Alexandru Zirra

Alexandru Zirra (Roman, 1883 – Sibiu, 1946) was a Romanian composer and educator whose work belongs to the national tradition of his country. He is remembered above all for his contribution to Romanian musical theatre, a genre he helped shape alongside other composers of his generation, and for his teaching at several conservatories.

His training began at the Conservatory of Iași, where he studied with G. Musicescu, T. Cerne and E. Mezzetti, and continued in Milan with C. Gatti, in two stages between 1905 and 1911. On returning to Iași, he taught harmony over various periods and directed the institution from 1922 to 1924. Later he served as professor of harmony and singing and as director of the Conservatory of Cernăuţi, today Chernivtsi, in Ukraine, from 1925 to 1931. His contemporaries praised his talent as a teacher.

His stage output, comprising six works, draws on episodes from Romanian history. Among them, the opera Alexandru Lăpuşneanu and the children's musical tale Capra cu trei iezi stand out. In these works he gave prominence to the choruses and vocal lines, and incorporated material from popular music, such as recitatives in a folk style, melodies built on doina motifs, modal harmonies and an orchestration influenced by traditional instruments. On occasion he also drew on Byzantine chant, as in the chorus of friars in the third act of Alexandru Lăpuşneanu.

Although his temperament was essentially lyrical, he was able to handle intense dramatic conflicts, a trait that perhaps explains the abundance of his programmatic orchestral music. His symphonic poems, suites and even symphonies take literary ideas as their starting point, often linked to rural life and the landscape of Moldavia, his native region, and they draw equally on the music of Gypsies and peasants. His legacy endures chiefly as an example of the integration of Romanian folklore into musical theatre and symphonic music in the first half of the twentieth century.