This article aims to explain the rise of Western art forms in the musical creation of the Romanian Principalities in the first half of the nineteenth century, as dictated by a particular European political and economic dynamic. I analyse the spread of Western music – usually described as a consequence of the gradual modernization of Romanian society – in terms of the power relations between the European core and a newly integrated periphery at the Eastern border of the continent. To illustrate this change, I discuss Edward Said's concept of orientalism which helps describe the early interactions between Western musicians and professionals and the local music traditions and customs. I then show how these interactions gave the former access to a distinctive musical material used in compositions targeting an expanding European music market. In an age of national struggle in the Romanian Principalities, national music was both a concept and a practice in demand by the local intelligentsia and fostered by composers. However, in addition to this agreement, the concept of national music signalled some significant societal changes that I elucidate by looking at class stratification and the evolution of musical taste. In the final part of the analysis, I draw on dependency theory authors such as Samir Amin and Daniel Chirot to argue that musical life in the first half of the nineteenth century in Wallachia and Moldavia was closely mirroring the economic development of these countries. Thus, I demonstrate that the emergence of the Romanian school of composition must be understood not only at a national level but also within a broader political, economic and social context, defined by the gradual transition to capitalist modes of production and consumption that happened in the first decades of the nineteenth century.

"Romanian ethnomusicology has a series of less discussed and, implicitly, less understood topics. One of them is the relatively vast literature that addresses the new folklore that appeared after the installation of the communist regime and the folk music of artistic ensembles performed on stage. Most of the texts written on these subjects display a strong political and ideological pressure. Consequently, they are either forgotten or superficially perceived as evidence of a repressive regime, adding to the general belief that the communist regime turned peasant art into an instrument of propaganda. Starting from a study signed by Ioan R. Nicola on music collected from Mărginimea Sibiului, we will try to understand the theoretical horizon and the ideological limitations that influenced the way researchers wrote about contemporary music phenomena in the second half of the twentieth century. Despite the constraints, we argue that ethnomusicologists had at hand a coherent system of analysis of the folk music, which they had to adapt to the official ideology. Keywords: new folklore, amateur artistic ensembles, folk performance, ethnomusicologic research, communist ideology"

"The Secașe Valley is an ethnographic area populated by different ethnic groups, the most numerous being the Romanians, Saxons, Hungarians, and Roma. Starting from field recordings of Romanian music performed by Saxon peasants from this region, we aim to contribute to the topic of inter-ethnic musical exchange in Transylvania. The songs borrowed by the Saxons from their Romanian neighbors are diverse, ranging from ritual songs, ballads, lyric songs representative for the area, to dance songs, romances, and other modern creations. We concluded that the Saxons thoroughly absorbed the style of traditional Romanian music not only from their own villages, but also from a wider area that goes past the Secașe Valley and into the neighboring regions. This allows us to claim that, as an ethnic minority, the Saxons were involved in a process of acculturation. The cultural strategy adopted by the Saxon community was the integration within the dominant culture, but without abandoning its own musical patrimony. Keywords: Transylvanian Saxons, Secașe Valley, cultural exchange, inter-ethnic relations, acculturation, Romanian folk songs, Southern Transylvania "