Doves, Tuberculosis & Anthems: The Forgotten Links between Polish & Romanian Music

-_gruss_aus_der_bukowina_gurahumora_-_1r_-_a0169d78-7a72-4c7c-bf1d-72d1d5755dc6.jpg, default, Postcard from Bukovina, view of the town of Gura Humora (Romanian: Gura Humorului), one of the historical centres of Polish migration in Bukovina, pub

#music

Did you know that the author of Albania’s national anthem was a Pole born in Bukovina? Or at least, he had Polish roots.

Ciprian Porumbescu, a genius composer
and a distant ancestor of the poet Porumbescu,
was born into the family of a certain Gołębiewski.

Excerpt from ‘Ciprian Porumbescu, a Genius Composer’ by Miłosz Biedrzycki

In 1926, the Warsaw publishing house Gebethner i Wolff released a book of travelogues titled Z Północy i Południa: Finlandja, Włochy, Szwecja, Rumunia, Turcja (From the North and South: Finland, Italy, Sweden, Romania, Turkey) by Zdzisław Dębicki, a poet, publicist and national activist. While the title might suggest a work of travel literature, it’s worth noting that it meant a specific type of travel. It records impressions from press trips (referred to by Dębicki as ‘group excursions’) organised by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with diplomats from young countries. ‘Today, when solo travel is so difficult, nearly impossible, it’s better to travel as a group than not at all,’ writes Dębicki, praising the enabling of such visits, while lamenting the inability to take one’s own path. ‘The goal is to cross the walls that divide us from other countries, to finally get to know our closer and more distant neighbours.’

‘Romania welcomed us more than warmly,’ Dębicki recalls, describing how the delegation was met at the border by state officials and accommodated in a specially prepared sleeping car adorned with flags and banners bearing signs in Polish and Romanian such as ‘Welcome!’ and ‘Long live the Polish press!’ Officials greeted them in every city and village.

The journalists admitted that their perceptions of Romania had been superficial and unjust up until this point, often filtered through Austrian and Russian sources, which had poor relations with the Romanian state. Initially, Dębicki’s observations are fairly general, describing Romania as a beautiful, wealthy and hospitable country full of ‘state-educated elites’. The first observation he noted was the high level of knowledge Romanians had about their folk traditions, Even their ministers and deputy ministers, ‘busy with high politics and entirely engrossed in its issues’, would weave into their conversations folk legends, information about folk art, music, songs and dance. ‘I doubt Polish ministers could provide a foreigner with equally valuable and in-depth information in these areas,’ summarises Dębicki bitterly.

The concept of România Mare (Greater Romania) resonated with Dębicki’s National Democratic sensibilities. The journalist admired its pursuit of diplomatic neutrality while simultaneously fighting for the ‘Romanian national element’. ‘But there are young, Bolshevised Jews in Chișinău opposing us and our culture,’ he heard from Ludovic Dauș, a writer, theatre director and politician in Chișinău. In light of the 1903 Chișinău pogrom and later Holocaust events in Moldavia and Romania, this complaint seems rather disturbing.

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Zaleszczyki: view from under the bridge to the Romanian shore, published by the Polskie Towarzystwo Księgarni Kolejowych Ruch in 1935-1939, photo: Polona.pl

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Let’s get back to music. Dębicki, listening to Romanian dances and songs, immediately concluded they had Slavic roots. He suggested renaming the Romanian dance hora to ‘chora’, asserting it looked like it originated in ancient Slavic forest rituals, namely the ‘chorowody’ danced around bonfires lit up for Kupala Night. He said the fact the Romanian songs were ‘lovely’, ‘nostalgic’ and ‘melancholic’ was proof of their the Slavicness:

No Latin nation has ever sung with such life!

He claimed Polish musicians ought to immediately start studying these melodies. His argument is rather inconsistent though – in the next paragraph, he says he heard ‘Italian-Greek’ echoes in them.

