Mircea Florian
Encyclopedia
Mircea Florian (ˈmirt͡ʃe̯a floriˈan, also known as Florian din Transilvania, M. A. N. Florian, FloriMAN; born December 5, 1949) is a Romania
n multi-instrumentalist musician, multimedia artist and computer scientist, based in Germany
. Having started his musical career as a folk rock
singer, in the late 1960s, he developed a fusion between Romanian folklore and Eastern music, especially Indian sound
, moving into psychedelic music
. He founded Ceata Melopoică ensemble, with whom he recorded a concept album
. These and his solo acts earned him a cult following among rebellious youth, establishing his reputation as one of the most original contributors to Romanian pop music. Florian was also an early member of Cenaclul Flacăra, a traveling music and literature circle, but parted with it when it became increasingly nationalistic
.
Before 1980, Florian was turning his attention to electronic music
and New Wave
. In parallel, like other artists on the Romanian folk scene, he was pursuing his interest in non-pop ventures, from experimental rock
and minimal music to biomusic
, and exhibiting his installation art
. In 1986 Florian escaped Communist Romania, having by then been exposed to much communist censorship
, and took up cultural and scientific projects in West Germany
. Since the Romanian Revolution
, he has made frequent returns, playing at numerous festivals and composing film scores.
and various other instruments. He first took classes at the Satu Mare Art School, and first became interested in performing arts
while an avid spectator of the local Medrano Circus (the place where he also witnessed the first concert by a rock band).
Florian then studied at the Eminescu High School, where he had musical appearances with the band Zburătorii (1965). A while after, he also gave his first one-man show, which included a dance routine. In parallel to state-run education, he took private courses in music and visual arts. Florian first came into contact with the burgeoning hippie
movement of the West
, and met Romanians who, despite facing tight scrutiny from the communist authorities, wanted to replicate it locally. In 2005, he stated that the fundamental difference was in the drug culture, which Romanians had little access to, adding: "In any case the manner in which the artistic act was supposed to be carried out here was different from what one could experience in the West. Romanian artists created for a tighter circle, of (proper) connoisseurs." Elsewhere, he also noted that hippie culture was essentially becoming more accessible to Romanians by the end of the 1960s: "I remember that, once a record came out, fresh off the Western market, no more than a week would pass before it got to Romania, brought over by some sailor or an acquaintance who had been visiting 'out on the outside', or through heaven knows what channels..."
Among the decade's pop acts, Florian was most impressed by Bob Dylan
, The Beatles
and Leonard Cohen
. At the time, he became an avid listener of clandestine Western radio, where he first heard the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen
, Steve Reich
and especially Luigi Nono
: "[Nono's] music was so new, so captivating, so rich in meanings... I got hooked on it forever!" He carried out his first experiments with electronic music at the age of 16, when, in his search for new "tone colors", he turned a sound generator
into a keyboard instrument.
Zburătorii disbanded in 1967, and Florian left Satu Mare for Bucharest
, the capital. He studied cybernetics
at the Politehnica University, from 1967 to 1972, and was part of the first-ever graduating class at Politehnica's Faculty of Economic Calculations. After arriving to Bucharest, he played for a while with a band called Lotus, which, he recalls, was a "pretty interesting" folk project. In 1968, during the invasion of Czechoslovakia
, Florian also had his first brush-in with communist censorship: a song of his, which was transparently critical of the Soviet Union
, was banned from public radio
. According to popular account, DJ Cornel Chiriac
ignored such commands and played the song, being promptly sacked as a result (the other version attributes his dismissal to having played The Beatles' ambiguous record "Back in the U.S.S.R.").
Lotus major breakthrough came in 1969, when they performed at the 3-Gaură-3 Club, where music critic Florin Silviu Ursulescu organized Romania's first American folk-inspired music festival. As noted by Florian, Lotus appeared alongside the "first wave" of Romanian folk singers, among them Mircea Vintilă, Dorin Liviu Zaharia
and Doru Stănculescu. At around the same time, Florian joined the Luceafărul literary club, and provided the avant-garde jazz
background to the Surrealistic
poems recited live by Valery Oisteanu
.
In parallel, Florian's work in mathematics opened new fields for his musical experimentation. The major factor, he notes, was his familiarization with transistor computer
s at the Economic Calculations laboratory and the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, during an era of "sheer luck"—that is, when liberalization
allowed Romania to trade in electronics with the United States
. He had a free hand to work in algorithmic composition
and computer music
. He was officially employed by the computer industry from age 22, supplementing his salary with semi-compulsory dispatches "on location", which allowed him to invest his own money in various cutting-edge musical instruments.
. He also played at the Ion Mincu University
hangout, Club A, in live concerts with Vintilă and actor-singer Florian Pittiş
. The coincidence of names with the latter was a running joke, and it was here that he began using the stage name Florian din Transilvania (literally, "Florian from Transylvania
"). It has endured as one of the singer's main pseudonyms, alongside M. A. N. Florian.
His focus was on playing string instruments such as guitar or cobza
, as well as being a singer-songwriter. He established a concept-band, known initially as Florian în Labirint ("Florian in the Labyrinth"), and later as Ceata de dubaşi, ceteraşi, kitarozi şi alţi meşteri lăutari ("A Band of Drummers, Cittern
-players, Guitarists and Other Master Lăutari
"), and also involving Gabi Căciulă and Sorin Chifiriuc
as guitarists and Alexandru Beno as violinist. The project broke musical ground when it added Indian influences
and sitar
backing, which was contributed by Ljubiša Ristić, of Yugoslavia
. The occasional tabla
rhythm and flute
melodies were played by a Pakistan
i performer, Arif Djafri.
The music was described by Florian as combining "archaic and electric
elements" into "a science", and covering successive colored "periods" in his creative history, when he was into amassing musical instruments. The new Western inspirations on his work were Laurie Anderson
, Peter Gabriel
and Todd Rundgren
. Emerging from the core group of Florian în Labirint, Ceata Melopoică ("The Melo-poetic Band") became Florian's main project of the 1970s. Its often-changing membership included: Beno, Căciulă, Chifiriuc, Ristić, Zaharia, Andrei Oişteanu
, Alexandru Beno, Valentin Andronescu, Günther Reininger
, Andrei Cristea, Eugen Gondi
, Dietrich Krauser, Mihai Creţu, Costin Petrescu
, Alexandru Mitaru, Alexe Conta, Mircea Dordoi, Ortansa Păun, Sorin Baroţi, Gheorghe Popescu and Mihai Pintilie.
From its choice of name, this new project also reflected its leader's mounting interest in Ancient Greek philosophy, the ideological source of his psych-folk, which he describes as more profound than generic folk rock. He referred to his earlier folk songs as "singable" and "more accessible" than his later work. Although psychedelic music was not well seen in Communist Romania in the 1970s, Florian's psych-folk earned a cult following. According to critic Mihai Plămădeală, there was a transition at the end of which Florian became "one of the most peculiar Romanian musicians": "While he started his career as a folk-singer, with several calm and usual songs, Florian slowly began to get distance from standard means of expression."
introduced Sino
-North Korea
n-style state control. As noted by critic Marius Chivu, Florian's opposition to the communist regime led him into "the great quad of folk protest singers
", with Nicu Vladimir, Valeriu Sterian
and Horia Stoicanu. For a while, he was a presence at Cenaclul Flacăra, the folk-singing club organized with communist approval. The singer later stated that he was one of the club's founding members, together with poet Adrian Păunescu
, his colleague at Luceafărul, and that he intended to create "a movement to bring together people interested in poetry and music."
In the end, Florian was thrown out for performing songs punctuated with double entendre
s. Literary critic and folk music fan Dan C. Mihăilescu suggests that these disagreements reflected a larger cultural conflict. He describes Florian, Marcela Saftiuc, Sterian and Zaharia as fundamentally different from the "Maoist
" agenda of Romanian communism, and notes that they also became irreconcilable with Păunescu when the latter committed himself to "embarrassing" indoctrination. Reflecting back on his childhood attendance of Cenaclul, writer-politician Varujan Vosganian
noted a similar issue: "I liked Marcela Saftiuc, [...] Mircea Florian, Doru Stănculescu and many others, I did not like it when we were made to stand up clapping and chanting." As asserted by literary critic Ion Bogdan Lefter, "Few authentic artists of the [folk] genre could prevent its rapid absorption into the melodious, lyricaloid and often jingoistic kitsch promoted by the propagandistic Cenaclul Flacăra." Florian's account mentions the "controlled diversions" of such ventures, adding that the "real folk" of the 1970s was lost to indoctrination and commercialization.
