Mihai Brediceanu

Mihai Brediceanu was a Romanian conductor and composer. He was born in Brasov, Romania, on June 14, 1920, and was the son of Tiberiu Brediceanu.

He graduated from the Brasov Conservatory in 1939 as a pianist, having studied with Imanuil Bernfeld, who had himself studied at the Schola Cantorum in Paris under Vincent d'Indy. From 1943 to 1947 he studied piano, composition, and conducting at the Bucharest Academy of Music. His teachers there included Mihail Jora in composition, Dimitrie Cuclin in aesthetics, Eduard Lindenberg and Ionel Perlea in conducting, and Florica Musicescu in piano. He also completed the Faculty of Law at the University of Bucharest.

In 1943 he began working as a rehearsal pianist at the Bucharest Opera. In 1946, while still a student, he became chorus master, and for the next twenty years he was associated above all with that institution. From 1959 to 1966 he led it as artistic director and chief conductor. At the same time he also worked with the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1956 he founded the Galati Symphony Orchestra. Beginning in 1959 he toured as a conductor in various European countries, including the Soviet Union in 1960, and in 1967 he made his first appearance in the United States.

From 1969 to 1982 he lived and worked mainly in the United States, first as musical consultant to the symphony orchestra in Syracuse and, from 1971, as a teacher and research associate at Syracuse University. His research focused on ways of applying different topological models and the concept of multidimensional time to the composition and performance of music. In particular, he developed and patented in 1970 the "Polymetronome," or "Polytimer," a computer device that made it possible to perform polyphonic works in which different voices use different tempos. Alongside his work in the United States, he served as general director of the Istanbul Opera from 1978 to 1980.

In 1982 Brediceanu returned to Romania and led the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra until 1990. From 1991 he headed the National Opera.

Brediceanu's legacy as a composer includes early chamber and symphonic works, theatrical music from the 1950s, including scores for such plays as Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos and Anatoly Surov's Dawn over Moscow, the ballet Master Manole based on the famous folk legend from 1967, and polyphonic pieces from the 1970s that used the Polymetronome.

He died in Focsani, Romania, on March 4, 2005.

Connections

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