Constantin Brăiloiu

Constantin Brăiloiu (13 August 1893 – 20 December 1958) was a Romanian composer and internationally known ethnomusicologist.

He was born in Bucharest, the scion of an old boyar family from Oltenia. His father, Nicolae Brăiloiu, and his grandfather, Constantin N. Brăiloiu, were both lawyers and politicians. Constantin Brăiloiu studied in Bucharest (1901–1907), Vienna (1907–1909), Vevey and Lausanne (1909–1912), as well as Paris (1912–1914). In 1920, he founded the ''Societatea Compozitorilor Români'' (SCR, Society of Romanian Composers) 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'' (folklore archive), 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 "Schița unei metode de folclor muzical" (Sketch of a method for music folklore), 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 (AIMP)'', that was part of the Musée d'ethnographie de Genève (Geneva Museum of Ethnography). He served as director for the AIMP from 1944 until his death in 1958, and collected musical recordings from all over the world. In particular, between 1951 and 1958 he released 40 volumes in the series ''Collection universelle de musique populaire enregistrée'' (Universal collection of recorded popular music) on 78 rpm records. In 1948, he became assistant professor (''maître de conférence'') at the CNRS in Paris.

Brăiloiu was a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy from 1946. He died in Geneva of a stroke, at age 65. The Ethnography and Folklore Institute of the Romanian Academy now bears his name. Provided by Wikipedia