Publishing scientific works nowadays without offering them an international recognition means to continue leaving the Romanian musicology aside. Romanian historiography, lexicography, musical analysis, estethics, ethnomusicology, byzantinology have produced through time several important writings, some of these being very useful information sources today. The effervescence of the present obliges though not only to research and publish for a handful of Romanian specialists, but to a much widerspread  visibility and  circulation of the musicology researches.

This is the main reason for which we propose a new publication within the landscape of musical magazines, an online quarterly, placed under the academic cover of the National  University of  Music Bucharest. The main purpose of this journal is to reflect what is new in the  musicology  research: either new topics or new perspectives on musics from the past.Musicology Today seeks therefore relevant studies and articles for the actual state of musicology, with its specific tools, also involving an important amount of artistic intuition.

This first issue is dedicated to some significant celebrations. The year 2009 was meaningful for the entire musical world: concerts, festivals, symposia celebrated 200 years either since Joseph Haydn’s death, or since Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s birth. We couldn’t possibly have missed the occasion of emphasizing these two events. Therefore, Klaus Aringer (Graz) proposes an unusual perspective about the martial references in Haydn’s late works, and Thomas Kabisch (Trossingen) looks into some virtuosity aspects of the poetic cycle of Lieder ohne Worte.

Last but not least, the Romanian musical milieu remembered in 2009 one of its greatest composers, born in 1909: Paul Constantinescu. Ioana Raluca Voicu-Arnăuţoiu investigates some unknown aspects of Constantinescu’s biography, related to the communist era with its “Securitate” procedures.

Providing a thrilling reading, our section of “Studies” will reveal that musicology has scientific but not dull tools. The same way of communicating through strongly opinionated ideas is characteristic for another compartment of Musicology Today, “Thoughts”.  We’ll have to think about the fascinating world of oral music in the present days, about the plurality of “musics” that surround us. Speranţa Rădulescu leads us into this world.

I have to underline that plurality is something that concerns also the editorial staff of Musicology Today. Different views, different languages are contained in this first issue. Taking an example from the review of the International Musicological Society, Acta Musicologica (founded in 1954), we plead for the diversity of three main European languages: English, German, French, and for lots of musicological traditions.

Valentina Sandu-Dediu

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