Florian recalls that his lyrics, and especially his long-haired looks, were a growing cause for irritation among communist censors
, and that as a consequence he devised various "strategies" for getting his message across to the public. He also explained: "In general the text that was very trenchant stood no chance—they would pick you up then and there and out you were [...]. But everybody would metaphorize. One would get what it was all about from the text, but the most important bit was the state of mind, the attitude sent out by the author, by the artist... [...] Very often [my] message was a simple one: I refused enrollment, I refused that social formula, I would not let myself be lied to and I would let the public know that, I called for 'general cleanup' actions, I also expressed my position on the fact that freedom had been taken away from me. That was fundamental."
Florian and Zaharia had a friendly relationship with writer Dorin Tudoran
, who was in the process of becoming an outspoken dissident
. According to Tudoran, it was around 1974 when the three of them first became aware that agents of the Securitate
secret police were keeping them under surveillance. Ceata member Andrei Oişteanu, who made his career in religious studies, also noted that the Securitate was at the time closing in on himself and other non-conformists or hippies.
Florian's solo music was included on the 1973 split EP
Muzică folk ("Folk Music"), which he shared with Saftiuc, then, in 1975, on the single
Pădure liniştitoare/La făgădău' de piatră/Cu pleoapa de argint ("Quieting Forest/At the Stone Tavern/With the Silver Eyelid"). The songs, recorded with Chifiriuc, Reininger and Căciulă, were based on texts written by Florian or selected from Romanian folklore, particularly hajduk
songs. The instrumental arrangement comprised a wide assortment of instruments: acoustic guitar
, flute, drum kit, cobza, jaw harp, idiophone
s (all played by Florian himself), alongside electric guitar
, tabla, conga
, electric piano
, celesta
, synthesizer
and electronic organ
. Mihai Plămădeală describes the result as a unique project in Romanian music
: "Nothing of what can be listened to or heard on it finds a direct correspondent in anything that anyone, anywhere, has achieved." He notes Florian's fusion of "hippie culture", "mantra
" singing and the "maximal liberty of progressive rock
". Reputedly, Florian remains the first Romanian singer to have employed the synthesizer in one of their works.
Florian continued with live performances, including the concert of Orăştioara de Sus
, where he went on stage alongside Transsylvania Phoenix and the traditional drummers of Brăneşti
, performing what Florian calls "unfiltered, clean, unprocessed music." Like Nicu Vladimir, he gave concerts at the "fires on the beach" gatherings in the remote Black Sea
resort of 2 Mai
, a hippie hotspot, before these events were banned on grounds of border security. He also provided the music to Oişteanu's play Vlacea, regele nebun ("Mad King Vlacea"), performed on tour by the Ţăndărică Theater, and reportedly poking fun at the authoritarian
leader Nicolae Ceauşescu
. Florian later made an appearance as actor-pupeteer and multi-instrumentalist performer in Till Eulenspiegel
, directed by Cătălina Buzoianu for Ţăndărică. As he recalls, this involved him playing some 30 or 40 instruments in quick succession, from celesta, sackbut
and melodica
to guitar; Florian does not consider himself a consummate player of all such instruments: "it's like painting and needing some yellow just for a tiny highlight. You can't say you've painted in yellow."
Pădure... was followed in 1977 by another single, Fîntîna ("The Well"). An electronic rock product, it included a collaboration with rock drummer Radu Răducanu. In 1979, Florian was included on a compilation album, also titled Muzică folk. However, most of the music he composed and produced at that stage went unrecorded, or was only preserved on fidelipac
. As noted by his former promoter Florin Silviu Ursulescu, who was working for the Radio Company
, his supervisors had simply banned some of Florian's songs for containing "inane lyrics".
, familiarizing himself with new technologies while working as an engineer for the Computer Science Institute, Bucharest. He also had access to the recordings kept in the Radu Stan collection at the State Central Library
. According to his own reference system, this inaugurated a "green period". Beyond the early pop influences, Florian was increasingly inspired by the classics of electronic, aleatoric
or minimal music: Léon Theremin
, Pierre Schaeffer
, Pierre Boulez
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
, Morton Subotnick
, Lejaren Hiller
, Steve Reich
, Terry Riley
, Iannis Xenakis
, John Cage
.
With collaborators Belu Alexandru and Valentin Antonescu, he tested minimalist recordings on magnetic tape
, glued into various sequences. Florian also composed and, with the help of Transsylvania Phoenix drummer Costin Petrescu
, recorded the experimental rock
song Nicodim şi toaca ascunsă ("Nicodim and the Hidden Semantron
"), which was visually supported by Florian's performance art and reworked on a music sequencer
. The musical pieces were played at Florian's exhibits, including his contribution to the major multimaedia show Scrierea ("Writing"), or in special "new music" concerts held in classical concert halls such as the Romanian Atheneum. His other activity as a multimedia artist was in biomusic
: in 1976, Kalinderu Palace hosted his live study, Corpul uman ("The Human Body"), during which he mixed the body resonance of one friend into a musical arrangement.
In reference to this phase, Lefter includes Florian among the young men who reached out of the folk and hippie scenes and into the field of multimedia experiments, in what was largely an attempt to circumvent the official art of communism. This "pre-postmodern
" transition, Lefter notes, was also effected by the Sfinx
, Transsylvania Phoenix, "the weird" Dorin Zaharia and Nicu Vladimir, but Florian's work remained the "most interesting". Florian, who first began introducing himself as an "InterMedia artist
" during the 1970s, collaborated with draftsman Anton Petraşincu, who created the first opaque projections
to go with Florian's live singing.
By 1977, Florian's interest in electronic musical instrument
s, particularly synthesizers, created splits within Ceata Melopoică, which was also affected by some of its members' decisions to emigrate. In the early 1980s, Florian was again interested in setting up a classic rock band, but also sought to preserve the trademark combination of folklore and electronics. He switched to New Wave music
, with his new band Florian din Transilvania; among his New Wave and electronic influences, Florian called to mind David Byrne
, Brian Eno
and Depeche Mode
. Reflecting back on this time, he spoke of Sfinx's Dan Andrei Aldea
as the "saint" of Romanian electronic music, one "more important than anyone else" on this scene.
The group only released one album, the 1986 vinyl-edition
Tainicul vîrtej ("The Secret Swirl"), with the state-run recording company Electrecord
. The lyricist and composer Florian did most of the vocals, and played cobza, guitar and synthesizer. The other members of the team came from various Romanian rock and pop acts: Andronescu was on keyboards, Doru Căplescu on additional synthesizer, Dan Cimpoieru on second guitar, Doru Istudor on drums, Zsolt Kerestely on electronic drum
s, with Mircea Baniciu
providing backing vocals and Mihaela Hoaja the violin parts. Reportedly, the record went through the hands of official censors before being released, and Florian's song Madama Butterfly had to be discarded, leaving space for other songs such as Nunta lui Harap Alb ("Harap Alb
's Wedding"). The song AS ("Ace"), also included on the album, was altogether banned after the Electrecord producers picked up on its political hints.
Plămădeală argues that Tainicul vîrtej follows its composer's "metaphysical" inclination, being notable for its "shock element", while journalist and musician Maria Balabaş describes the record as "psychedelic" with an "electronic sound". According to its author, it should also be seen as "intellectualized" and "elitist", but not in fact a "hiatus" in his artistic development. Florian additionally argued that, from "stupor", the public's reaction to his compositions became "very positive, even enthusiastic."
Although short-lived, the act became known on the underground scene for both its music an the conceptual art
of its live performances, drawing comparisons with Tangerine Dream
, Popol Vuh
and the Third Ear Band
; during such events, Florian would appear dressed up in a hazmat suit
. Florian and his collaborators toured the country, and were awarded the first prize at the Constelaţii rock event in Râmnicu Vâlcea
. Tainicul vîrtej also led to shows at various underground venues, from Stelian Tănase
's rock evenings at the Revue Theater to the State Jewish Theater
stage and Arenele Romane.
The artist was several times invited to exhibit his work outside Romania, and even beyond the Iron Curtain
, receiving a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service
and attending the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, where he worked under Stockhausen's supervision. In 1982, he was among those collaborating with the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk
studio of electronic music, in Cologne
. His concerts abroad were probably the reason why his Tainicul vîrtej was never on general release: the communist government allegedly presumed that he would not be returning, and tried to prevent the public from glorifying his departure. Florian accuses Electrecord of having mismanaged the distribution, by not printing sufficient copies and by oversupplying shops located outside Bucharest.
