Perspectives on Greek Musical Modernism

Eva Mantzourani is a musicologist and music analyst. Her academic qualifications include a PhD from King’s College, London, UK; an MMus in Music Theory and Analysis and an MMus in Historical Musicology from Goldsmiths, University of London, UK; and a BMus from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her teaching includes lecturing positions at Kingston University–Hong Kong University (Space), City University London, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Canterbury Christ Church University, and The Open University. She has published work on musicological topics and the music of Nikos Skalkottas. She has authored The Life and Twelve-Note Music of Nikos Skalkottas (Ashgate, 2011/Routledge, 2016) and edited Polish Music since 1945 (2013). She is the editor of the critical edition of Nikos Skalkottas’s Violin Concerto, published by Universal Edition (Vienna). Costas Tsougras (musicologist and composer) is Professor of Systematic Musicology and Music Analysis in the School of Music Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His academic qualifications include a PhD and an MMus from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His PhD research involves the adaptation of the Generative Theory of Tonal Music (GTTM) for the analysis of Y. Constantinidis’ ‘44 Greek Miniatures’. He has published theoretical and analytical work in international and Greek journals and collective volumes on GTTM, cognitive and computational analytical models, analysis of classical and 20th-century music, and Greek contemporary music. His compositions have been performed and recorded by acclaimed musicians and ensembles. In 2012 and 2019 his music represented the Greek Composers’ Union at the ISCM World Music Days in Belgium (2012) and Estonia (2019). Petros Vouvaris is Associate Professor in Music Form and Analysis in the Department of Music Science and Art at the University of Macedonia, Greece. He holds a doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA, a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina–Greensboro, USA, and a bachelor’s degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has presented papers at international conferences and has published articles in both Greek and international journals. His book Introduction to the Formal Analysis of Tonal Music (in Greek) was published in 2015. His research interests primarily focus on analytical and hermeneutical approaches to Greek musical modernism, particularly Nikos Skalkottas. He is a member of the board of directors of the Hellenic Musicological Society and a member of the editorial board of the English-language, peer-reviewed, open-access electronic journal Mousikos Logos.

About the Contributors

Introduction

Petros Vouvaris

1. Greek musical modernism in context

Ioannis Tsagkarakis

2. Musical modernism in Greece: An overview

Kostas Chardas and Giorgos Sakallieros

3. Dimitri Mitropoulos in the 1920s: The pioneering steps of musical modernism in Greece

Giorgos Sakallieros

4. Sonata form, sonata cycle, and multi-movement coherence in Nikos Skalkottas’s free dodecaphonic works

Eva Mantzourani

5. Nikos Skalkottas’s May Day Spell – A Fairy Drama: Symbolic fusion of diatonicism and chromaticism

Costas Tsougras

6. Nikos Skalkottas’s musical borrowings and the art of collecting ideas

Petros Vouvaris

7. Struggling for the ‘new’ in the 1950s: Twelve-note/tonal interactions in Symphony No. 3 and Concerto for orchestra by Yannis A. Papaioannou

Kostas Chardas

8. A selective appropriation: Yorgos Sicilianos between modernism and postmodernism

Valia Christopoulou

9. Michael Adamis’s poly-melodic structures and the creative renegotiation of Byzantine musical heritage

Theodore Karathodoros

10. On Christou

Panos Vlagopoulos

11. Three components of Xenakis’s universe

Makis Solomos

12. On the evolution of Xenakis’s compositional thinking

Dimitris Exarchos

13. Beyond the stave: Performance indeterminacy and the limits of Greek musical experimentalism

Danae Stefanou

Index