Composer, teacher and musicologist, one of the leading figures of Romanian musical avant-garde whose works were performed in important venues across Europe, Aurel Stroe was born on May 5, 1932 in Bucharest.
He studied at the Conservatoire (today the National University of Music), where he later taught Theory of Instruments and Orchestration (1962-75) and Composition (1975-85). Associate Professor at University of Illinois (between 1985 and 1986, the year he settled in Mannheim), he gave summer courses, conferences and lectures in Romania (Piatra Neamț and Bușteni), France, Austria and Germany (Darmstadt). Publishing studies and essays in dedicated journals, his novel ideas, among which the theory of morphogenetic music or the composition classes, influenced the generations that followed him. Aurel Stroe died on October 3, 2008 in Mannheim.
Selective list of works: Arcades (1963), Laudes I (1966), Laudes II (1968), Canto I (1967), Canto II (1968), Concerto for Clarinet and Mid-Sized Orchestra (1974), Trilogia cetăţii închise – o nouă Orestie: I Agamemnon (1981) [The Trilogy of the Closed Citadel – A New Oresteia: I Agamemnon], II Coeforele [II The Libation Bearers] (1977), III Eumenidele [The Eumenides] (1985), Capricci et Ragas (1990), Mandala mit einem Crucifixus von Antonio Lotti (1997), Concerto for Accordion and Orchestra (2000).
Author: Petre Fugaciu
Translation: Maria Monica Bojin