. He notes having been increasingly frustrated by censorship, which prevented him from participating in some exhibits and concerts, and eventually pondering about leaving the country.
After receiving a visa for the United States
, where he had been invited to present his sound installation
s, he defected and later settled down in West Germany
. He changed residence between the cities of North Rhine-Westphalia
: Mettmann
, Wuppertal
, Düsseldorf
. He decided not to work as a musician, because he could only conceive of singing in his native Romanian language
.
Florian focused on his work as an artist and computer scientist. Since the late 1980s he has been combining visual arts with music to create sound sculpture
s, sound installation
s, and collage
s. By 2009, his work had received some 21 awards, including, alongside Romanian ones, German, British
and Japan
ese distinctions. He was present with his work at the Venice Biennale
of 1999, and managed a Romanian festival in Wuppertal.
In the decades after the Romanian Revolution of 1989
, Florian has resumed his collaboration with Romanian artists, including Nicu Covaci
: in 1992, he wrote the title song on Covaci's "Symphoenix" album Timişoara. Also in 1992, he participated in setting up Deutsch-Rumänische Kulturbegegnungen ("German-Romanian Cultural Meetings", or DeR KuB), a cultural society dedicated to cooperation between artists; its Romanian branch is the Mircea Florian Association. Two years later, some of his work was reissued on the Club A compilation. Florian also contributed the preface to Vlad Arghir's book, the first Romanian-language monograph on Leonard Cohen
, published in Germany by Pont Kiadó.
Florian and DeR KuB have organized several events reuniting Romanian folkloric ensembles from Hungary
, Serbia
and Ukraine
with bands representing the various traditions of minority groups in Romania
. He personally spent a week in Satu Mare Prison, coaching the detainees' own musical project, and created portrait projection shows in Satu Mare and Bratislava
. In addition to opening for Phoenix and Covaci at reunion concerts in 2003, Florian has performed with the Shukar Collective
project, which mixes electronic music with Romani tradition. He and Shukar's DJ Vasile remixed several Ursari
renditions of old songs, "some five out of eleven" entries on the Collective's album, and including the single Anna e Manole. He intended to continue work with this group, but it disbanded following lead singer Tamango's illness.
Florian's performance art was showcased in exhibits at the National Theater Bucharest, the International Center for Contemporary Art, the Cluj-Napoca Techical College
etc. In addition, he was visiting scholar
at the Caragiale Academy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography
and Babeş-Bolyai University
. Florian was also invited to sing at the Stufstock
event of Vama Veche
, in 2004, but refused to perform on stage, and gave an impromptu concert on one of the side alleys, in hopes of addressing only his real fans. Florian was later a guest at Festivalul Plai
, a multicultural music event held in Timişoara
city. He also returned to attend the Gărâna Jazz Festival
, setting up his own world music
festival project, in Certeze
. His presences at Folk You! in Vama Veche were included on the festival's "best of" compilation for 2007. In January 2008, after polling the Romanian music critics, Sunete magazine ranked Florian the 11th most important musician in the country's pop history.
ding-dongs in Mircea Florian's music." Florian was later the composer of music for Alexandru Solomon's political documentary Kapitalism: Our Improved Formula (2010). It was received with interest by film journalist Mihai Fulger, who described Solomon as a "trendsetter", for attaching Florian's original music to animation and archive footage. Florian's contribution was nominated for the Gopo Awards
of 2011, in the "Best Original Music in Short Film" category.
He was additionally working with Cătălina Buzoianu, arranging the music to her various productions, including a 2005 version of August Strindberg
's Father and a 2008 staging of Mircea Cărtărescu
's Dream. Theater manager and poet Ion Cocora was impressed by the latter show and its "fairy tale state", describing Florian's music as "a continuous oscillation between the real and the unreal." Theater critic Alice Georgescu also described Florian's music for Dream as "felicitously reusing childish rhymes". The collaborative project was later taken up for the 2009 productions of Matei Vişniec
's Joan and the Fire and We're Banning Richard III (Bulandra Theater), as well as to the 2010 adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer
's The Magician of Lublin (State Jewish Theater
).
Around 2007, Florian's work in art again centered on magnetic tape, used in collages and sound sculptures. One example is his work The Last Supper, exhibited in Berlin
: it is a combination of three analog recording
s, on different colors of tape, played in unison. His work in Romania covered graphic art, and he designed the layout to the cultural review aLtitudini. Some of his other projects again bridged avant-garde jazz and literature. Around 2004, he toured with novelist Gheorghe Crăciun, who was promoting his book Pupa Russa. In 2010, he resumed his work with Valery Oisteanu
, upon the latter's return from the United States. Their mix of Surrealism and electronic music was hosted by the Green Hours pub, in Bucharest.
While experimenting with a new generation of electronica
gear (samplers
, Ableton Live
and Max
programs, Korg
adapters etc.), Florian still saw string instruments as his first love, and noted that he had also began playing the guitalele
. In February 2011, Florian, DJ Vasile and their new music project, FloriMan, performed live at the Cinema Total, part of the Berlinale festivities
. During this, they mixed electronic music and traditional bucium
-playing. His past work was also included in the Berlin exhibit When History Comes Knocking: Romanian Art from the 80s and 90s in Close Up.
In June, the Vasile Goldiş West University
made Florian a honoris causa doctor. The same year, he returned to Romania with a re-release of Tainicul vîrtej as a Bucharest musical show, part of the Club A Festival, and a personal exhibit at the Bucharest Municipal Art Galleries, Negrele-mi aripi ("Black My Wings"), turned into a film directed by fellow artist Victor Velculescu. It recorded Florian's installations, which comprised brushes, a laptop
, an oscilloscope
and other instruments, creating the illusion of a winged figure attached to his body. Also in 2011, the alternative rock
act byron
covered one of his Tainicul vîrtej songs on their own album Perfect.
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n multi-instrumentalist musician, multimedia artist and computer scientist, based in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Having started his musical career as a folk rock
Folk rock
Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...
singer, in the late 1960s, he developed a fusion between Romanian folklore and Eastern music, especially Indian sound
Music of India
The music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, popular, pop, classical music and R&B. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and developed over several eras. It remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as...
, moving into psychedelic music
Psychedelic music
Psychedelic music covers a range of popular music styles and genres, which are inspired by or influenced by psychedelic culture and which attempt to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues-rock bands in the...
. He founded Ceata Melopoică ensemble, with whom he recorded a concept album
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
. These and his solo acts earned him a cult following among rebellious youth, establishing his reputation as one of the most original contributors to Romanian pop music. Florian was also an early member of Cenaclul Flacăra, a traveling music and literature circle, but parted with it when it became increasingly nationalistic
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
.
Before 1980, Florian was turning his attention to electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
and New Wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
. In parallel, like other artists on the Romanian folk scene, he was pursuing his interest in non-pop ventures, from experimental rock
Experimental rock
Experimental rock or avant-garde rock is a type of music based on rock which experiments with the basic elements of the genre, or which pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique....
and minimal music to biomusic
Biomusic
Biomusic is a form of experimental music which deals with sounds created or performed by non-humans. The definition is also sometimes extended to included sounds made by humans in a directly biological way...
, and exhibiting his installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
. In 1986 Florian escaped Communist Romania, having by then been exposed to much communist censorship
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
, and took up cultural and scientific projects in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. Since the Romanian Revolution
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, he has made frequent returns, playing at numerous festivals and composing film scores.
Beginnings
Born in Satu Mare, Mircea Florian began his musical education as a pianist and saxophonist, before turning to guitar, blockflute, mandolinMandolin
A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
and various other instruments. He first took classes at the Satu Mare Art School, and first became interested in performing arts
Performing arts
The performing arts are those forms art which differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some physical art object...
while an avid spectator of the local Medrano Circus (the place where he also witnessed the first concert by a rock band).
Florian then studied at the Eminescu High School, where he had musical appearances with the band Zburătorii (1965). A while after, he also gave his first one-man show, which included a dance routine. In parallel to state-run education, he took private courses in music and visual arts. Florian first came into contact with the burgeoning hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
movement of the West
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
, and met Romanians who, despite facing tight scrutiny from the communist authorities, wanted to replicate it locally. In 2005, he stated that the fundamental difference was in the drug culture, which Romanians had little access to, adding: "In any case the manner in which the artistic act was supposed to be carried out here was different from what one could experience in the West. Romanian artists created for a tighter circle, of (proper) connoisseurs." Elsewhere, he also noted that hippie culture was essentially becoming more accessible to Romanians by the end of the 1960s: "I remember that, once a record came out, fresh off the Western market, no more than a week would pass before it got to Romania, brought over by some sailor or an acquaintance who had been visiting 'out on the outside', or through heaven knows what channels..."
