Music, Language and Identity in Greece

Polina Tambakaki is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Hellenic Studies (CHS), King’s College London. Panos Vlagopoulos is Associate Professor in the Department of Music Studies and Director of the Hellenic Music Lab at the Ionian University, Corfu. Katerina Levidou is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London. Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King’s College London.

Editors’ preface



List of Contributors



Introduction

Roderick Beaton



Part I Contested histories: Greek art music in retrospect



1. Karl Otfried Müller and Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos: Dorism, music and Greek identity

Christophe Corbier



2. Canonising Byzantine chant as Greek art music

Alexander Lingas



3. National music history on the eve of ‘the end of music history’: Greek music historiography and its Western models

Katy Romanou



4. Odes, anthems and battle songs: creating citizens through music in Greece during the long nineteenth century

Kostas Kardamis



5. Delving into the Athens Conservatoire Archive: musical education as a national need

Stella Kourmpana



Part II ‘National music’: Kalomiris, Skalkottas and beyond



6. The harmonisation of Greek folk songs and Greek ‘national music’

Panos Vlagopoulos



7. Alternative Greek national music: the case of Petros Petridis

Nikos Maliaras



8. The last defender: Kalomiris’s Constantine Palaiologos and the ‘Idea of Greek Music’

Ioannis Tsagkarakis



9. A Greek icon: heteroglossia, ambiguity and identity in the music of Nikos Skalkottas

Eva Mantzourani



10. A museum of Greekness: Skalkottas’ 36 Greek dances as a record of his homeland and his time

Katerina Levidou



11. Traversing melancholy: Skalkottas reads Esperas

Petros Vouvaris



Part III Music and language: modern poetry, ancient drama



12. ‘You used to sing all my songs’: poetry, language and song from Solomos to Seferis

Peter Mackridge



13. Reading Polylas’s ‘Prolegomena’ (1859): poetry and music, history and cultural politics

Polina Tambakaki



14. Can surrealism sing? Nikos Gatsos and song-writing

Effie Rentzou



15. Greek productions of ancient Greek drama in the first half of the twentieth century: music and words

Anastasia Siopsi



16. Performing (ancient) Greek modernism: modernist music and the staging of ancient drama

Kostas Chardas



Afterword

Jim Samson



Appendix: Greek composers setting poetry to music: a personal perspective

George Couroupos



Index