(b Bucharest, 13/25 Aug 1893; d Geneva, 20 Dec 1958). Romanian ethnomusicologist, active in France. He became a naturalized French citizen in 1956. He studied music in Lausanne, then with Gédalge at the Paris Conservatoire (1912–14) and later in Romania. Initially he worked as a composer and music critic, publishing some piano pieces in Lausanne (1911), followed by other works in Paris and Bucharest, but he soon turned to the study of musical folklore; he served as professor of music history and aesthetics at the Académie Royale de Musique (appointed 1921) and taught at the Académie de Musique Religieuse de la Sainte Patriarchie (1929–35). From 1926 he was secretary-general of the Society of Romanian Composers and in 1928 founded and organized its folklore archives, which later became the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore. With a team of sociologists he did fieldwork in several Romanian provinces (1929–32). In 1938 he was appointed cultural adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Romania and later worked in Berne (1943–6) as attaché to the Romanian Legation; with Eugène Pittard, director of the Museum of Ethnography, he founded the Archives Internationales de Musique Populaire (AIMP) in Geneva (1944). On settling in Paris (1948) he became a member of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and in this capacity worked in the ethnomusicology department of the Musée de l'Homme and at the Sorbonne Institute of Musicology.
Brăiloiu was one of the leading ethnomusicologists of his generation. All his work was inspired by the conviction that music in the oral tradition should be considered as being governed by a system, and that the principal task of the ethnomusicologist is to define this system, possible only through an adequate method of analysis. These ideas led to his important methodological, critical and theoretical writings. His principles of the ‘synoptic’ transcription of music (‘Schiţa unei metode de folklore muzical’, 1931) are an important contribution to ethnomusicological method and have been widely applied in Romania and France. His theories about the pentatonic system (‘Sur une mélodie russe’, 1953), rhythm in children's songs (‘Le rythme enfantin’, 1954), the aksak rhythm and Romanian popular sung verse are each fundamental developments in the history of ethnomusicology. However, he was not only a theoretician. Like Bartók, he did extensive fieldwork, and his collections of Romanian folksongs (particularly those for funerals, marriages and Christmas) are models of ethnomusicological description.
Brăiloiu was greatly concerned with the production of records, convinced that whatever the quality of the musical transcription, nothing could replace sound recording. He was responsible for 33 records published by the Society of Romanian Composers (Bucharest, 1930–43), 19 for the Archives Internationales de Musique Populaire (Geneva, 1948–9), four for the Musée de l'Homme (Paris, 1950) and 40 published by UNESCO and the Archives Internationales de Musique Populaire in the Collection Universelle de Musique Populaire Enregistrée (Paris and Geneva, 1951–8). A complete re-edition of these 40 records was published on a set of six LPs by the Musée d'Ethnographie of Geneva in 1984 with the original accompanying texts in French and English, an introduction by Laurent Aubert and a study of Brăiloiu's work by J.-J. Nattiez. Brăiloiu's collection of ‘Musique populaire suisse’ was similarly reissued in 1986 on two LPs. Earlier records of Romanian popular music, made between 1930 and 1940, were transferred on to three CDs in 1988 by the Archives Internationales de Musique Populaire of Geneva, with a foreword by Aubert and commentaries by Esperanţa Rădulescu. Thus, the important part of Brăiloiu's historical work as a collector is more readily available.
