Ion Vidu

Who was Ion Vidu?

Ion Vidu, was a Romanian composer and choral conductor. Under his influence the small town of Lugoj, which up until that time had not had much in the way of artistic institutions, became a well-known center of choral music in Romania.

Vidu was born in Mânerău in the Arad district, where he initially studied music at the Arad Conservatory and later at Caransebeş in the Banat region just south of Arad. From 1890 to 1891 he attended the Conservatory of Music and Declamation in Iaşi, studying harmony and choral conducting with Gavriil Musicescu. He subsequently moved back to Banat, obtaining a post in Lugoj where he stayed for the rest of his life. Almost all of his compositions are for chorus. In 1922 he organized the Banat Choral and Brass Band Society, which at one time included more than 10,000 peasant singers. Like his friends and fellow composers Gavriil Musicescu, Béla Bartók, and Dimutru Kiriac-Georgescu, he was an avid collector of folk music. Vidu based most of his music on Romanian folk tunes, although he avoided the modes characteristic of folk music and primarily used major and minor tonality. His first collection of choral music, Severina, became so well known, that many of the original melodies from it are often mistakenly thought to be authentic folk tunes. The patriotic, anti-Habsburg flavor of his succeeding works also proved to be very popular.