JORA MUSEUM
In the Rosetti family museum at Tescani-Bacaeu, best known for its connections with George Enescu, one small room is devoted to the memory of the Romanian composer Mihail Jora (1891-1971). Born like Enescu in the Moldavian region but ten years later, Jora was a cousin of Enescu’s wife, who was a Rosetti. Trained in Leipzig and Paris as well as at home, after World War I he championed Romanian music – as pianist and composer, as founder and first chairman of the Society of Romanian Composers and later as music director of the Romanian Broadcasting Corporation. That Enescu liked and admired him, both as a composer of ballet music and songs and as a teacher (Jora was professor of harmony, counterpoint and composition at Bucharest Conservatory), is clear from attributed remarks and photographs of them on display in the rooms devoted to Enescu at Tescani-Bacaeu. Jora and his wife had quarters at the Rosetti mansion as well as a house in Bucharest. On display in the room off the far corner of the Oedip Room are a few pieces of furniture, a bronze death mask and a cast of his right hand, a profile drawing and photographs, his writing case and a baton, editions of his music and a programme from the wartime festival held to mark his 50th birthday in August 1941. One of the most beautiful spots in Latvia must be the farmstead surrounded by green-velvet meadows that slope down to the edge of Lake Pulgoznis, near Ergli, about 100 km east of Riga, where for many generations the Jurjans family tended cattle and harvested grain.
JORA MUSEUM Photo Gallery
Today their wooden house commemorates three brothers, who became distinguished musicians and with a fourth brother performed as a french horn quartet. The exhibition, which includes the upright piano that they used to take by horse and cart to concert venues, as well as photographs, facsimiles, scores and commemorative medals, was opened in 1978. The outbuildings – a granary, cattle shed and bathhouse (where one of the brothers was born when the house had burnt down and the family took refuge there) – preserve the history and traditions of rural Latvia. High on the hill Rights were not granted to include these illustrations in electronic media. Please refer to print publication The Jurjans family bathhouse at Ergji above the house, with panoramic views of the lake and the countryside, is the site of large annual open-air folksong festivals, attracting some 2000 singers and an even larger audience.
Like their father and grandfather, who were both fiddlers, Peteris (1851-1900), Andrejs (1856-1922), Juris (1861-1940) and Pavuls (1866-1948) began as folk musicians. They are said to have rowed out to the island in the middle of the lake with their horns to serenade the inhabitants of the valley. Pe-teris decided against a professional musical career, but the others went to the St Petersburg Conservatory and Andrejs and Juris taught at the music school at Khar’kiv.
Andrejs returned to Latvia each summer to collect folk tunes, developing new methods of ethnomusicological research, and over the years he published a series of critical editions for the Latvian Society in Riga. Both Andrejs and Pavuls (who became a professor of singing at the Latvian Conservatory and is considered the father of Latvian opera) were also conductors and composers; Andrejs in particular was associated with the early Latvian song festivals of 1880,1888,1895 and 1910.