Interestingly, just two years before Dębicki’s book was published, Baruch Agadati (1895-1976), a dancer born in the now Moldovan city of Tighina, adapted the hora into choreography for workers’ theatres in Palestine under British Mandate. Decades later, it would become a symbol of Hebrew culture.

In the spa town of Mehadia, the delegation of journalists listened to a military orchestra. Among the pieces performed were the Polish anthem, ‘Polish Songs’ by the German composer Hans von Bülow, ‘Minuet’ by Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the polonaise attributed to Michał Kleofas Ogiński, and Romanian folk melodies. In Bucharest, Dębicki spoke with a theatre director, asking him about who the most famous Romanian artists were in each field. George Enescu, Alfred Alessandrescu, Stan Golestan and Dimitre Cuclin were all mentioned, but strangely, Ciprian Porumbescu was not, someone who Dębicki would undoubtedly have noted down as Cyprian Gołębiewski. It seems this representative of Bucharest’s cultural world likely favoured creators trained in French musical centres, overlooking those associated with the multicultural Bukovina...

An entirely different experience met Silesian journalist Janusz Primula at the turn of the 21st century. In the article Ciprian Porumbescu – Cyprian Gołębiowski (1853–1883): A Romanian Musician with Polish Roots, Adam Gałkowski recalls an anecdote published by Primula on the portal Musiq.pl. While in a Romanian restaurant, the journalist was asked where he was from. When he replied that he was Polish, the restaurant’s band played a piece by Porumbescu called Ballad for Violin and Orchestra (Romanian: Baladă pentru vioară și orchestră). Primula described it as ‘moving’ and ‘beautiful’:

Slavic soul pours out of it. It’s a shame he didn’t manage to compose more and is remembered today as a one-piece composer, but what a piece that is...

In reality, Porumbescu composed many works, including the first Romanian operetta and a song that is now Albania’s national anthem.

Let’s go back for a moment to earlier times. In the 14th century, Bukovina was taken over by the Principality of Moldavia. In the 16th century, it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, and in the 18th century, by Austria. The region was part of the trade route connecting the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the Black Sea. The inhabitants of Bukovina were predominantly Vlachs and Ruthenians, but there were also Germans, Jews, Roma, Hungarians, Poles and Armenians. In 1786, fourteen years after the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Habsburg-occupied Galicia was merged with Bukovina. This marked the beginning of large migrations of Poles to the region.

The first site associated with Poles was the salt mine in Cacica, after 20 families of engineers were brought there from the mines in Bochnia and Wieliczka. Shortly afterward, Polish highlanders from Čadca (today in the Žilina region in Slovakia) also settled in Bukovina. By the mid-19th century, larger Bukovinian cities like Suceava and Chernivtsi (today in Ukraine) attracted both intellectuals and the emerging working class. Descendants of Poles still live in Bukovina today, though it is now divided between Romania and Ukraine.

Polish Radio’s classic series of Polish folk music includes the album Polacy na Ukrainie, w Rumunii i Kazachstanie (Poles in Ukraine, Romania and Kazakhstan), which includes recordings made during three expeditions to Romanian Bukovina in 1996. In the notes accompanying the album, Anna Szewczuk-Czech and Piotr Kędziorek write:

Polish villages in Romanian Bukovina are more isolated [than Polish villages in Ukrainian Bukovina – editor’s note], located in hard-to-reach mountain valleys. In the villages we visited, inhabited by the [descendants of] Čadca highlanders (Solonețu Nou, Poiana Micului, Pleșa), the Polish language can be heard everywhere, even spoken by small children. Wedding ceremonies often take place in an archaic form, lasting three days and preceded by the weaving of a wedding wreath (Pleșa). However, as the people we interviewed say, such as Zyta Chachla: “Everything’s different now. Grandpa used to wear long linen trousers, a sheepskin vest, a hat, and carried a bag with flint inside. Weddings only happened in winter. The bride wore leather moccasins and a woollen jacket. Now we prepare all sorts of things, but back then, it was just potatoes, rye bread, cabbage and meat.”

