From Cold War Politics to Covid-19 Policies: Transformation and Canonization of Art Music in Greece, 1950–2020

Giorgos Sakallieros

doi:10.5937/newso2565069S

Giorgos Sakallieros Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Music Studies

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5937/newso2565069S

Keywords: historiography, Greek music, modernism, cultural politics, institutions, musical life, Hadjidakis, Theodorakis, higher education, COVID-19

Abstract

In this paper, the ever-changing perspectives of Greek art music are viewed from a retrospective standpoint both in the realm of transcending borders between centers and peripheries of 20th-century European music traditions and under the fluid context of social, ideological and cultural particularities of the Greek state during the second half of the 20^th and the early 21^st centuries. The identification of domestic cultural policies, whether impacted by foreign affairs, economics, or even the pandemic, undergoes cross-referencing with musical identities, trends, creative output, and institutions, in order to produce an interdisciplinary analysis of post-1950 music history and its key protagonists in Modern Greece.

Author Biography

Giorgos Sakallieros, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Music Studies

Professor of Historical Musicology at the School of Music Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Athens, and also studied composition and advanced music theory. His publications include the books Perspectives of Musical Modernism in Greece during the 20^thCentury: People, Trends, Works, Institutions (Athens: Kallipos, Open Academic Editions, 2023); Dimitri Mitropoulos and His Works in the 1920s: The Introduction of Musical Modernism in Greece (Athens: Hellenic Music Centre, 2016 – 1st Prize for Musicological Monograph by the Union of Greek Music and Theatre Critics, 2018); and Yiannis Constantinidis (1903–1984): His Life, Works and Compositional Style (Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2010), many articles, and contributions to Grove Music Online. His research mainly focuses on Greek art music (19th–20th centuries), through historical, analytical, and interdisciplinary perspectives. He is an active composer (awarded in national competitions), a collaborator in international research programs with major European institutions (IRCAM, ZKM, Onassis Foundation), and a member of the International Musicological Society (IMS), the Hellenic Musicological Society, and the Greek Composers Union.