Muzika. In 1913 he won the George Enescu Prize and in 1928 the Romanian National Prize for composition. His works were predominantly dramatic in nature: operas, ballets, and symphonic poems. However, he also composed a

Ion Vidu

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ion Vidu ( – 7 February 1931), was a Romanian composer and choral conductor. Under his influence the small town of Lugoj, which up until that time had not that much in the way of artistic institutions, became a well-known center of choral music in Romania. Vidu was born in Mânerău, Arad County, Austrian Empire, where he initially studied music at the Arad Conservatory (1880–1881) and later at Caransebeș in the Banat region just south of Arad (1885). From 1890 to 1891 he attended the Conservatory of Music and Declamation in Iași (in the historical region of Moldavia, very near the northeastern border of modern Romania), studying harmony and choral conducting with Gavriil Musicescu. He subsequently moved back to Banat, obtaining a post in Lugoj (midway between Caransebeș and Timișoara), where he stayed for the rest of his life. Almost all of his compositions are for chorus. In 1922 he organized the Banat Choral and Brass Band Society, which at one time included more than 10,000 peasant singers. Like his friends and fellow composers Gavriil Musicescu, Béla Bartók, and Dumitru Kiriac-Georgescu, he was an avid collector of folk music. Vidu based most of his music on Romanian folk tunes,

Iosif Kotek

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Iosif Iosifovich Kotek, also seen as Josef or Yosif (, Iosif Iosifovič Kotek; 6 November 18554 January 1885), was a Russian violinist and composer remembered for his association with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. He assisted Tchaikovsky with technical difficulties in the writing of the solo part in his Violin Concerto in D. Biography Iosif Kotek was born in Kamenets-Podolsk, Russian Empire, in 1855, the son of a Czech father and a Russian mother. He studied violin under Jan Hřímalý at the Moscow Conservatory, where he was also a composition student of Tchaikovsky. From the outset, their attraction was mutual. He held Tchaikovsky’s music in the highest regard, and he was the composer’s favourite pupil. Tchaikovsky was infatuated with his student—he called him “Kotik”, Russian for little tomcat —and it has been conjectured by some (and asserted unambiguously by others) that they became lovers. They certainly became physically very affectionate, as demonstrated in Tchaikovsky’s 1876 letter to his brother Modest about Kotek: “When he caresses me with his hand, when he lies with his head inclined on my breast, and I run my hand through his hair and secretly kiss it … passion rages within