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Postcard from Kača, 1909, photo: Polona.pl

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Those interested in Polish life in Bukovina should explore the Zasobnik Bukowiński (Bukovinian Repository), a portal dedicated to the Polish diaspora in this multicultural region. Among the things there, you can find a dialect dictionary, audiovisual materials (including recordings of memories, songs and legends of Poles from Bukovina), and short essays introducing readers to the cultural world of Bukovina. Surprisingly, there is no information there about Ciprian Porumbescu, or Cyprian Gołębiewski. In some texts, Porumbescu is referred to as the Romanian Chopin, although, in my opinion, calling him the Romanian Moniuszko would be more fitting.

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Iraclie Golembiowski-Porumbescu, photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Herakliusz Gołęmbiowski, we can read,

changed his surname under pressure from his surroundings

to Porumbescu, which roughly means the same.

Iraclie Porumbescu, we can read,

forced by the Austrian occupier to change his surname

to Golembiovski, returned to his ancestral surname in 1881.

Excerpt from ‘Ciprian Porumbescu, a Genius Composer’ by Miłosz Biedrzycki

The parents of Ciprian Porumbescu were Iraclie Gołęmbiowski (1823-1896) and Emilia Clodnițchi (1826-1876) – both had Polish roots but were of the Orthodox faith, which is emphasised in almost every text on the composer. Iraclie was born into a poor family of Polish emigrants in the village of Suceviţa, which had been living in Bukovina for two generations. At the age of six, he was entrusted to the care of monks from a nearby monastery. The clergy who looked after him noticed his talent for learning to read and decided to fund his education at the primary school in Suceava and later the high school in Chernivtsi. In 1837, Ghenadie Platenchi, the archimandrite who had been taking care of him, passed away, leaving Ciprian’s future father without any means of livelihood. To continue his studies in philosophy and theology, he did simple odd jobs in the homes of the teachers at his school. In 1841, he left Bukovina and decided to follow in the footsteps of his philosophy professor, Antmann, who had been appointed to a position at Lviv University. The capital of Galicia did not welcome him warmly – shortly after his arrival, he was arrested, accused of collaborating with a Polish revolutionary who had been his roommate. He was released six months later, whereupon he immediately returned to Chernivtsi. While finishing his degree there at the Institute of Orthodox Theology, he started to write poetry in Romanian:

I deleted the letters “ł”, “ę” and “w”, which have no

historic justification, we can read, they are simply

expressions of the fantasies of certain co-editor colleagues.

Excerpt from ‘Ciprian Porumbescu, a Genius Composer’ by Miłosz Biedrzycki

He published his first compositions in the periodical Zimbrul (The European Bison) – it was then that he started to use the pseudonym Porumbescu, which is a loose translation of his surname. The Polish word ‘gołąb’ and Romanian word ‘porumbel’ mean ‘dove’ in English. Iraclie combined his work as a prior in small Bukovinian parishes with poetry, prose and journalistic activities, as well as collecting local folklore and working as an editor. He collaborated with magazines from Pest, Vienna, Oradea, Brașov, Suceava and Chernivtsi. Literary historians consider him one of the first modern Romanian-language prose writers from Bukovina.

Besides that, he was the father of Ciprian Porumbescu – a composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and organiser of musical life. The musicologist Rosina Caterina Filimon, in a Revistă de Muzicologie article on this musical man who passed away before reaching the age of 30, also describes him as a philosopher and theologian. Indeed, like his father, he studied at the Institute of Orthodox Theology, but he ended up dedicating his life to another field. Iraclie taught his son the basics of music. Ciprian’s first professional music teacher was Karol Mikuli (1819-1897), a pianist and pedagogue, and a student of Fryderyk Chopin. This Polish-Romanian-Armenian musician was born in Chernivtsi and, after studying under Chopin in Paris and pursuing a vibrant concert career, settled in Lviv in 1857, spending his summers in Bukovina. According to Filimon, he visited the parish in Șipotele Sucevei (today Shepit in Ukraine), where the Gołęmbiowski-Porumbescu family lived from 1859 to 1864, travelling there with a piano transported by a six-horse team. After studying in Suceava and Chernivtsi, Ciprian Porumbescu went to Vienna, where he studied under Anton Bruckner and Eusebius Mandyczewski, as well as other luminaries.

