{{Short description|Romanian musician and musicologist (1908–1988)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=May 2017}} thumb|upright=1|Harry Brauner '''Harry Brauner''' (24 February 1908 - 11 March 1988) was a Romanian ethnomusicologist, composer, and professor of music.
==Life== Brauner was born in Piatra Neamț into a Jewish family with many children, including his elder brother, Victor, who became a noted painter and sculptor of the Surrealist movement. He moved in 1913 to Vienna with his family, where they stayed for two years.<ref name= RL>{{cite web|url=http://www.romlit.ro/din_viata_lui_harry_brauner|title=Din viata lui Harry Brauner|last=Ornea|first=Zigu|author-link=Zigu Ornea|publisher=România Literară|date=1999|number=42|access-date=17 November 2014|language=Romanian|archive-date=28 April 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130428083041/http://www.romlit.ro/din_viata_lui_harry_brauner|url-status=dead}}</ref> When they returned to Romania, they lived first in Brăila, and later in Bucharest. There he studied at the Music Academy, having as teachers, among others, Constantin Brăiloiu, Dumitru Georgescu Kiriac, and Ștefan Popescu. In 1927, he was named secretary of the Composers' Society's so-called Folklore Archives.<ref name= RL/>
Brauner was one of those who discovered Romanian folk music diva Maria Tănase in the mid-1930s.<ref name= RL/> He eventually became her official biographer.
During World War II, he was a teacher at a Jewish high school in Bucharest, in 1944 he became music adviser at the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company in charge of folklore, and in 1949 he became head of the Folklore Department at the Music Academy in Bucharest.<ref name= RL/>
Brauner was implicated in the show trial against Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, and spent 12 years in prison, most of it in solitary confinement. He was released from Aiud Prison in January 1962,<ref>{{cite book |last= Muraru |first= Andrei |author-link= Andrei Muraru |title= Dicționarul penitenciarelor din România comunistă |lang=ro |publisher=Polirom |year= 2008 |page= 90 |isbn= 9789734608935 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340454074}}</ref> sent into internal exile to a village near Slobozia. He married Lena Constante in 1964. In 1966, he was allowed to travel to the Venice Biennale, Italy, where his brother Victor Brauner exhibited some of his works at the French pavilion.<ref name= RL/>
In 1967, after being named a member of the Paris Music Biennale, he was allowed to travel to Paris, where he became acquainted with Marc Chagall. In 1968, both he and Lena Constante were rehabilitated and given a meager pension for their sufferings.<ref name= RL/>
A close collaborator of Constantin Brăiloiu, Brauner recorded about 5,000 Romanian folk songs.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.romlit.ro/harry_brauner|title=Harry Brauner|last=Datcu|first=Iordan|language=Romanian|publisher=România Literară|date=2008|number=4|access-date=17 November 2014|archive-date=24 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924121943/http://www.romlit.ro/harry_brauner|url-status=dead}}</ref> He died in 1988 in Bucharest.
==Books== *1979. ''Să auzi iarba cum crește'' ("To Hear How the Grass Grows"). Bucharest: Editura Eminescu
== References == {{reflist}}
==Further reading== * Constante, Lena (1995). ''The Silent Escape: Three Thousand Days in Romanian Prisons''. Berkeley: University of California Press. * Marian-Bălașa, Marin (2000). ''Harry Brauner: Field Collector, Director, Victim, and Love''. European Meetings in Ethnomusicology 7:83–192. * Irina Nicolau, Carmen Huluță (1999). ''Surîsul lui Harry'' ("Harry's Smile"). Bucharest: Ars Docendi.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Brauner, Harry}} Category:1908 births Category:1988 deaths Category:People from Piatra Neamț Category:Romanian ethnomusicologists Category:Jewish musicologists Category:Jews from Western Moldavia Category:Jewish Romanian musicians Category:20th-century Romanian composers Category:20th-century Romanian male composers Category:20th-century Romanian musicologists Category:20th-century Romanian journalists Category:20th-century Romanian male journalists Category:Inmates of Aiud Prison Category:People detained by the Securitate Category:Socialist Republic of Romania rehabilitations