Constantin Brăiloiu

Who was Constantin Brăiloiu?

Constantin Brăiloiu was a Romanian composer and internationally known ethnomusicologist.

He was born in Bucharest. He studied in Bucharest, Vienna, Vevey and Lausanne as well as Paris. In 1920 he founded the Societatea Compozitorilor Român along with other composers, and he served as general secretary of the organization between 1926 and 1943.

In 1928 he initiated the composer's collective Arhiva de folklore, which soon became one of the largest folk music archives of its time. From 1928 he and sociology professor Dimitrie Gusti visited the various regions of Romania in order to make sound recordings. In 1931 he published the article "Schiţa a unei Metode de folklore Muzical", which became one of the foundational texts for ethnomusicology.

In 1943 he became cultural consultant for the Romanian embassy in Bern. Due to the political incidents in his homeland he stayed from then on in Switzerland. In 1944 he organized another archive in Geneva, Les Archives internationales de musique populaire, that was part of the Musée d'ethnographie de Genève. He served as director for the AIMP from 1944 until his death in 1958, and collected musical recordings from all over the world.