Composers, Trends and the Question of Nationality in Nineteenth-Century Musical Greece

Abstract

The question of a European-type local music was raised in modern Greece as early as during the first years of its independent life, and within the context of a rapid Occidentalizing and modernizing process. The earliest Greek professional musicians to serve this social, as well as ideological, need came from the Ionian Islands, but soon other parts of the national territory saw the birth of some important composers who added specific German, French or Russian components to the basically Italianate flavour of the Ionian musical tradition. In their respective works the main trends of nineteenth-century European music found their Greek way, although a sparse use of local folk elements was only gradually, hesitantly, and – in any case – partially accepted by a middle-class public, willing to keep its distance from its own Ottoman past. It was mainly for that reason that a Herderian-type musical nationalism, although already visible around 1850, had to wait until the end of the century before obtaining its clear and definite shape, and before occupying the central Greek musical scene during the early years of the new age.

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