Tens of thousands of pages of sheet music with notes placed neatly on music sheets, which made them stand in the historical southwestern region of Banat from 1680 until the making of Greater Romania salon music in the mansions of yesteryear, and found a temporary place in a personal archive in Munich of the Banat musician Franz Metz, born in Darova.
Organist, musicologist historiographer and conductor, researcher in the field of musical historiography in the Danube space, especially in the historical Banat, one could say about Franz Metz that he is the Romanian with German roots, but also the German with Romanian origins settled in Munich after 1990, who wants to do something for western city of Timisoara, for music.
Franz Metz told AGERPRES that his rich archive of manuscripts, autographs and other musical documents would best find their place in a music museum, in Timisoara, where they could be researched and seen by the public.
"It is an old idea of many musicians from Banat. Knowing that I am in charge of the history of Banat and Timisoara music and I have in Munich a very important archive, the South-East European Music Archive, specialized in the historical Banat, since 2000, three years ago, when I visited Remus Georgescu, he asked me to whom I leave all my manuscripts, works, my records, that I do not trust even the large state institutions and we do not have in Timisoara an adequate place to have them we keep? Then I went to the son of the great composer Eugen Cuteanu, who told me the same thing, that he is older and must give up these values. I've also discussed the problem with Professor Damian Vulpe, with other families of musicians, with Peter Oschanitzky. We know that in Timisoara there was in the 90's a small museum of music, of Cornel Suboni, in Lugoj we had the House of Music, but it no longer exists, in Sannicolau Mare there is also the Bartok Bela Collection, inside the Nako Castle, and gradually a valuable, very interesting thematic has accumulated. In Timisoara, several families of famous musicians worked, such as Novacek, Schwach," says composer Franz Metz.
The musician recalled that Timisoara in today's Romania used to be the most important center for making musical instruments: here were built violins, wind instruments, pianos, organs, harpsichords.
Metz says he was contacted by many people whose families emigrated in the 70s-80s, but especially after the 90's, with "the notes of the grandfather or the chaplain from the village or the city" and "gave me packages with musical notes of the grandparents. I took documents from 20-30 musical personalities, families from Israel, Austria, Germany. Thus, this enormous archive in Germany was formed, which became inconspicuous in order to preserve everything. There are over 70,000 musical autograph documents, from 1680, taken over from before the liberation from the Ottoman occupation, but also from the XVIII-XIX centuries," Metz reveals.
Franz Metz is driven by a creed: music begins where words have no place. It is a specific fact of Banat.
"In 1846, a teacher from Timisoara published a book of Banat songs, Banater Liederbuch, in five languages: Romanian, Serbian, Bohemian, German and Hungarian. And that's the turn for a Romanian song. It is typical of Timisoara. No one gave him orders to publish something like that. Visiting or attending the breweries in Timisoara, in the evening, he noticed that at a neighbouring table people begin to sing drunken people songs, the Serbs. But the others do not understand the text, and in 10 minutes they begin to sing raising glass songs in Hungarian. The idea of publishing Banater Liederbuch in a common language of music was born. Something pragmatic: let's feel good and understand the neighbour's raising glass song. It's simple things, human things, and that's always been the spirit of Timisoara, because that's how we feel, that's how we want it to be and that's how it has to be, not because someone imposes on us. That spirit was kept in Timisoara for many centuries, until today and I hope that it has not yet been lost," the musician says.
In his approach, Franz Metz recently held, in Timisoara, a bilingual Romanian-German conference dubbed "Timisoara in the History of Universal Music", in which he spoke about this topic, highlighting through piano performances, together with the PhD student conductor of the Faculty of Music of the West University of Timisoara, Andreas Schein, the atmosphere in the musical soirees of yesteryear, from the Banat salons.
In the conference held in Timisoara, Franz Metz presented premises for an exposition of the musical values of the city in a future Museum of Music or the House of Music, since the musical history of Timisoara and the inhabitants of this metropolis would deserve such an institution.AGERPRES
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