Musicological meeting “Perspectives of Greek Music Creation: Bridging Tradiitons”

Within the framework of the 2nd Festival “Days of Greek Music Creation” organized by the School of Music Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, from May 20th to June 5th, 2024, in venues and historical landmarks of Thessaloniki, the present scientific meeting is included, which also serves as its inaugural event. As indicated in the title, the purpose of the conference is to bridge scientifically seemingly heterogeneous musical traditions, which, however, collectively express related perspectives of Greek musical life and creation throughout the centuries.

Thus, the meeting is divided into three main sections. The first session is dedicated to the manuscript tradition, the composition, and the explanatory practices of Psaltic art, as a field of Byzantine musicological research. The presentations focus on sources of Psaltic art, both in Greece (Lesvos) and abroad (Ukrainian manuscripts), as well as explanatory aspects in compositions by Agios Ioannis Koukouzelis and Konstantinos Protopsaltis, with the participation of E. Giannopoulos, Y. Ignatenko, D. Spanoudakis, and Ch. Ioannidis.

In the second session, historiographical and inter-artistic aspects of contemporary Greek culture are presented, which, although primarily seem to concern Greek avant-garde after 1950, nevertheless depict facets that are interconnected with other genres of Greek musical tradition. Thus, we encounter the collaboration of composer Michalis Adamis, who bridged Byzantine music with electronic music and contemporary idioms, with the Choir of the Music Department of the University Student Club of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and its conductor, Yannis Mantakas, the lively interest of Greek composers in the artistic reshaping of folk genres (the lullaby in A. Evangelatos and the lament in Th. Antoniou), historiographical-interartistic approaches examining ideas and modes of expression of Greek post-war avant-garde within the cultural environment in which it developed (with an emphasis on the relationship between architecture and music, through K. Doxiadis, A. Logothetis, and G. G. Papaioannou), as well as subsequent diverse expressions of musical life and creation in the fluid ideological and cultural evolution of the period from 1980 to the present. Participants include S. Gerathanasi, Ch. Scarlatos, C. Tsougras, K. Chardas, and G. Sakallieros.

The meeting concludes with the round table “Contemporary Repertoire for Flute – Ethnographic and Analytical Components”, which is chronologically rooted in the present and geographically in Thessaloniki, presenting composers who live and work in the city and their work through a creative interdisciplinary dialogue employing methodological tools from the fields of social sciences, historical research, and musical practice. Th. Iordanidou, in her dual role as musicologist and performer, hosts composers G. Šmite, D. Papageorgiou, and C. Tsougras, mapping a research path from interpretation to compositional and pre-compositional processes of three of their works for solo flute, concluding artistically with a solo recital that includes these works (alongside works by Th. Antoniou and G. Sakallieros).