E. Comişel, ed. and trans.: C. Brăiloiu: Opere, i–v (Bucharest, 1967–81) [O]
ed. G. Rouget, with foreword: Problèmes d’ethnomusicologie (Geneva, 1973/R; Eng. trans., 1984) [PE]
‘Schiţa unei metode de folklore muzical’, Boabe de grîu, ii/4 (1931), 204–19; Eng. trans. as ‘Outline of Method of Musical Folklore’, EthM, xiv (1970), 389–417 [PE]
Despre bocetul dela Drăguş/Note sur la plainte funèbre du village de Drăguş (district de Făgăraş) (Bucharest, 1932)
Patru muzicanti francezi: Fauré–Duparc–Debussy–Ravel [Four French musicians] (Bucharest, 1935)
‘Ale mortului’ din Gorj [‘About the dead’ in Gorj] (Bucharest, 1936)
with H.H. Stahl: Vicleiui dîn Targu-Jiu [Nativity rites in Targu-Jiu] (Bucharest, 1936)
‘Bocete din Oaş’ [Mourning-chants in Oaş], Grai si suflet, vii (Bucharest, 1938), 1–90
Nunta la Feleag [Wedding at Feleag] (Bucharest, 1938)
Nunta in Someş [Wedding in Someş] (Bucharest, 1941)
‘A román népzene’ [Popular Romanian music], Emlékkönyv Kodály Zoltán hatvanadik születésnapjára, ed. B. Gunda (Budapest, 1943), 300–07
Poeziile soldatului Tomut din razboiul 1914–1918 [War poetry of the soldier Tomut] (Bucharest, 1944)
Sur une ballade roumaine (la Mioritza) (Geneva, 1946) [PE]
‘Béla Bartók folkloriste’, SMz, lxxxviii (1948), 92–4
‘Le giusto syllabique: un système rythmique propre à la musique populaire roumaine’, Polyphonie, ii (1948), 26–57 [PE; O, i]; also in AnM, vii (1952), 117–58, 153–94
‘Le folklore musical’, Musica aeterna (Zürich, 1949), 277–332 [PE; O, ii]
‘Le rythme aksak’, RdM, xxx (1951), 71–108 [PE; O, i]
‘Sur une mélodie russe’, Musique russe, ed. P. Souvtchinsky, ii (Paris, 1953), 329–91 [PE; O, i]
‘Elargissement de la sensibilité musicale devant les musiques folkloriques et extra-occidentales’, Domaine musical, i (1954), 94–101 [O, ii]
‘Le rythme enfantin: notions liminaires’, [Ethnomusicologie I]: Wégimont [I] 1954, 64–96 [PE; O, i]
‘Un type mélodique méditerranéen’, ‘Melodie, ritmi, strumenti e simboli delle danze mediterranee’, Musiche popolari mediterranee …: Palermo 1954, 59–60, 101–13
‘Le vers populaire roumain chanté’, Revue des études roumaines, ii (1954), 7–74 [PE; O, i]
‘Un problème de tonalité: la métabole pentatonique’, Mélanges d'histoire et d'esthétique musicales, offerts à Paul-Marie Masson, i (Paris, 1955), 63–75 [PE; O, i]
‘Pentatonismes chez Debussy’, Studia memoriae Belae Bartók sacra, ed. B. Rajecky and L. Vargyas (Budapest, 1956, 2/1957), 385–426 [PE; O, i]
‘L'ethnomusicologie, ii: étude interne’, Précis de musicologie, ed. J. Chailley (Paris, 1958, 2/1984), 41–52 [O, ii]
‘Musicologie et ethnomusicologie aujourd’hui’, IMSCR VII: Cologne 1958, 17–28 [PE; O, ii]
‘Réflexions sur la création musicale collective’, Diogène [Paris], xxv (1959), 83–93 [PE; O, ii]
‘La vie antérieure’, Histoire de la musique, ed. Roland-Manuel, i (Paris, 1960), 118–27 [O, ii]
Vie musicale d'un village: recherches sur le répertoire de Drăguş (Roumanie 1929–1932) (Paris, 1960)
Treizeci cântece populare [30 popular songs] (Bucharest, 1925)
Colinde şi cântece de Stea [Christmas carols and songs from Stea] (Bucharest, 1931)
Cântece bătrâneşti din Oltenia, Muntenia, Moldova şi Bucovina [Old songs from Oltenia etc.] (Bucharest, 1932)
G. Cucu: 200 colinde popular [200 popular Christmas carols] (Bucharest, 1936)
A. Schaeffner: ‘Bibliographie des travaux de Constantin Brăiloiu’, RdM, xliii (1959), 3–27
G. Ciobanu: ‘Aportul lui Constantin Brăiloiu la lărgirea conceptului de sistem tonal’ [Brăiloiu's contribution to broadening the concept of the tonal system], Revista de etnografie şi folclor, xiii (1968), 481; repr. in CMz, ii (1970), 159–69 [with Eng. summary]
‘Omagiu lui Constantin Brăiloiu’, CMz, ii (1970), 15–273 [incl. tributes by I.D. Chirescu, E. Comişel, M.G. Andricu, G. Ciobanu, T. Alexandru]
A. Benkő: ‘Bartók Béla levelei Constantin Brăiloiuhoz’ [Letters of Bartók and Brăiloiu], Bartók-dolgozatok, ed. F. Lászlo (Bucharest, 1974), 191–239
J.-J. Nattiez: ‘Brăiloiu, a Structuralist and Comparativist Collector: a Contribution to the History of Ethnomusicology’, Collection universelle de musique populaire enregistrée, VDE-Gallo 30 425–30 430 (1984), 11–27 [disc notes]
E. Comişel: Constantin Brăiloiu (1893–1958) (Bucharest, 1996) [incl. bibliography, 95–102; discography, 103]
GILBERT ROUGET