Porumbescu’s compositions number over 200 in total. At first, he composed sacral choral works, meant for the Institute of Orthodox Theology’s seminary and members of the Arboroasa organisation active at the University of Chernivtsi. Founded in 1875, this association organised lectures on Romanian culture, concerts and poetry evenings. They also created a library, made contact with Romanian organisations in other towns, and financially aided poorer students.

Członkowie Arboroasy, w środku siedzi Cristian Porumbescu, fot. domena publiczna — Members of Arboroasa, in the centre sits Cristian Porumbescu, photo: public domain

Then Porumbescu started composing songs and instrumental works, most often inspired by folklore. A large part of his pieces were relatively simple, written with performances by students and amateurs in mind – it’s hard not to compare Porumbescu’s ambition with the activities of Stanisław Moniuszko and his Home Songbook. In 1880, the Romanian composer published Colecţiune de Cântece Sociale Pentru Studenţii Români (A Collection of Social Songs for Romanian Students). Published in Vienna, every copy went to a student organisation, many in Vienna itself. One of the works within, Pe-al nostru Steag e Scris Unire (Union is Written on our Flag), was the Romanian national anthem from 1968 to 1977. But before it became Romania’s anthem, it was already the national anthem of Albania. The poem ‘Betimi mbi Flamur’ by the Albanian poet Asdreni had its publishing premiere in Bucharest, which was one of the largest hubs for the Albanian national movement. In 1912, the melody of the Romanian composer with Polish roots was chosen by the National Congress in Vlorë as the national anthem of the newly-independent country of Albania.

Whose song is this? Well, ours, the Șop folk, we know that.
And could it, for example, be a Șip folk song?
Nooo, absolutely not. The Șip people have no culture at all.

Excerpt from ‘Whose Song is This?’ by Miłosz Biedrzycki

During his studies in Vienna, Porumbescu was fascinated with operas, as well as operettas. In 1882, the first ever Romanian operetta premiered in an Eastern Orthodox high school in Brașov. It was called Crai Nou (New Moon), a reference to the folk custom in which a girl can ensure she is lucky in love by singing three times in the direction of a new moon. This cosmic work drew on folk dances and song melodies, including the previously-mentioned hora. The composer also managed to weave into its contents a storyline that included patriotic elements.

Crai Nou is not a tragic story about love, but one of its arias is inspired by doina – one of the most characteristic forms of Romanian folk song from pastoral culture. The theme of a doina is supposed to be ‘dor’.

Jest to słowo bardzo trudno przetłumaczalne, ale można by je z grubsza przełożyć jako "tęsknota", "roztęsknienie". Z kolei w Portugalii formą, w której coś bardzo podobnego do rumuńskiego dor się wciela, czyli saudade, nastrój melancholii i nostalgii, też jakiejś tęsknoty nieokreślonej – jest fado.

Ireneusz Kania explains in his essay Pieśni losu Europy Południowej (Songs about Fate from Southern Europe):

This is a difficult word to translate precisely, but it might be likened to ‘yearning’ or ‘longing’. There is something similar to Romanian dor found in Portuguese, known as saudade, which also has an atmosphere of melancholy and nostalgia for something undefinable, and has also inspired its own genre of music, known as fado.

Dor is a particularly important part of Romanian culture. The religious historian Mircea Eliade wrote about it (who said ‘Dor – saudade românească’), as did the philosopher Lucian Blaga (‘Spaţiul Mioritic’, meaning ‘Pastoral Space’). As Kania writes:

According to Blaga, doina is the most characteristic and fully developed musical form they have, serving as a sort of quintessence of Romanian identity in various aspects: musically, but above all in terms of a certain spiritual dimension that could be called the inner spiritual landscape of the Romanian.