Among the decade's pop acts, Florian was most impressed by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
and Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
. At the time, he became an avid listener of clandestine Western radio, where he first heard the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
, Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
and especially Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
: "[Nono's] music was so new, so captivating, so rich in meanings... I got hooked on it forever!" He carried out his first experiments with electronic music at the age of 16, when, in his search for new "tone colors", he turned a sound generator
Sound generator
A sound generator is a vibrating object which produces a sound. There are two main kinds of sound generators ....
into a keyboard instrument.
Zburătorii disbanded in 1967, and Florian left Satu Mare for Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
, the capital. He studied cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
at the Politehnica University, from 1967 to 1972, and was part of the first-ever graduating class at Politehnica's Faculty of Economic Calculations. After arriving to Bucharest, he played for a while with a band called Lotus, which, he recalls, was a "pretty interesting" folk project. In 1968, during the invasion of Czechoslovakia
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
On the night of 20–21 August 1968, the Soviet Union and her main satellite states in the Warsaw Pact – Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic , Hungary and Poland – invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in order to halt Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring political liberalization...
, Florian also had his first brush-in with communist censorship: a song of his, which was transparently critical of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, was banned from public radio
Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company
The Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company , informally referred to as Radio Romania , is the public radio broadcaster in Romania. It operates four national radio channels, and, under the Radio România Regional umbrella, eleven regional radio stations. The four national radio channels are: Radio...
. According to popular account, DJ Cornel Chiriac
Cornel Chiriac
Cornel Chiriac was a Romanian journalist, radio producer, record producer, journalist and jazz drummer.-Early life:...
ignored such commands and played the song, being promptly sacked as a result (the other version attributes his dismissal to having played The Beatles' ambiguous record "Back in the U.S.S.R.").
Lotus major breakthrough came in 1969, when they performed at the 3-Gaură-3 Club, where music critic Florin Silviu Ursulescu organized Romania's first American folk-inspired music festival. As noted by Florian, Lotus appeared alongside the "first wave" of Romanian folk singers, among them Mircea Vintilă, Dorin Liviu Zaharia
Dorin Liviu Zaharia
Dorin Liviu Zaharia was one of the most interesting figures of the 1960s and '70s Romanian pop music scene. He was probably the first Romanian musician interested in mixing Romanian folklore with Indian music. He sang with the band Olympic '64, developing a sound and attitude that were in contrast...
and Doru Stănculescu. At around the same time, Florian joined the Luceafărul literary club, and provided the avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz
Avant-garde jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, despite its distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which ...
background to the Surrealistic
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
poems recited live by Valery Oisteanu
Valery Oisteanu
Valery Oişteanu is a Soviet-born Romanian and American poet, art critic, essayist, photographer and performance artist, whose style reflects the influence of Dada and Surrealism. Oişteanu is the author of more than a dozen published books of poetry, a book of short fiction, and a book of essays...
.
In parallel, Florian's work in mathematics opened new fields for his musical experimentation. The major factor, he notes, was his familiarization with transistor computer
Transistor computer
A transistor computer is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The "first generation" of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, were bulky, and were unreliable. A "second generation" of computers, through the late 1950s and...
s at the Economic Calculations laboratory and the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, during an era of "sheer luck"—that is, when liberalization
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
allowed Romania to trade in electronics with the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He had a free hand to work in algorithmic composition
Algorithmic composition
Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music.Algorithms have been used to compose music for centuries; the procedures used to plot voice-leading in Western counterpoint, for example, can often be reduced to algorithmic determinacy...
and computer music
Computer music
Computer music is a term that was originally used within academia to describe a field of study relating to the applications of computing technology in music composition; particularly that stemming from the Western art music tradition...
. He was officially employed by the computer industry from age 22, supplementing his salary with semi-compulsory dispatches "on location", which allowed him to invest his own money in various cutting-edge musical instruments.
Florian în Labirint to Ceata Melopoică
By 1971, Mircea Florian had grown dissatisfied with the band concept, and committed himself mainly to solo projects. As such, in what he calls his "white period" of acoustic rock, he notably became the opening act for the celebrated rock band Transsylvania PhoenixTranssylvania Phoenix
Transsylvania Phoenix is a Romanian rock band formed in 1962 in Timişoara by guitarists Nicu Covaci and Kamocsa Béla. Guitarist Claudiu Rotaru, vocalist Florin "Moni" Bordeianu and drummer Ioan "Pilu" Ştefanovici completed the early lineup...
. He also played at the Ion Mincu University
Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism
The Universitatea de Arhitectură şi Urbanism Ion Mincu din Bucureşti is a public university in Bucharest, Romania, founded in 1952....
hangout, Club A, in live concerts with Vintilă and actor-singer Florian Pittiş
Florian Pittis
Florian Pittiş was a Romanian stage and television actor, theatre director, folk music singer, and radio producer.He attended the Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest and in 1968 he graduated from the Institute of Theatre...
. The coincidence of names with the latter was a running joke, and it was here that he began using the stage name Florian din Transilvania (literally, "Florian from Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
"). It has endured as one of the singer's main pseudonyms, alongside M. A. N. Florian.
His focus was on playing string instruments such as guitar or cobza
Cobza
The cobza is a Romanian and Moldovan folk instrument of the lute family . It is distinct from the Ukrainian kobza, an instrument of a different organology and origin....
, as well as being a singer-songwriter. He established a concept-band, known initially as Florian în Labirint ("Florian in the Labyrinth"), and later as Ceata de dubaşi, ceteraşi, kitarozi şi alţi meşteri lăutari ("A Band of Drummers, Cittern
Cittern
The cittern or cither is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. Modern scholars debate its exact history, but it is generally accepted that it is descended from the Medieval Citole, or Cytole. It looks much like the modern-day flat-back mandolin and the modern Irish bouzouki and cittern...
-players, Guitarists and Other Master Lăutari
Lautari
The Romanian word Lăutar denotes a class of traditional musicians. Most often, and by tradition, Lăutari are members of a professional clan of Romani musicians , also called Ţigani lăutari. The term is derived from Lăută the name of a string instrument...
"), and also involving Gabi Căciulă and Sorin Chifiriuc
Sorin Chifiriuc
Sorin Chifiriuc is a rock, new wave and blues guitarist and vocalist.Affectionately called Kifi by his fans, and a graduate of the Bucharest Music Conservatory, he is also known for his unconventional behaviour on stage....
as guitarists and Alexandru Beno as violinist. The project broke musical ground when it added Indian influences
Music of India
The music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, popular, pop, classical music and R&B. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and developed over several eras. It remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as...
and sitar
Sitar
The 'Tablaman' is a plucked stringed instrument predominantly used in Hindustani classical music, where it has been ubiquitous since the Middle Ages...
backing, which was contributed by Ljubiša Ristić, of Yugoslavia
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
. The occasional tabla
Tabla
The tabla is a popular Indian percussion instrument used in Hindustani classical music and in popular and devotional music of the Indian subcontinent. The instrument consists of a pair of hand drums of contrasting sizes and timbres...
rhythm and flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
melodies were played by a Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i performer, Arif Djafri.
The music was described by Florian as combining "archaic and electric
Electric instrument
An electric musical instrument is one in which the use of electric devices determines or affects the sound produced by an instrument. It is also known as an amplified musical instrument due to the common utilization of an electronic instrument amplifier to project the intended sound as determined...
elements" into "a science", and covering successive colored "periods" in his creative history, when he was into amassing musical instruments. The new Western inspirations on his work were Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
, Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
and Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren
Todd Harry Rundgren is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and record producer. Hailed in the early stage of his career as a new pop-wunderkind, supported by the certified gold solo double LP Something/Anything? in 1972, Todd Rundgren's career has produced a diverse range of recordings...
. Emerging from the core group of Florian în Labirint, Ceata Melopoică ("The Melo-poetic Band") became Florian's main project of the 1970s. Its often-changing membership included: Beno, Căciulă, Chifiriuc, Ristić, Zaharia, Andrei Oişteanu
Andrei Oisteanu
Andrei Oişteanu is a Romanian historian of religions and mentalities, ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, literary critic and novelist. Specialized in the history of religions and mentalities, he is also noted for his investigation of rituals and magic and his work in Jewish studies and the...
, Alexandru Beno, Valentin Andronescu, Günther Reininger
Günther Reininger
Günther Reininger is a German keyboardist and a former member of the Romanian rock groups Amicii, and Phoenix.He is an Honorary Citizen of Timişoara.He currently resides in Germany.-Footnotes:...
