Gheorghe Ciobanu

Gheorghe Ciobanu (Pădureni, Ilfov County, 4 February 1909 – Bucharest, 29 June 1995) was a Romanian ethnomusicologist specialising in Byzantine music. His work belongs to twentieth-century Romania, and his interest in the folklore and the ancient psalmody of the country gave him a prominent place in the study of the traditional music of his homeland.

He trained at the Bucharest Conservatory, with interruptions between 1931 and 1945, and worked as a music teacher between 1939 and 1952. From 1949 until 1968 he was a researcher at the Institute of Folklore in Bucharest, and between 1965 and 1971 he taught folklore as a full professor at the Iași Conservatory. His research focused on early Romanian psalmodic music. He obtained his doctorate in Cluj in 1972 with a study of the musicians of Clejani.

His work on Romanian folklore helped clarify questions relating to popular modes and methods of versification, and made a notable contribution to the history of folklore collections and of popular music. He was also an editor of song collections, among them 200 Cîntece şi doine, published in Bucharest between 1955 and 1962.

His work was recognised with prizes from the Romanian Academy, in 1957 and 1978, and from the Union of Romanian Composers, in the years 1969, 1974, 1977, 1979 and 1987. His bibliography, which includes studies of Byzantine music on Romanian territory and of psaltic music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, remains a reference for those studying the musical tradition of the eastern Balkans.