Banatian Chant as Seen by Father Terentius Bugariu

In her Banatian Chant as Seen by Father Terentius Bugariu the author brings to our attention the work done and the views held by Terentius Bugariu, a military priest endowed with outstanding musical qualities and energy for research, whose duties took him far across regions of the late 19th century Austrian-Hungarian Empire presenting him thus with the opportunity to compare the practice of byzantine chant in various parts of Romania and Serbia, particularly in the Banate. The proofs he brought to the support of his view that the influence of Western music, the abandonment of the neumatic notation in favour of the linear one, and above all the change of attitude towards church music which all those influences strengthened, were the wrong way to go have lost nothing of their relevance today.

Elena Chircev