The most popular example of doina is the ballad Miorița (Little Lamb), which has been recreated countless times. The first time it was published in print was in 1850 on the pages of Bucovina, a newspaper that sometimes worked with Iraclie Gołęmbiowski. It tells the tale of three shepherds, one of whom is warned by his sheep that he will probably be murdered by his companions. Seemingly unmoved by the information from this talking animal, he does not try to escape. He merely gives the lamb instructions on how to bury him.

In his book From Zalmoxis to Genghis Khan, Mircea Eliade summarises one variant of the ballad as follows:

He asks it to say that he should be laid to rest in the ground of his own homestead, so he can be close to his sheep and hear his dogs. He also asks for three flutes to be placed at his head. When the wind blows, they will play, and the gathered sheep will shed bloody tears.

Was Porumbescu equally as resigned to his own death? That’s unclear, but it is certain that his Romanian identity drove him to the grave. He died of tuberculosis, contracted during an 11-week stay in a Chernivtsi prison in 1877. He was there due to his involvement in the previously-mentioned Arboroasa association – his signature appeared on telegrams sent to the authorities in both Iași and Bucharest, cities already part of the independent Kingdom of Romania. The first message paid tribute on the 100th anniversary of the execution of Grigore III Ghica, the Moldavian prince who opposed handing Bukovina over to Austrian control. The second telegram congratulated them for the victory in the Battle of Pleven – a battle that ended the Russo-Turkish War, in which Romania supported Russia. This was the same war referred to in The Doll by Bolesław Prus as ‘the Bulgarian War’, which allowed Stanisław Wokulski to amass his fortune. After his imprisonment, Porumbescu’s health steadily declined, and he died in 1883 in the village of Stupca near Suceava. Since 1953, the village has simply been called Ciprian Porumbescu.

The maize [porumb] rustled, and from it fluttered away a tiny dove [porumbel].
Unexpectedly, for the majority, for the minority.

Except from ‘Porumbescu Speculates about His Background’ by Miłosz Biedrzycki’

The tuberculosis certainly does bring Porumbescu closer to Chopin. The music of the Polish pianist was highly praised in Romania – the Romantic great Mihai Eminescu (‘the Romanian Mickiewicz’) adored him, as did the famous composer George Enescu. The popularisation of Chopin’s music in Romania was certainly helped by his previously-mentioned student Karol Mikuli, who often played it in Romanian concert halls. Chopin also had another student born in Romania, this time in Transylvania to a German family: Carl Filtsch (1830-1845). Chopin said of him:

My God, what a child! Nobody has ever understood me as well as this boy. He can play almost all of my pieces, even though he’s never heard how I play, just like I do (because he has his own style), and certainly not worse.

Yes, Filtsch also died of tuberculosis.

Did ‘Ciprian Porumbescu, a genius composer’ actually feel any connection with Poland? It’s hard to say. His parents may have come from Polish families, but nowhere is it implied that they instilled him with any Polish traditions. We don’t even know if he spoke Polish. We do know that not long before his death he was on holiday in Genoa, and that during his return journey he travelled via Kraków. In the Polish House in Suceava, a music group regularly plays there named after Ciprian Porumbescu, and a statue of him stands not far from the cultural centre. Adam Gałkowski, author of at least one article on the composer, has commented that he is not discussed in Polish encyclopaedias, neither general ones nor music ones. Nor could Gałkowski find any articles about Porumbescu in the archives of Polish newspapers.

One of the few traces of the Gołęmbiewski-Porumbescu family is the poetry collection Porumb written by Miłosz Biedrzycki, a Kraków-based poet born in Slovenia. Within its pages, he creates the figure of ‘Porumb’, a fictional descendant of the Romanian composer. ‘Could this be the antithesis of Zbigniew Herbert’s Pan Cogito?’ asks Jakub Nikodem elsewhere here on Culture.pl.

The dove, porumbel, rises from the porumb, soars into the sky.

Excerpt from ‘Ciprian Porumbescu, a Genius Composer’ by Miłosz Biedrzycki

Originally written in Polish, October 2024; translated into English by Adam Zulawski, November 2024

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