, Andrei Cristea, Eugen Gondi
Eugen Gondi
Eugen Gondi is a Romanian-born jazz drummer.He graduated from the Arts Middle School in his hometown.He started his musical career by playing with the "Paul Weiner Free Jazz" trio....
, Dietrich Krauser, Mihai Creţu, Costin Petrescu
Costin Petrescu
Costin Petrescu is a Romanian musician , born in Bucharest in 1949. He played with two Romanian rock bands of the 60s and 70s': Olimpic '64 and Phoenix . He is a graduate of the Architecture Institute and he works today as an architect in Paris...
, Alexandru Mitaru, Alexe Conta, Mircea Dordoi, Ortansa Păun, Sorin Baroţi, Gheorghe Popescu and Mihai Pintilie.
From its choice of name, this new project also reflected its leader's mounting interest in Ancient Greek philosophy, the ideological source of his psych-folk, which he describes as more profound than generic folk rock. He referred to his earlier folk songs as "singable" and "more accessible" than his later work. Although psychedelic music was not well seen in Communist Romania in the 1970s, Florian's psych-folk earned a cult following. According to critic Mihai Plămădeală, there was a transition at the end of which Florian became "one of the most peculiar Romanian musicians": "While he started his career as a folk-singer, with several calm and usual songs, Florian slowly began to get distance from standard means of expression."
Protest singer
There was a political aspect to Florian's reputation. He later spoke about the cultural shock at the end of liberalization, when the July ThesesJuly Theses
The July Theses is a name commonly given to a speech delivered by Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu on July 6, 1971, before the Executive Committee of the Romanian Communist Party...
introduced Sino
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
-North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
n-style state control. As noted by critic Marius Chivu, Florian's opposition to the communist regime led him into "the great quad of folk protest singers
Protest song
A protest song is a song which is associated with a movement for social change and hence part of the broader category of topical songs . It may be folk, classical, or commercial in genre...
", with Nicu Vladimir, Valeriu Sterian
Valeriu Sterian
Valeriu Sterian was a Romanian folk and rock musician.-Studies:He studied at the University of Bucharest and obtained a BA in psychology.-Musical activity:...
and Horia Stoicanu. For a while, he was a presence at Cenaclul Flacăra, the folk-singing club organized with communist approval. The singer later stated that he was one of the club's founding members, together with poet Adrian Păunescu
Adrian Paunescu
Adrian Păunescu was a Romanian poet, journalist, and politician. Though criticised for praising dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, Păunescu was called "Romania's most famous poet" in a Associated Press story, quoted by the New York Times.-Life:Born in Copăceni, Bălţi County, in what is now the Republic...
, his colleague at Luceafărul, and that he intended to create "a movement to bring together people interested in poetry and music."
In the end, Florian was thrown out for performing songs punctuated with double entendre
Double entendre
A double entendre or adianoeta is a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Often the first meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: often risqué or ironic....
s. Literary critic and folk music fan Dan C. Mihăilescu suggests that these disagreements reflected a larger cultural conflict. He describes Florian, Marcela Saftiuc, Sterian and Zaharia as fundamentally different from the "Maoist
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
" agenda of Romanian communism, and notes that they also became irreconcilable with Păunescu when the latter committed himself to "embarrassing" indoctrination. Reflecting back on his childhood attendance of Cenaclul, writer-politician Varujan Vosganian
Varujan Vosganian
Varujan Vosganian is a Romanian politician, economist, essayist and poet. A member of the National Liberal Party, Vosganian was Romania's Minister of Economy and Commerce in the Tăriceanu cabinet.-Biography:...
noted a similar issue: "I liked Marcela Saftiuc, [...] Mircea Florian, Doru Stănculescu and many others, I did not like it when we were made to stand up clapping and chanting." As asserted by literary critic Ion Bogdan Lefter, "Few authentic artists of the [folk] genre could prevent its rapid absorption into the melodious, lyricaloid and often jingoistic kitsch promoted by the propagandistic Cenaclul Flacăra." Florian's account mentions the "controlled diversions" of such ventures, adding that the "real folk" of the 1970s was lost to indoctrination and commercialization.
Florian recalls that his lyrics, and especially his long-haired looks, were a growing cause for irritation among communist censors
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
, and that as a consequence he devised various "strategies" for getting his message across to the public. He also explained: "In general the text that was very trenchant stood no chance—they would pick you up then and there and out you were [...]. But everybody would metaphorize. One would get what it was all about from the text, but the most important bit was the state of mind, the attitude sent out by the author, by the artist... [...] Very often [my] message was a simple one: I refused enrollment, I refused that social formula, I would not let myself be lied to and I would let the public know that, I called for 'general cleanup' actions, I also expressed my position on the fact that freedom had been taken away from me. That was fundamental."
Florian and Zaharia had a friendly relationship with writer Dorin Tudoran
Dorin Tudoran
Dorin Tudoran is a Romanian poet, essayist, journalist, and dissident. A resident of the United States since 1985, he has authored more than fifteen books of poetry, essays, and interviews.-Early life:...
, who was in the process of becoming an outspoken dissident
Dissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
. According to Tudoran, it was around 1974 when the three of them first became aware that agents of the Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
secret police were keeping them under surveillance. Ceata member Andrei Oişteanu, who made his career in religious studies, also noted that the Securitate was at the time closing in on himself and other non-conformists or hippies.
Florian's solo music was included on the 1973 split EP
Split album
A split album is a music album which includes tracks by two or more separate artists. There have been singles and EPs released in the same nature, which can be referred to as split singles and split EPs respectively...
Muzică folk ("Folk Music"), which he shared with Saftiuc, then, in 1975, on the single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
Pădure liniştitoare/La făgădău' de piatră/Cu pleoapa de argint ("Quieting Forest/At the Stone Tavern/With the Silver Eyelid"). The songs, recorded with Chifiriuc, Reininger and Căciulă, were based on texts written by Florian or selected from Romanian folklore, particularly hajduk
Hajduk
Hajduk is a term most commonly referring to outlaws, highwaymen or freedom fighters in the Balkans, Central- and Eastern Europe....
songs. The instrumental arrangement comprised a wide assortment of instruments: acoustic guitar
Acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
, flute, drum kit, cobza, jaw harp, idiophone
Idiophone
An idiophone is any musical instrument which creates sound primarily by way of the instrument's vibrating, without the use of strings or membranes. It is the first of the four main divisions in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification...
s (all played by Florian himself), alongside electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
, tabla, conga
Conga
The conga, or more properly the tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed Cuban drum with African antecedents. It is thought to be derived from the Makuta drums or similar drums associated with Afro-Cubans of Central African descent. A person who plays conga is called a conguero...
, electric piano
Electric piano
An electric piano is an electric musical instrument.Electric pianos produce sounds mechanically and the sounds are turned into electrical signals by pickups. Unlike a synthesizer, the electric piano is not an electronic instrument, but electro-mechanical. The earliest electric pianos were invented...
, celesta
Celesta
The celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...
, synthesizer
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
and electronic organ
Electronic organ
An electronic organ is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally, it was designed to imitate the sound of pipe organs, theatre organs, band sounds, or orchestral sounds....
. Mihai Plămădeală describes the result as a unique project in Romanian music
Music of Romania
Romania is a European country with a multicultural music environment which includes active ethnic music scenes. Romania also has thriving scenes in the fields of pop music, hip hop, heavy metal and rock and roll...
: "Nothing of what can be listened to or heard on it finds a direct correspondent in anything that anyone, anywhere, has achieved." He notes Florian's fusion of "hippie culture", "mantra
Mantra
A mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of "creating transformation"...
" singing and the "maximal liberty of progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
". Reputedly, Florian remains the first Romanian singer to have employed the synthesizer in one of their works.
Florian continued with live performances, including the concert of Orăştioara de Sus
Orastioara de Sus
Orăştioara de Sus is a commune in Hunedoara County, Romania. It is composed of eight villages: Bucium, Costeşti, Costeşti-Deal, Grădiştea de Munte, Ludeştii de Jos, Ludeştii de Sus, Ocolişu Mic and Orăştioara de Sus....
, where he went on stage alongside Transsylvania Phoenix and the traditional drummers of Brăneşti
Faget
Făget is a town in Timiş County, Banat, western Romania, with a population of about 7,500. Its name literally means "beech tree forest" in Romanian...
