Costin Miereanu (born 27 February 1943) is a Frenchcomposer andmusicologist ofRomanian birth.
Costin Miereanu | |
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| Born | (1943-03-27)March 27, 1943 Bucharest,Romania |
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| Instrument | Keyboard instruments |
| Years active | 1965-2015 |
Miereanu was born inBucharest in 1943. At the age of eleven, he enrolled in the Bucharest School of Music, where he completed six years of study in piano and chamber music. Following this, he balanced his time between a music academy and a standard secondary education. His dual studies culminated in a science baccalaureate and a degree in piano concert and teaching, after which he continued his musical journey at theBucharest Conservatory for another six years (1960-1966), studying withAlfred Mendelsohn,Tiberiu Olah,Ștefan Niculescu, Dan Constantinescu,Myriam Marbé,Aurel Stroe, Anton Vieru, and Octavian Lazăr Cosma. He became accointed with composersIancu Dumitrescu andHorațiu Rădulescu, and started to get immersed into avant-garde music and simultaneously begins his musicological career, writing articles for journals and magazines.
Between 1967 and 1969, he was a student ofKarlheinz Stockhausen,György Ligeti, andErhard Karkoschka at theFerienkurse für neue Musik inDarmstadt.[1] In September 1968, Miereanu travelled to Paris to sign a contract withÉditions Salabert and did not return to communist Romania until after the fall and death ofNicolae Ceausescu (in December 1989).
In Paris, his initial musical explorations led him to a course at theGroupe de Recherches Musicales andPierre Schaeffer's class at theConservatoire National Supérieur de Musique. He chooseJean-Etienne Marie’s electroacoustic class at theSchola Cantorum instead, where he studied for two years. In 1970, with the aid of a grant from theCité internationale des arts, he enrolled atVincennes University of Paris VIII, where he encountered the musicologistDaniel Charles, who became very influential to him. He also attendedAlgirdas Julien Greimas’s courses ongeneral semantics at theÉcole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. While lecturing at the University of Paris VIII from 1973 and teaching at several conservatories, Miereanu pursued advanced degrees, completing a DEA with Greimas andRoland Barthes, followed by his doctoral thesis, which he defended with Greimas in 1978. In 1979, he successfully defended his Thèse d’Etat ès Lettres atSorbonne University with Charles. In 1977, he became a French citizen. Miereanu taught at the Music Department of the University of Paris VIII in Vincennes between 1973 and 1981. Since 1981, he has been Professor of Philosophy, Aesthetics, and the Science of Art at the Sorbonne, as well as becoming artistic director of Éditions Salabert (1981) and founder (withIannis Xenakis) of the Foundation Salabert. He was also co-artistic director of theEnsemble 2e2m between 1982 and 1985 and in 1983 he became director of the Centre de Recherches en Esthétique des Arts Musicaux at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. In 1991, he became director of the laboratory "Esthétique des Arts Contemporains", associated with theCNRS.
He was awarded theGaudeamus International Composers Award in 1967, the Prix Georges Enesco of the (SACEM) in 1974, and the Prix de la Partition Pédagogique of (SACEM) in 1992.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Miereanu was associated with the Groupe d'étude et réalisation musicale (GERM), founded byPierre Mariétan in 1966. Miereanu was also close to the composers aroundEnsemble l'Itinéraire (notablyTristan Murail andGérard Grisey).
Miereanu evolved his compositional style featuring a sensuous sonic fabric by combining ofErik Satie's techniques with an abstraction ofRomanian traditional music.[1] Many of his works include visual components and Miereanu produced several experimental movies to be projected with his music performances. He has composed more than one hundred cataloged pieces –aleatoric works,musique concrète, semi-improvised piece for solo synthesizer, music for orchestra and chamber orchestra (often using pre-recorded tape material), as well as pieces for theatre, ballet, and educational music.
In 1975, Miereanu recorded theelectroacoustic pieceLuna Cinese for the Italian label Cramps Records at Ricordi Studios inMilan, with the help ofWalter Marchetti andMartin Davorin-Jagodić. Musicologist Sam Ridout writes that "The disc represents an attempt to reconcile the conception of the open work developed from the early 1970s with the form of the record.""The piece in many ways recalls the recordings of another Parisian admirer of Cage,Luc Ferrari, combining fragments of speech in different languages, recordings of everyday noises and soundscapes, arranged through long duration, scarcely perceptible loops."[2] Miereanu was subsequently included in theNurse With Wound list (1979) andLuna Cinese remains a cult record for many young composers and listeners.
Miereanu founded his own label called Poly-Art International/Records around 1982, to release his ownminimalist andproto-ambient music, mostly solo synthesizer pieces (onMinimoog,Polymoog,PPG Wave,Sequential Circuits's Prophet-10, etc.) He self-published two cassettes,Le Royaume de la Reine Pellapouf (recorded 1977-78) andFata Morgana (recorded 1981), as well as four LPs,Dérives (recorded 1976-1978),Pianos-Miroirs (recorded 1978-1979),Jardins Oubliés (recorded 1981), andCarrousel (recorded 1982).Alan Licht includedDérives in hisMinimal Top Ten List #4 and wrote "Both sides/pieces onDérives are superb, comprised of long drones with flurries of skittering electronic activity popping up here and there."[3] Comparisons to these records have been made with the work ofHarold Budd andBrian Eno from the period, as well asDavid Behrman's andTerry Riley's music of the 1970s, and have been described as "some of the most essential yet overlooked documents of French nonconformist contemporary music from that era."[4]
His pieceFinis-Terre (1978) is featured inGaspar Noé's short filmThe Art Of Filmmaking (2020), featuringBéatrice Dalle andCharlotte Gainsbourg.
His six Poly-Art records have been reissued in a boxset by Auryfa and Metaphon in 2025, remastered from original master tapes byStephan Mathieu.[5]
