MERIDIAN International Festival

In 1925, the Romanian Composers’ Society founded the Romanian Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music.

Since its beginnings (1923), the festival organized by the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) has sustained the plurality of the modern composition styles and, thus, maintained its viability and vitality. It has promoted young composers and it has presented works which nowadays are considered classical. Austria is the country where, in 1922, the greatest musical organization meant to promote new music, ISCM, was founded at the initiative of the composer and musicologist Rudolph Réti and of the composer Egon Wellesz. 

For decades, ISCM, led from London, has functioned as a supra-national society of composers, trying to promote new music of all tendencies and aesthetic trends. This mission was accomplished through the World Music Days Festival (bearing this title since 1974), a festival that takes place each year in another important city. Of course, in the frame of the numerous concerts presented by ISCM, there have been discussions on the great topics concerning the style of the modern creations, starting with the terminology that nuances the difference between “new music” and “contemporary music” (reflected in the German, French or English terms as Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik or International Society for Contemporary Music). The concept of “new music” was, for a while, synonymous with the dodecaphonic orientation of the Second Viennese School, but the festival programme has equally included the inter-war neoclassicism.

In the musical life, ISCM has gradually become an important supra-political factor, which has greatly influenced the music between the two World Wars; it is known that the age between 1922 and 1945 (presided by the British Edward Dent) was a glorious one, corresponding with modern music history. Then, in its later stages (after 1971, when certain changes occurred in the Society), the role of such an organisation was clearly seen in the dialogue between the national sections represented in festivals, in the number of first performances of later famous works, or even in establishing important composers.

The role of the organization has often been discussed, its history encountering many difficult obstacles (ideological, financial or social): if contemporary music will at some point manage to find its place in the traditional musical life, the ISCM’s function will be lost, paradoxically by being accomplished. In Romania at least, this hasn’t happened yet. The World Music Days Festival organized here in 1999 was a celebration for contemporary music creation, while being an accomplishment of one of the most important aims of the Society, which is the permanent activity of the national sections. 

The brief history of the Romanian Section shows that it functioned between 1925 and 1935, being then inactive between 1948 and 1950. Attempts for reviving it would only become possible after 1989, through the efforts of composer Nicolae Brânduş, President of the Romanian National Section between 1990-1991 and 1993-2002, as well as member of the Executive Committee of the ISCM between 1991-1993. His work as a President was continued by composers Liviu Dănceanu (1991-1993), Maia Ciobanu (2002-2003), Sorin Lerescu (2003-2013) and Ulpiu Vlad (2013-2019).

The efficiency of ISCM can be seen in the increased interest in new music all over the world, in the influence of a style-creating compositional process, in the development of certain genres (such as chamber music). The activity of each national section, materialized in commissions, concerts and other means of promoting national and foreign composers, is as significant and important as the annual ISCM festival. The internationalism intended by the organization determins an information exchange that benefits the great nations as much as the smaller or marginalized ones, as the ISCM promotes the main and latest trends in new music.  There is also an impressive list of composers that owe their first international success to the ISCM (Britten, Copland, Dallapiccola, Eisler, de Falla, Hába, Honegger, Janacek, Kodály, Malipiero, Frank Martin, Martinu, Marcel Mihalovici, Petrassi, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Roussel, Szymanowski, Vaughan-Williams, Wellesz etc.), as well as big names that were not launched, but backed through ISCM (Schönberg, Berg, Webern, Stravinski, Ravel, Hindemith, Bartók, Milhaud, Krenek, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Boulez, Nono, Cage, Schnittke, Kagel and others).

Thus, an important part of the XXth century music, “modern”, “contemporary” or “new”, interferes with the ISCM, an organization that was involved in the musical life from the beginnings of Schönberg ‘s School up to the nowadays “classics”. The institution maintains even today the idea of promoting the music of our days, verifying the compositional act through audition and through the opinions of the World Music Days’ participants.

Valentina SANDU-DEDIU, musicologist