, performing what Florian calls "unfiltered, clean, unprocessed music." Like Nicu Vladimir, he gave concerts at the "fires on the beach" gatherings in the remote Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
resort of 2 Mai
2 Mai
2 Mai is a village in Limanu commune, Constanţa County, Romania, and a small resort on the shore of the Black Sea, between Mangalia and Vama Veche....
, a hippie hotspot, before these events were banned on grounds of border security. He also provided the music to Oişteanu's play Vlacea, regele nebun ("Mad King Vlacea"), performed on tour by the Ţăndărică Theater, and reportedly poking fun at the authoritarian
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
leader Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
. Florian later made an appearance as actor-pupeteer and multi-instrumentalist performer in Till Eulenspiegel
Till Eulenspiegel
Till Eulenspiegel was an impudent trickster figure originating in Middle Low German folklore. His tales were disseminated in popular printed editions narrating a string of lightly connected episodes that outlined his picaresque career, primarily in Germany, the Low Countries and France...
, directed by Cătălina Buzoianu for Ţăndărică. As he recalls, this involved him playing some 30 or 40 instruments in quick succession, from celesta, sackbut
Sackbut
The sackbut is a trombone from the Renaissance and Baroque eras, i.e., a musical instrument in the brass family similar to the trumpet except characterised by a telescopic slide with which the player varies the length of the tube to change pitches, thus allowing them to obtain chromaticism, as...
and melodica
Melodica
The melodica, also known as the "blow-organ" or "key-flute", is a free-reed instrument similar to the melodeon and harmonica. It has a musical keyboard on top, and is played by blowing air through a mouthpiece that fits into a hole in the side of the instrument. Pressing a key opens a hole,...
to guitar; Florian does not consider himself a consummate player of all such instruments: "it's like painting and needing some yellow just for a tiny highlight. You can't say you've painted in yellow."
Pădure... was followed in 1977 by another single, Fîntîna ("The Well"). An electronic rock product, it included a collaboration with rock drummer Radu Răducanu. In 1979, Florian was included on a compilation album, also titled Muzică folk. However, most of the music he composed and produced at that stage went unrecorded, or was only preserved on fidelipac
Fidelipac
The Fidelipac, commonly known as an NAB cartridge or simply cart, is a magnetic tape sound recording format, used for radio broadcasting for playback of material over the air such as radio commercials, jingles, station identifications, and music. Fidelipac is the official name of this industry...
. As noted by his former promoter Florin Silviu Ursulescu, who was working for the Radio Company
Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company
The Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company , informally referred to as Radio Romania , is the public radio broadcaster in Romania. It operates four national radio channels, and, under the Radio România Regional umbrella, eleven regional radio stations. The four national radio channels are: Radio...
, his supervisors had simply banned some of Florian's songs for containing "inane lyrics".
Minimalism and New Wave
Over the following period, Florian became more interested in electronic musicElectronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, familiarizing himself with new technologies while working as an engineer for the Computer Science Institute, Bucharest. He also had access to the recordings kept in the Radu Stan collection at the State Central Library
National Library of Romania
Biblioteca Naţională a României is the National Library of Romania. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in Romania.-History:...
. According to his own reference system, this inaugurated a "green period". Beyond the early pop influences, Florian was increasingly inspired by the classics of electronic, aleatoric
Aleatoric music
Aleatoric music is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer...
or minimal music: Léon Theremin
Léon Theremin
Léon Theremin was a Russian and Soviet inventor. He is most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments. He is also the inventor of interlace, a technique of improving the picture quality of a video signal, widely used in video and television technology...
, Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician of the 20th century. His innovative work in both the sciences —particularly communications and acoustics— and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end...
, Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
, Morton Subotnick
Morton Subotnick
Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch...
, Lejaren Hiller
Lejaren Hiller
Lejaren Arthur Hiller was an American composer. In 1957 he collaborated on the first significant computer music composition, Illiac Suite, with Leonard Issacson. It was his fourth string quartet. In 1958 he founded the Experimental Music Studio at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign...
, Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
, Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
, Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
.
With collaborators Belu Alexandru and Valentin Antonescu, he tested minimalist recordings on magnetic tape
Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
, glued into various sequences. Florian also composed and, with the help of Transsylvania Phoenix drummer Costin Petrescu
Costin Petrescu
Costin Petrescu is a Romanian musician , born in Bucharest in 1949. He played with two Romanian rock bands of the 60s and 70s': Olimpic '64 and Phoenix . He is a graduate of the Architecture Institute and he works today as an architect in Paris...
, recorded the experimental rock
Experimental rock
Experimental rock or avant-garde rock is a type of music based on rock which experiments with the basic elements of the genre, or which pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique....
song Nicodim şi toaca ascunsă ("Nicodim and the Hidden Semantron
Semantron
The semantron or semanterion , also called a xylon is a percussion instrument used in monasteries to summon monks to prayer or at the start of a procession.-Origins and use:...
"), which was visually supported by Florian's performance art and reworked on a music sequencer
Music sequencer
The music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...
. The musical pieces were played at Florian's exhibits, including his contribution to the major multimaedia show Scrierea ("Writing"), or in special "new music" concerts held in classical concert halls such as the Romanian Atheneum. His other activity as a multimedia artist was in biomusic
Biomusic
Biomusic is a form of experimental music which deals with sounds created or performed by non-humans. The definition is also sometimes extended to included sounds made by humans in a directly biological way...
: in 1976, Kalinderu Palace hosted his live study, Corpul uman ("The Human Body"), during which he mixed the body resonance of one friend into a musical arrangement.
In reference to this phase, Lefter includes Florian among the young men who reached out of the folk and hippie scenes and into the field of multimedia experiments, in what was largely an attempt to circumvent the official art of communism. This "pre-postmodern
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
" transition, Lefter notes, was also effected by the Sfinx
Sfinx (band)
Sfinx was one of the most appreciated Romanian rock acts in the 1970s, along with Phoenix.-The early years :The band was formed in 1963, in Bucharest. It was singer and guitarist Octav Zemlicka who had the idea to start the band...
, Transsylvania Phoenix, "the weird" Dorin Zaharia and Nicu Vladimir, but Florian's work remained the "most interesting". Florian, who first began introducing himself as an "InterMedia artist
Intermedia
Intermedia was a concept employed in the mid-sixties by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres that became prevalent in the 1960s. Thus, the areas such as those between drawing and poetry, or between painting...
" during the 1970s, collaborated with draftsman Anton Petraşincu, who created the first opaque projections
Opaque projector
The opaque projector, epidioscope, epidiascope or episcope is a device which displays opaque materials by shining a bright lamp onto the object from above. A system of mirrors, prisms and/or imaging lenses is used to focus an image of the material onto a viewing screen...
to go with Florian's live singing.
By 1977, Florian's interest in electronic musical instrument
Electronic musical instrument
An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces its sounds using electronics. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical audio signal that ultimately drives a loudspeaker....
s, particularly synthesizers, created splits within Ceata Melopoică, which was also affected by some of its members' decisions to emigrate. In the early 1980s, Florian was again interested in setting up a classic rock band, but also sought to preserve the trademark combination of folklore and electronics. He switched to New Wave music
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
, with his new band Florian din Transilvania; among his New Wave and electronic influences, Florian called to mind David Byrne
David Byrne
David Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
, Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
and Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. The group's original line-up consisted of Dave Gahan , Martin Gore , Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke...
. Reflecting back on this time, he spoke of Sfinx's Dan Andrei Aldea
Dan Andrei Aldea
Dan Andrei Aldea is a Romanian rock multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, best known for his work with the band Sfinx, but also for his solo career....
as the "saint" of Romanian electronic music, one "more important than anyone else" on this scene.
The group only released one album, the 1986 vinyl-edition
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
Tainicul vîrtej ("The Secret Swirl"), with the state-run recording company Electrecord
Electrecord
Electrecord is a Romanian record label founded in 1932. It served as the only record label in Communist Romania. It was then transformed into the national recording company, following the centralization-oriented socialist doctrine...
. The lyricist and composer Florian did most of the vocals, and played cobza, guitar and synthesizer. The other members of the team came from various Romanian rock and pop acts: Andronescu was on keyboards, Doru Căplescu on additional synthesizer, Dan Cimpoieru on second guitar, Doru Istudor on drums, Zsolt Kerestely on electronic drum
Electronic drum
An electronic drum is an electronic synthesizer which mimics an acoustic drum kit.The electronic drum usually consists of a set of pads mounted on a stand in a disposition similar to an acoustic drum kit. The pads are discs with a rubber or cloth-like coating. Each pad has a sensor which generates...
s, with Mircea Baniciu
Mircea Baniciu
Mircea Baniciu is a Romanian musician. He plays with the bands Transsylvania Phoenix and Pasărea Colibri. While playing with Phoenix, he also earned a BA in architecture.Mircea Baniciu is now married and has two children.- Discography :...
providing backing vocals and Mihaela Hoaja the violin parts. Reportedly, the record went through the hands of official censors before being released, and Florian's song Madama Butterfly had to be discarded, leaving space for other songs such as Nunta lui Harap Alb ("Harap Alb
Harap Alb
"Harap Alb" or "Harap-Alb" , known in full as Povestea lui Harap Alb , is a Romanian-language fairy tale. Based on traditional themes found in Romanian folklore, it was recorded and reworked in 1877 by writer Ion Creangă, becoming one of his main contributions to fantasy and Romanian literature...
