Music and Social Life in the Romanian Society of the Enlightenment

The majority of the Romanian intellectual society considered music a valuable and useful instrument for education and acknowledged it as favorable for the development and improvement of the individual. Music stopped being a mere auxiliary to religion, and musical education began to cut off from moral education, acquiring a strictly esthetic basis. The instruments (violas, violins, wire strings for these, fine bows, “claviers”, “fortepianos”, guitars) were acquired from abroad, brought by merchants from Vienna, Leipzig, Pest, Neukirchen. Though somewhat delayed in comparison with the West, the progressively “enlightening” Romanian society gradually integrated into the pace of the European development. Boyars and merchants were concerned with, and engaged in the new innovating flux, which gave rise not only to social homogenization in terms of wealth, but also a spiritual one of those who shared the same cultural aspirations and musical tastes.

Full Text