|
abstracts
Costas Tsougras: Nikos Skalkottas’ Passacaglia
for solo piano: Tradition and innovation in equilibrium
Nikos Skalkottas (1904-1949), the early 20th century
Greek composer and one of Arnold Schoenberg’s most prominent
students, composed his Passacaglia
for solo piano in 1940 as part of his 32
piano pieces, during an extremely prolific compositional period.
The work is written in a free atonal style and its transparent form
incorporates a short 2-bar theme (in 9/8 time signature), consisting
of a 9-note structural bass line with its multi-layered harmonic
accompaniment, and its 20 short variations (all of them – except the
last one – also 2 bars long). Each variation is structured on
characteristic rhythmic patterns, which often address Greek
traditional dance rhythms, and on the same untransposed bass line and
harmonic network. The work exhibits a remarkable economy of musical
material. Its austere form and its structural-harmonic consistency,
combined with the strictly defined character of each variation,
project a neoclassical quality, existing in balance with dense atonal
harmonies, complex rhythmic surface elements and dramatic climaxes.
The present paper attempts a formal, structural, motivic and textural
analysis of the piece and connects the emerging stylistic features
with the elements of the composer’s mature style.
Theodore
Loustas: Distinguished Greek pianists of the past: analytical
discography and concise biographical information
The preface of this paper includes short biographies of famous Greek
pianists of the 19th and 20th century who did not make recordings. The
first chapter is dedicated to thirteen pianists who had a career
primarily ïr exclusively as soloists
and the second chapter is dedicated to six pianists who worked mainly
or exclusively as accompanists: all known commercial and many private
recordings are listed, with concise biographical information. The
earliest known recordings of important Greek pianists (Leipzig, 1905)
were made by Télémaque Lambrino (1878-1930). Timotheos
Xanthopoulos (c.1864-1942), Theseus Pindios (1886-1934) and Ivi Pana
(1895-1967) made recordings before 1923. Anna Antoniades-Xydis
(c.1919-1980) made recordings in Berlin (1938-1939). She appeared with
major orchestras and conductors in Germany, USA, etc. Vasso Devetzi
(1927-1987) made recordings with legendary performers from the former
Soviet Union, such as David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich and Rudolf
Barshai. The world famous conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960)
was also a virtuoso pianist. He often played the solo part of
difficult works for piano and orchestra, and conducted simultaneously
from the keyboard. Among his very few recordings as pianist-conductor
three performances of Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano
Concerto no 3
exist. Gina Bachauer (1910-1976) and Rena Kyriakou (1917-1994) have
the largest discographies. Rena Kyriakou has recorded the complete
piano works of Felix Mendelssohn, Emmanuel Chabrier and Isaac Albéniz.
She also made many first world recordings (various compositions by
Antonio Soler, Felix Mendelssohn, Jan Ladislav Dussek, John Field and
Isaac Albéniz). Tasso Yannopoulo (1898-1970) had the most
impressive international career among the accompanists. He made many
sound and video recordings with world-renowned performers, such as the
violinists Jacques Thibaud, Henryk Szeryng and Ivry Gitlis.
Unfortunately, many recordings are rare and unknown for various
reasons. The author believes that the artistry of many underestimated
and ignored Greek pianists of the past deserves to be properly
appreciated by a wider audience.
Ioannis
Fulias: Sonata forms and their theoretical evolution: The
fifth sonata type (“sonata-concerto form”) in 18th- and
19th-century theory
The eleventh part of this extensive survey of the
theoretical evolution of sonata forms from 18th to 20th centuries begins
to treat the fifth sonata type, i.e. the enriched version of any pure
sonata form with orchestral ritornellos in the classic concertos.
Taking a brief account on the compositional evolution from the late
baroque “ritornello form” to early classical “concerto form”
as a starting point, the present paper observes this substantial
structural transformation being also reflected in music-theoretical
writings from mid-18th-century (mainly by Johann Joachim Quantz and
Joseph Riepel), in which only vague references to sonata techniques
can still be detected in the “concerto form”, to late-18th-century
(by Georg Joseph Vogler, Heinrich Christoph Koch and Francesco Galeazzi), where the binary or ternary sonata type is now
clearly considered as the basis of the “concerto form”, whilst the
role of the ritornellos is drastically pushed out of the limelight.
Moreover, just before the end of the 18th-century, August Kollmann
already makes the next crucial step towards the full integration and
assimilation of all orchestral sections of a concerto into a simple
ternary sonata form, which is then further developed during the entire
19th-century by Carl Czerny, Adolf
Bernhard Marx, Otto Jahn and Ebenezer Prout, among others.
Nikos Andrikos: The ecclesiastical music production in 20th-century
Lesvos: a historical – stylistic approach
This article could be regarded as an attempt to
outline the action and work of a group of personalities, who were well
known for their presence in the field of ecclesiastical music in
20th-century Lesvos. The case of Lesvos will provide us the
opportunity to deal with issues of a broader musicological interest,
relating, for example, to the existence of an oral interpretative
idiom, the functioning of teaching and oral transmission networks, the
aesthetic-morphological particularity of the original compositional
production, etc.
In 20th-century Lesvos, it is interesting to observe
how an idiomatically autonomous compositional and interpretative trend
was developed, which was yet directly related, both historically and
aesthetically, to the innovative model of the “School of Smyrna”.
The broad compositional and teaching work of Nikolaos Papageorgiou
should be considered as a fundamental influential factor in the region,
while the established dipole of Michael Karykas – Georgios Kritikos,
which emerged from as early as the interwar period, would result in
the contemporaneous activity of two parallel networks of oral
transmission and original compositional production. Furthermore, it
should be noted that the overall activity in the field of
ecclesiastical music was carried out with the same intensity both in
the urban area of Mytilene and the country of Lesvos, having as a
common typological characteristic the ideologically conscious handling
of the historical material in an alternative, original and innovative
manner.
Ion
Zottos: Chopin’s Variations
opus 2 and Schumann; Mozart and E. T. A. Hoffmann
This last paper by Ion Zottos was read in a
symposium for Chopin’s 200th anniversary of his birth in 2010 and
deals mainly with Schumann’s famous and enthusiastic music critique
of Chopin’s Variations on
“La ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s Don
Giovanni, in a manner that freely recalls the Tales
of Hoffmann.
Anastasia Kakaroglou – Katy Romanou:
Extracts from Guillaume André Villoteau’s De l’état actuel de l’art musical en Égypte
(VII
– final)
In this issue of Polyphonia we
complete the publication of a translation of Guillaume André
Villoteau’s important text “De la musique grecque moderne”, that
is the fourth chapter of his dissertation entitled De
l’état actuel de l’art musical en Égypte…
(1826). The final “Article” 10 ends with the music and the verses
of two Greek folk songs. They are among the earliest music examples of
Greek folk songs to appear in a publication. Most probably Villoteau
wrote them down in 1798. The largest part of this final “article”
on Greek music refers to modal transpositions. All music examples and plates in this translation have been
photographed from the French edition of 1826.
|