's Wedding"). The song AS ("Ace"), also included on the album, was altogether banned after the Electrecord producers picked up on its political hints.
Plămădeală argues that Tainicul vîrtej follows its composer's "metaphysical" inclination, being notable for its "shock element", while journalist and musician Maria Balabaş describes the record as "psychedelic" with an "electronic sound". According to its author, it should also be seen as "intellectualized" and "elitist", but not in fact a "hiatus" in his artistic development. Florian additionally argued that, from "stupor", the public's reaction to his compositions became "very positive, even enthusiastic."
Although short-lived, the act became known on the underground scene for both its music an the conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
of its live performances, drawing comparisons with Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream
Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...
, Popol Vuh
Popol Vuh (German band)
Popol Vuh was a German electronic avantgarde band, in the mainstream-media so called Krautrock, founded by pianist and keyboardist Florian Fricke in 1969 together with Holger Trülzsch and Frank Fiedler...
and the Third Ear Band
Third Ear Band
Third Ear Band evolved within the London alternative and free-music scene of the mid 1960s.-History:Members came from The Giant Sun Trolley and The People Band to create an improvised music drawing on Eastern raga forms, European folk, experimental and medieval influences...
; during such events, Florian would appear dressed up in a hazmat suit
Hazmat suit
A hazmat suit is a garment worn as protection from hazardous materials or substances. A hazmat suit is generally combined with breathing apparatus for protection and may be used by firefighters, emergency personnel responding to toxic spills, researchers, specialists cleaning up contaminated...
. Florian and his collaborators toured the country, and were awarded the first prize at the Constelaţii rock event in Râmnicu Vâlcea
Râmnicu Vâlcea
Râmnicu Vâlcea is the capital city of Vâlcea County, Romania .-Geography and climate:Râmnicu Vâlcea is situated in the central-south area of Romania...
. Tainicul vîrtej also led to shows at various underground venues, from Stelian Tănase
Stelian Tanase
Stelian Tănase is a Romanian writer, historian, journalist, political analyst, and talk show host. Having briefly engaged in politics during the early 1990s, after the fall of the Communist regime, he has remained a leading figure of the Romanian civil society.A founding member of both the Group...
's rock evenings at the Revue Theater to the State Jewish Theater
State Jewish Theater (Romania)
Teatrul Evreiesc de Stat in Bucharest, Romania is a theater specializing in Jewish-related plays. Its contemporary repertoire includes plays by Jewish authors, plays on Jewish topics, and plays in Yiddish...
stage and Arenele Romane.
The artist was several times invited to exhibit his work outside Romania, and even beyond the Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
, receiving a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service
German Academic Exchange Service
The German Academic Exchange Service or DAAD is the largest German support organisation in the field of international academic co-operation....
and attending the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, where he worked under Stockhausen's supervision. In 1982, he was among those collaborating with the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk
Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk
Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk was the organization responsible for public broadcasting in the German Länder of Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia from 22 September 1945 until 31 December 1955. Until 1954, it was also responsible for broadcasting in West Berlin...
studio of electronic music, in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
. His concerts abroad were probably the reason why his Tainicul vîrtej was never on general release: the communist government allegedly presumed that he would not be returning, and tried to prevent the public from glorifying his departure. Florian accuses Electrecord of having mismanaged the distribution, by not printing sufficient copies and by oversupplying shops located outside Bucharest.
Defection and return
Mircea Florian continued his work in other media, joining with the SubReal performance artists, with whom he staged a 1986 event in the city of SibiuSibiu
Sibiu is a city in Transylvania, Romania with a population of 154,548. Located some 282 km north-west of Bucharest, the city straddles the Cibin River, a tributary of the river Olt...
. He notes having been increasingly frustrated by censorship, which prevented him from participating in some exhibits and concerts, and eventually pondering about leaving the country.
After receiving a visa for the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, where he had been invited to present his sound installation
Sound installation
Sound installation is an intermedia and time based art form. It is an expansion of an art installation in the sense that it includes the sound element and therefore the time element...
s, he defected and later settled down in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. He changed residence between the cities of North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia
North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...
: Mettmann
Mettmann
Mettmann is a Rhenish town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the administrative centre of the district of Mettmann, Germany's most densely populated rural district...
, Wuppertal
Wuppertal
Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in and around the Wupper river valley, and is situated east of the city of Düsseldorf and south of the Ruhr area. With a population of approximately 350,000, it is the largest city in the Bergisches Land...
, Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
. He decided not to work as a musician, because he could only conceive of singing in his native Romanian language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
.
Florian focused on his work as an artist and computer scientist. Since the late 1980s he has been combining visual arts with music to create sound sculpture
Sound sculpture
Sound sculpture is an intermedia and time based art form in which sculpture or any kind of art object produces sound, or the reverse...
s, sound installation
Sound installation
Sound installation is an intermedia and time based art form. It is an expansion of an art installation in the sense that it includes the sound element and therefore the time element...
s, and collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
s. By 2009, his work had received some 21 awards, including, alongside Romanian ones, German, British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese distinctions. He was present with his work at the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
of 1999, and managed a Romanian festival in Wuppertal.
In the decades after the Romanian Revolution of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, Florian has resumed his collaboration with Romanian artists, including Nicu Covaci
Nicu Covaci
Nicolae Covaci is a Romanian painter, music composer, best known as the leader of Romanian Rock and cult band Phoenix, for which he is vocalist and guitar player, with more than 40 years of activity.-Biography:...
: in 1992, he wrote the title song on Covaci's "Symphoenix" album Timişoara. Also in 1992, he participated in setting up Deutsch-Rumänische Kulturbegegnungen ("German-Romanian Cultural Meetings", or DeR KuB), a cultural society dedicated to cooperation between artists; its Romanian branch is the Mircea Florian Association. Two years later, some of his work was reissued on the Club A compilation. Florian also contributed the preface to Vlad Arghir's book, the first Romanian-language monograph on Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
, published in Germany by Pont Kiadó.
Florian and DeR KuB have organized several events reuniting Romanian folkloric ensembles from Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
with bands representing the various traditions of minority groups in Romania
Minorities of Romania
Officially, 10.5% of Romania's population is represented by minorities . The principal minorities in Romania are Hungarians and Roma people, with a declining German population and smaller numbers of Poles in Bucovina...
. He personally spent a week in Satu Mare Prison, coaching the detainees' own musical project, and created portrait projection shows in Satu Mare and Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...
. In addition to opening for Phoenix and Covaci at reunion concerts in 2003, Florian has performed with the Shukar Collective
Shukar Collective
Shukar Collective is a Romanian musical group which fuses traditional Romany|Romanes and electronic music. It is especially known for using traditional rhythms employed by the Ursari section of the Roma minority with contemporary electronic sampling...
project, which mixes electronic music with Romani tradition. He and Shukar's DJ Vasile remixed several Ursari
Ursari
The Ursari or Richinara are the traditionally-nomad occupational group of animal trainers among the Roma people.An endogamous category originally drawing the bulk of its income from busking performances in which they used brown bears...
renditions of old songs, "some five out of eleven" entries on the Collective's album, and including the single Anna e Manole. He intended to continue work with this group, but it disbanded following lead singer Tamango's illness.
Florian's performance art was showcased in exhibits at the National Theater Bucharest, the International Center for Contemporary Art, the Cluj-Napoca Techical College
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
The Technical University of Cluj-Napoca , Cluj-Napoca, Romania, is the second largest university in the city. The university has seven faculties, all in Romanian, and two in English.- Faculties :...
etc. In addition, he was visiting scholar
Visiting scholar
In the world of academia, a visiting scholar or visiting academic is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university, where he or she is projected to teach , lecture , or perform research on a topic the visitor is valued for...
at the Caragiale Academy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography
Caragiale Academy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography
The Caragiale University of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography is a public university in Bucharest, Romania, founded in 1954....
and Babeş-Bolyai University
Babes-Bolyai University
The Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca is an university in Romania. With almost 50,000 students, the university offers 105 specialisations, of which there are 105 in Romanian, 67 in Hungarian, 17 in German, and 5 in English...
