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Several books and biographies of Romania’s greatest musicians have been written over the years. Yet dramatic events which impacted their lives and no doubt their music are still hardly known.

The aim of the Musicians in the Securitate Archive exhibition is to record such events with the help of documents (notes, reports, resolutions, letters, photos taken during surveillance) filed by the Securitate and now held by the National Council for Study of the Securitate Archives.

George Enescu, Mihail Jora, Paul Constantinescu, Constantin Silvestri, and Sergiu Celibidache, are the subjects of the research carried out by the author of the site www.muzicieni-in-arhive.ro. Each of them was treated as a “case” to be closely monitored by the authorities during the ascent and consolidation of the Communist regime in Romania (1945-1965).

The heavy methods used by the Securitate (watching Enescu during his Paris exile, illegally confiscating Silvestri’s arts collection, monitoring Sergiu Celibidache around the world and watching his family in Romania, etc.) bore no relationship to the lack of cooperation or defiance shown by these musicians. The methods were part of the regime’s policy of quashing any opposition to changes in the social and political domain and severely restricting freedom of speech.

Ioana Raluca Voicu-Arnautoiu