To mark the National Culture Day, on 15 January 2026 the State Jewish Theatre presents an event dedicated to the folklorist Harry Brauner - "TO HEAR THE GRASS GROW", a lecture given by Prof. Dr. Stephan Poen. It is devoted to the work and the memory of one of Romania's most important collectors of folklore: Harry Brauner, a defining figure of Romanian culture and of twentieth-century ethnomusicological research. Prof. Dr. Stephan Poen's talk traces the remarkable path of the Romanian folklorist of Jewish origin and highlights some of his most significant contributions to the folkloric and cultural life of Romania.
Born in 1908 in Piatra Neamt, Harry Brauner settled with his family in Bucharest after short spells in Vienna and Braila. There he studied at the Conservatory (1925-1929), alongside studies in aesthetics and sociology, with Tudor Vianu and Dimitrie Gusti among his teachers. The renowned sociologist brought him into his monographic sociological research team, whose members also included Lena Constante, his future wife. The team's work bore remarkable fruit: more than 5,000 melodies recorded over the course of ten years. Among his first important discoveries was the melody of the ballad Master Manole. A study grant in Paris, awarded in 1933, brought him into contact with the sculptor Constantin Brancusi and the painter Marc Chagall, among others. A shared interest in folklore also brought him close to the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, in 1934. In the same period, 1934-1935, Harry Brauner met Maria Tanase and guided her career as a folk singer; many of Maria Tanase's celebrated songs were learned and performed under his direction. During the Second World War, barred from public life by the racial laws, Harry Brauner took a post as music teacher at the "Barbu Delavrancea" Jewish high school in Bucharest. After the war he worked in radio and taught at the Conservatory. In 1949 he founded the "Dimitrie Gusti" Institute of Ethnography and Folklore in Bucharest, which he led until 1950. That same year he was investigated and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, and was released in 1962. He resumed his prodigious research work, and in 1972 he came to head the first ethnomusicology laboratory, established within the "Ciprian Porumbescu" Conservatory in Bucharest.
The event features the artists of the State Jewish Theatre: Lorena Luchian, Arabela Neazi, Geni Brenda-Vexler, Andrei Miercure and Filip Popescu.