. Florian was also invited to sing at the Stufstock
Stufstock
Stufstock is a music festival that has taken place each year since 2003 in Vama Veche, Dobrogea, Romania, to protest against what some people may consider bad quality music Stufstock (Stuf - Romanian for reed - and stock from Woodstock) is a music festival that has taken place each year since 2003...
event of Vama Veche
Vama Veche
Vama Veche is a village in Romania on the Black Sea coast, near the border with Bulgaria, at 28.57 E longitude, 43.75 N latitude. It is part of the commune of Limanu and in 2002, it had a population of 178....
, in 2004, but refused to perform on stage, and gave an impromptu concert on one of the side alleys, in hopes of addressing only his real fans. Florian was later a guest at Festivalul Plai
Festivalul Plai
Festivalul Plai is a music festival taking place annually in Timişoara, Romania. The festival is hosted by Muzeul Satului Bănăţean, an outdoors ethnographic museum...
, a multicultural music event held in Timişoara
Timisoara
Timișoara is the capital city of Timiș County, in western Romania. One of the largest Romanian cities, with an estimated population of 311,586 inhabitants , and considered the informal capital city of the historical region of Banat, Timișoara is the main social, economic and cultural center in the...
city. He also returned to attend the Gărâna Jazz Festival
Gărâna Jazz Festival
Gărâna Jazz Festival is a music festival taking place annually in Gărâna, Romania.-2009 lineup:17 July Nik Bärtsch Ronin Terje Rypdal Group Jazz de Necaz Andrzej Jagodzinski Trio18 July ...
, setting up his own world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
festival project, in Certeze
Certeze
Certeze is a commune of 5,670 inhabitants situated in Satu Mare County, Romania. It is composed of three villages: Certeze, Huta-Certeze and Moişeni ....
. His presences at Folk You! in Vama Veche were included on the festival's "best of" compilation for 2007. In January 2008, after polling the Romanian music critics, Sunete magazine ranked Florian the 11th most important musician in the country's pop history.
Later projects
Florian composed the musical score to Ioan Cărmăzan's drama film Margo (2006). Like the film itself, his contribution received strong criticism from film critic Andrei Gorzo: "Margo travels a lot by train, then walks even more, [...] forever accompanied by the chirps, electronic farts and spaghetti westernSpaghetti Western
Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique and much copied film-making style and international box-office success, so named by American critics because most were produced and...
ding-dongs in Mircea Florian's music." Florian was later the composer of music for Alexandru Solomon's political documentary Kapitalism: Our Improved Formula (2010). It was received with interest by film journalist Mihai Fulger, who described Solomon as a "trendsetter", for attaching Florian's original music to animation and archive footage. Florian's contribution was nominated for the Gopo Awards
Gopo Awards
The Gopo Awards are the national Romanian film awards, similar to the Academy Awards , the Goya Awards , or the César Award...
of 2011, in the "Best Original Music in Short Film" category.
He was additionally working with Cătălina Buzoianu, arranging the music to her various productions, including a 2005 version of August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
's Father and a 2008 staging of Mircea Cărtărescu
Mircea Cartarescu
Mircea Cărtărescu is a Romanian poet, novelist and essayist.Born in Bucharest, he graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters, Department of Romanian Language And Literature, in 1980. Between 1980 and 1989 he worked as a Romanian language teacher, then he worked at the Writers'...
's Dream. Theater manager and poet Ion Cocora was impressed by the latter show and its "fairy tale state", describing Florian's music as "a continuous oscillation between the real and the unreal." Theater critic Alice Georgescu also described Florian's music for Dream as "felicitously reusing childish rhymes". The collaborative project was later taken up for the 2009 productions of Matei Vişniec
Matei Visniec
Matei Vişniec is a playwright, poet and journalist born in Romania and now settled in Paris, working as a journalist at Radio France Internationale.He is known especially for his writings in the French language....
's Joan and the Fire and We're Banning Richard III (Bulandra Theater), as well as to the 2010 adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer – July 24, 1991) was a Polish Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978...
's The Magician of Lublin (State Jewish Theater
State Jewish Theater (Romania)
Teatrul Evreiesc de Stat in Bucharest, Romania is a theater specializing in Jewish-related plays. Its contemporary repertoire includes plays by Jewish authors, plays on Jewish topics, and plays in Yiddish...
).
Around 2007, Florian's work in art again centered on magnetic tape, used in collages and sound sculptures. One example is his work The Last Supper, exhibited in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
: it is a combination of three analog recording
Analog recording
Analog recording is a technique used for the recording of analog signals which among many possibilities include audio frequency, analog audio and analog video information for later playback.Analog recording methods store signals as a continual wave in or on the media...
s, on different colors of tape, played in unison. His work in Romania covered graphic art, and he designed the layout to the cultural review aLtitudini. Some of his other projects again bridged avant-garde jazz and literature. Around 2004, he toured with novelist Gheorghe Crăciun, who was promoting his book Pupa Russa. In 2010, he resumed his work with Valery Oisteanu
Valery Oisteanu
Valery Oişteanu is a Soviet-born Romanian and American poet, art critic, essayist, photographer and performance artist, whose style reflects the influence of Dada and Surrealism. Oişteanu is the author of more than a dozen published books of poetry, a book of short fiction, and a book of essays...
, upon the latter's return from the United States. Their mix of Surrealism and electronic music was hosted by the Green Hours pub, in Bucharest.
While experimenting with a new generation of electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
gear (samplers
Sampler (musical instrument)
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
, Ableton Live
Ableton Live
Ableton Live is a loop-based software music sequencer and DAW for Mac OS and Windows by Ableton. The latest major release of Live, Version 8, was released in April 2009. In contrast to many other software sequencers, Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for...
and Max
Max (software)
Max is a visual programming language for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling '74. During its 20-year history, it has been widely used by composers, performers, software designers, researchers, and artists for creating innovative recordings,...
programs, Korg
Korg
is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic musical instruments, audio processors and guitar pedals, recording equipment, and electronic tuners...
adapters etc.), Florian still saw string instruments as his first love, and noted that he had also began playing the guitalele
Guitalele
A guitalele is a guitar-ukulele hybrid, that is, "a 1/4 size" guitar, a cross between a classical guitar and a tenor ukulele. The guitalele combines the portability of a ukulele, due to its small size, with the six single strings and resultant chord possibilities of a classical guitar...
. In February 2011, Florian, DJ Vasile and their new music project, FloriMan, performed live at the Cinema Total, part of the Berlinale festivities
Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival , also called the Berlinale, is one of the world's leading film festivals and most reputable media events. It is held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in West Berlin in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978...
. During this, they mixed electronic music and traditional bucium
Bucium
The bucium is a type of alphorn used by mountain dwellers in Romania. Of Dacian origin, it was used in the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia as signaling devices in military conflicts. The word is derived from Latin bucinum, originally meaning "curved horn", an instrument used by the Romans...
-playing. His past work was also included in the Berlin exhibit When History Comes Knocking: Romanian Art from the 80s and 90s in Close Up.
In June, the Vasile Goldiş West University
Vasile Goldis West University of Arad
„Vasile Goldiș” Western University of Arad is a private research university located in Arad, Romania. It was founded in 1990.Its spiritual patron is Vasile Goldiș, a Romanian politician, member of the Romanian Academy and the ideologist of the Great Union taking place on 1 December 1918...
made Florian a honoris causa doctor. The same year, he returned to Romania with a re-release of Tainicul vîrtej as a Bucharest musical show, part of the Club A Festival, and a personal exhibit at the Bucharest Municipal Art Galleries, Negrele-mi aripi ("Black My Wings"), turned into a film directed by fellow artist Victor Velculescu. It recorded Florian's installations, which comprised brushes, a laptop
Laptop
A laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
, an oscilloscope
Oscilloscope
An oscilloscope is a type of electronic test instrument that allows observation of constantly varying signal voltages, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences using the vertical or 'Y' axis, plotted as a function of time,...
and other instruments, creating the illusion of a winged figure attached to his body. Also in 2011, the alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
act byron
Byron (band)
byron is an alternative rock band formed in 2006 in Bucharest, Romania. Dan Byron, former guest of Agathodaimon and ex-member of Urma and Kumm, initially wanted to start a solo project, but it soon developed into an actual band...
covered one of his Tainicul vîrtej songs on their own album Perfect.