Valentina Sandu-Dediu, rector of the New Europe College in Bucharest, Prof. Dr. at the National University of Music in Bucharest, became a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy. The respected musicologist talked to Ioana Țintea about the importance of this acknowledgement.

Mrs. Valentina Sandu-Dediu, you were chosen to be a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy's arts, architecture and audiovisual department. How did you take these news and what does this title mean for you?

I'm honored and grateful that the Romanian Academy's general assembly voted with a majority that I be accepted as a corresponding member. In fact, my gratitude goes to the National University of Music in Bucharest for being the institution that made this proposal. Diana Moș, the rector, and Olguța Lupu, the dean, were the ones who came up with this proposal. I owe this proposal in equal measure to Adrian Iorgulescu too, a corresponding member of the Academy and member of the arts department. MY candidacy had to be supported by someone from the inside, if possible.

You're a pillar of Romanian musicology. Do you think this acknowledgement also implicitly serves as validation of Romanian musicology as its own research field?

I dearly hope so, because I've always tried to promote this idea because we're aware that we're researching a small niche. Even our own musician and composer friends look at us with suspicion sometimes, or at least at music critics, sometimes rightfully, but still, if someone asked me if we need musicology, I'd answer that we do, even if it seems like other disciplines are much more necessary in our times. I hope that any public gesture can bring at least a little- let's not dream big- recognition for this discipline.

What does it mean to be a musicologist in Romania today and how has this job changed with time?

We're a small collective, but I believe that today it's quite strong and much better represented on an international level than we were before. Of course, the reasons are objective and they're largely about context, not necessarily our quality. Generally, if we refer to musicology as a research field, not musical criticism or radio and TV hosts, who are as important, because they're the ones who disseminate information to the world, if we're talking about musicology research, it's associated with universities or research centres. So, there are people who teach, who read, who work, research and are up to date with everything that's happening in music and musicology worldwide, and whose role is to communicate matters of general interest to the rest of society, such as learning and understanding our recent history better. To understand that we need to read any printed work with a critical eye, especially ones from the communist period, when censorship was strong. The ideology forced musicologists, as well as every other representative of humanities studies, to adopt a certain ideological and aesthetic stance, and this stance often deformed historical reality. When you read about how Johann Sebastian Bach was fighting the feudal, mystical society and all his works are realistic and atheist, you can't take this information without a grain of salt, even though it's from a book that was translated in Romanian and still exists in our libraries. We need to reflect, and younger generations need to learn what a totalitarian society like communism was for us all and what deep marks it left, that you can still see in society today. Of course that musicology could work closer with schools, and when I say "school" I mean primary and secondary education, but anything can be improved.

What are the greatest challenges of contemporary Romanian musicology?

The first would be finding more youths interested in musicology. And when I say this I mostly mean young people who want this profession, but also our musician colleagues, who should see more of what we do. We're sure we need to be there, in the musical scene, to go to concerts, to understand the contemporary composing style, etc. , but perhaps we're also waiting for our colleagues to read our studies, articles, or books. For me, what's important is, as I said, to find serious young colleagues with a passion for this craft. I've been very lucky so far. I have a few former PhD students, about 10 brilliant young people of slightly different ages. So I'd say the future is secured for now.

You've published many specialty articles and books over time. How does the topic of a musicology book come into being? Given that it involves extensive documentation, and a lot of time and energy, I imagine it must be a topic you're passionate about. What is it like for you?

That's true. That's what I've always done, this is also how I do it in class with my students. You need to like a topic very much. You need to have ideas. Ideas might even come from others, but ideas generally only come if you read a lot. They won't come at all, not in composing, or in musicology, or probably not even when playing an instrument, if you don't listen to and read a lot of music. You need to be truly passionate about a topic, because a book takes a minimum of three years to write, if not five. Studies, articles, maybe, but sometimes they're also difficult to write, because as you said, it involves a lot of thorough research. Depending on the topic you'd read and analyze scores, and maybe you won't only need to read about music, but also look into other subjects, like I was saying earlier, to see what's happening in other fields of study. So there's a lot of work to be done and it wouldn't be a bad thing if the musicologist also had literary talent, to be able to write well.