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Lucian Mețianu

From Unearthing The Music

Lucian Mețianu. Photo sourced from Discogs

Lucian Mețianu, born in Cluj (June 3, 1937), is a Romanian music teacher and composer living in Switzerland.

Biography

Lucian Mețianu began his studies at the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest in 1954, which he abandoned in 1957, before his final year, to enter the Conservatory of this same city. There he studied music in its classical form, but above all he discovered a new effervescence around contemporary music, rubbed shoulders with professors such as Anatol Vieru, Aurel Stroe, Alfred Mendelssohn or Tiberiu Olah, and found a space for research and expression where his knowledge of mathematics and computer science worked wonders. He graduated in 1963, and continued his education between 1969 and 1971 at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. He followed the electronic music lessons taught by Herbert Eimert, and created one of his first electronic compositions, "Pythagoreis".

Lucian Mețianu divided his career between classical heritage and the exploration of new musical fields. He earned his living working as a secretary for the Ploieşti Philharmonica, while composing music for orchestra, chamber orchestra or string ensemble, but also for films or animations. His main compositions always put forward a mathematical approach to music and relate to the framework of serial music. This is the case with works such as "Trio Iteration", "Quartets N°4", or the electro-acoustic composition "Triple - Rêve du Temps, Mirage et Cloches". He is a friend of Romanian composers Octavian Nemescu and Corneliu Cezar, with whom he shares a philosophical-mathematical perception of music, as well as their interest in the development of electronic music. Lucian Mețianu continued his musical experiments in Switzerland from 1984 onwards, when he settled down in Lausanne. His perception of music found a favourable field of expression there, with the development of jazz and contemporary music. In 1985, he founded the "Archebole" Association of Composers, which brings together a dozen composers around the promotion of music freed from the 'shackles of writing'. Lucian Mețianu also taught composition at the Institut de Ribaupierre between 1985 and 2011, as well as electronic music at the Lausanne Conservatory between 1990 and 1998. He created the electronic music laboratory there.

Lucian Mețianu is a member of the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists, of Suisa, of the Contemporary Music Society of Lausanne and the Swiss Society of Music Pedagogy. In 2007, he was named Knight of the Order of Cultural Merit for his work and in 2011, he was entered into the Grove Dictionary. Currently retired, he lives in Lausanne with his wife.

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Text adapted from the French Wikipedia