Cornel Țăranu (; 20 June 1934 – 18 June 2023) was a Romanian classical composer,Ță musicologist, conductor and cultural manager. A native of Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, he was always attached to this region, and contributed to cultural cooperation between Romanian and ethnic Hungarian musicians. He studied locally, at the Cluj Academy, assimilating the local avatar of neoclassicism, alongside influences from Romanian folk music—though his debut years also evidenced conformity with Socialist Realism, he was reportedly censured by the communist regime for keeping company with sidelined figures, such as the poet Lucian Blaga. A teacher at his alma mater, he furthered his studies abroad, at the Conservatoire de Paris, becoming an authority on, and posthumous disciple of, George Enescu. Braving controversy, he worked on completing unfinished scores by Enescu, including his Fifth Symphony and a musical poem, Strigoii. In parallel, he founded Cluj's Ars Nova, a chamber orchestra dedicated to contemporary classical music and performance art.
Țăranu's main compositions focus on orchestral work; he wrote two operas, vocal music for soloists and choirs, and critically acclaimed film scores. His style transitioned into a postmodernism with expressionist tinges, used mainly in his shorter pieces, but remained largely neoclassical in his four symphonies. His personal project was a musical companion to modern Romanian literature, directing him to explore various other sources of inspiration. Depending on context, his contributions were informed by folklore (Romanian, Romani and Greek), Byzantine music, and jazz. He also produced a number of distinctly historicist pieces, which took inspiration from political or descriptive texts in the history of Transylvania. Achieving mainstream recognition in the 1980s, when he won the Koussevitzky Prize, Țăranu maintained his reputation after the Romanian Revolution of 1989. A Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002, he directed the music festival Cluj Modern, and was a long-serving vice president of the Union of Romanian Composers. His film work included collaborations with his brother-in law, director Nicolae Mărgineanu; he was also the son-in-law of psychologist Nicolae Mărgineanu Sr.
Biography
Early life and neoclassical debut
Țăranu was born in the Transylvanian city of Cluj (now Cluj-Napoca), and, into his thirties, represented the "Cluj outlook on music", with its blend of neoclassicism, national folklore, and modernist music. In 1998, Țăranu's colleague Ferenc László praised him as one of the few Transylvanian composers, whether Romanian or Hungarian, who chose not to leave their "rural" region for success abroad: "As a flexible mind, he succeeded in what few Transylvanians manage: while he lives in Cluj, his work travels around the world." He came from a musical family: "My parents were genuine aficionados, they frequented Cluj's musical milieu, my father played the violin and had a great ear for music. I began to study music at a very early age, then, in the most spontaneous way, I started to improvise, to work on my very own tiny essays in composition."
Țăranu studied at the local Conservatoire (later the Gheorghe Dima Academy) from 1951 to 1957—piano with and composition with Sigismund Toduță. The latter is credited as Țăranu's first master by fellow composer Doru Popovici. Fifty years later, Țăranu noted that Toduță, as the son in law of the political prisoner Ioan Suciu, was especially fragile and cautious, for being easily blackmailed by the communist authorities. Lacking a "balance between sincerity and diplomacy", he publicly spoke of his teacher as the Romanian Brahms, unaware that such praise of the classics would make Toduță even more exposed to persecution. His other early mentors were professors Marțian Negrea, Eliza Ciolan, and Antonin Ciolan; the latter, a conductor, nurtured his talent—even though Țăranu did not yet take up conducting as a specialization. He ignored his piano studies and skipped class "whenever I could", mainly because piano and mandatory lessons of Marxism-Leninism left him little time to work on his musical scores. Popovici was present for Țăranu's debut as a composer, in spring 1955, with the Trio for violin, viola and cello. In a 1962 retrospective, he reports: "Though written down during his years as a student, the work carried the seal of authentic sensibility and had its lyrical content [...] concealed by a concise format, wherein melodies created in the folk style would blend into each other masterfully, evidencing his affinity with the polyphonic style."