Dimitrie Cuclin

Dimitrie Cuclin (April 5 [O.S. March 24] 1885  – February 7, 1978) was a Romanian classical music composer, musicologist, philosopher, translator, and writer.

Dimitrie Cuclin was born in the city of Galaţi, a port on the left shore of the Danube. His father was an immigrant from czarist Bessarabia, from the village of Cucleni, near the town of Izmail. He had studied music at the Theological Seminar of Izmail and at the Universities of Iaşi and Bucharest. At the time of Dimitrie’s birth he was a music teacher at the Vasile Alecsandri High School in Galați. His mother was of peasant origin, from the village of Pechea, located about 25 miles from Galați; she was a housewife. Dimitrie Cuclin completed his primary and secondary studies in his native city, where his father was his first music teacher. During high-school, he began to compose small musical pieces, which impressed the composer G.D. Kiriac, who thus suggested that Cuclin should go to Bucharest to study music.

The young composer applied first at the Conservatory (1903), where he was rejected for being above the age limit, ant then at the Royal Academy of Music (1904), where he was accepted at the section of Theory and Harmony. After three years of studentship in Bucharest, Cuclin obtained a scholarship for Paris. He failed to get into the Conservatory (he was not a brilliant violin player, although he was an acceptable one), but he was admitted at Vincent D’Indy’s Schola Cantorum, where he studied until his scholarship expired in 1914. Because of the government’s refusal to supplement his scholarship, Cuclin had to live France without having completed his studies, thus without a French university degree, but with an attestation from D’Indy that certified his competencies. In Paris he met his future wife, Zoe, born Dumitrescu, ex Damian (d. 1973). They were married in 1920.

Once back in Romania, he was mobilised during the First World War, but did not go to the Front. He played violin at the Orchestra of Iasi, conducted by the famous musician George Enescu, in what was left free of the Kingdom of Romania. After the War’s end, in 1919, he became a Professor at the Conservatory of Music, and had the title of the newly founded chair of Musical Aesthetics. Between 1922 and 1930 Cuclin taught in New York, at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and City College of Music. He returned to the Bucharest Conservatory in 1930 and remained there until 1948, when he retired. During the Second World War, in the times of the National Legionary State, Cuclin was briefly the Director of the Conservatory, but he did not have the best relations with the Legion, a fact that got him relieved of that responsibility.

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