Anton Pann

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Anton Pann : biography

– November 2, 1854

Anton Pann carried on with his choral activities in Wallachia, was employed as a sexton by the Romanian Orthodox Olari and Sfinţilor Churches, before being tutored by Dionisie Fotino and allowed to attend the religious music school founded by Petru Efesiul (1816). Perfecting his craft, he came to the attention of Metropolitan Dionisie Lupu, who appointed him on a commission charged with translating liturgical works from Slavonic to Romanian. The memoirist Ion Ghica later recounted that Pann attended the Saint Sava College, but this remains disputed. In 1820, he first got married to a woman named Zamfira Azgurean, in what was to be the first of his unhappy romantic liaisons.

Midlife

[[Lăutari in mid-19th century Bucharest, as drawn by Carol Popp de Szathmary]] In 1821, when Tudor Vladimirescu’s rebellious forces occupied the city, Pann fled to the Transylvanian city of Kronstadt (part of the Austrian Empire), and was employed as a cantor by the Saint Nicolas Church in the ethnic Romanian neighborhood of Şchei. This temporary refuge over the Southern Carpathians mirrored that of other cultural and religious figures of the day, his fellow musician Macarie Ieromonahul among them.

He also spent time in Râmnicu Vâlcea (1827), where he was a teacher at the Orthodox seminary and, in parallel, lectured on religious music to the nuns of the Dintr-un Lemn Monastery. A scandal erupted after Pann used his position at the latter institution to seduce Anica, the mother superior’s 16-year-old niece. Unsuccessfully offering her legal guardians to marry Anica in church, he eloped with her back to Şchei. While there, he became friends with the writer Ion Barac, whom he had probably met earlier, and who, according to Pann’s own testimony, gave him lessons in meter. According to some sources, he also took a trip to Buda. The literary critic Tudor Vianu attributes to Barac and Vasile Aaron, whose work constituted an adaption of various chanson de geste themes, the merit of having inspired Pann to pursue a literary career.

Title page of "The Theoretical and Practical Basis of Church music or the Melodic Grammar", [[Bucharest, 1845. Copy in the library of Stavropoleos Monastery.]] Returning to Râmnicu Vâlcea in 1828, he was officially expelled from his teaching position, and, in 1828, he returned to work as a cantor for the Bucharest school on Podul Mogoşoaiei. Over the following decade, Pann authored a large panel of musical and literary works, including Noul Doxastar, which, adapted and partly recreated from Dionisie Fotino’s version, assembled all officially-endorsed pieces of Christian music, and which he prefaced. According to his own testimony, this had required a major financial effort, one which almost caused his bankruptcy.

In 1837, he separated from Anica, with whom he had fathered a son (Gheorghiţă) and a daughter (Tinca). Anton Pann married a third and final time in 1840, to Catinca (the more common name of Ecaterina). All three of his wives survived his death; his son by Zamfira, Lazăr, was to become an Orthodox priest.

From 1842 to 1851, with support gained from Metropolitan Neofit, Pann was employed as a music teacher by the main seminary in Bucharest (in parallel, he continued to sing at the Albă Church). During those years, he began associating with famous lăutari of his day, and regularly attended the lively social gatherings held in the gardens and orchards of Mitropoliei Hill. A passionate collector of classical-Ottoman and Romani music, which formed the staple of the lăutari repertory ever since the Phanariote period, Pann later printed some of the earliest manele tablatures. Oltiţa Cîntec, , in Evenimentul, June 30, 2001 Andrei Oişteanu, , in Revista 22, Nr 29, July 2001 (hosted by Pruteanu.ro) This was matched by his interest in other musical traditions: in his churchly practice, he endorsed the tradition of Byzantine hymns and removed modulations of Levantine inspiration, while he was among the first of his generation to use modern notation and Italian markings for tempo.