Piano, piano education and repertoire in the development of New Greek music culture.
Background. Piano as a new musical instrument spreads in Greece during the XIX century. At the end of the century, piano education begins. However, the development of Greek piano music and the formation of a piano repertoire occurs only from the beginning of the XX century. In this article for the first time in Ukrainian musicology, the Greek piano music and piano repertoire are investigated as the separate topic. The objectives of this study are to determine the symbolic meaning of the piano appearance as the musical instrument in Greece after four centuries of Ottoman rule and to prove the significant role of piano as the representative of European musical culture and as the symbol of Western music in foundation of Greek national school of composition. Creating of the national musical language within the forming of the Greek piano national repertoire during the first phase of development is investigated. Summary of the research material. Some examples of the piano’s entry into at the Greek realities – Greek culture and everyday life – after Greece was isolated from European culture, are given in the article. The reasons why this Western European musical instrument appears in the Greek education system and in life of citizens are explained. The generic system of the Greek piano music is analyzed. By the essential features of the musical compositions differences between conditions of Greek music based on monody, and the European tonal music are studied. The main phases of formation of the Greek piano education are studied. An overview of the creation and development of the first musical educational institutions of Greece is given, àmong them are the Athenian Conservatory (1871), the Conservatory of Thessaloniki (1914), the Hellenic Conservatory (1919) and the National Conservatory (1926). The main principals of the typical European piano genres adaptation are explained: among them – free polyphonic development of motives, using the patterns of texture of folk instruments instead of typical textures of classical-romantic piano music. Two positions in the approach to the development of folk material are compared: the polyphonic development of folk melodies, proposed by G. Lambellet and their harmonization, proposed by M. Kalomiris. Characteristic features of the Greek monody – special modal gravitation and specifics of melodies – create a stylistic dominant of the mentioned works and give the possibility of an organic disclosure of national artistic content with the help of specific textures. Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in Greek professional music, there are searches for methods of development and attempts to adapt distant and heterogeneous musical phenomena with the condition of preserving the integrity and originality of the folk base. For Greece, where for centuries musical art existed in the form of folk and church traditions, the assimilation of European style was associated, among other things, with the adaptation of typical academic musical genres of professional music. Their creation, not easy, given the monodic nature of Greek folklore, required a certain rethinking of the perceptions of the possibility of modification of a particular genre. Therefore, in the creative work of the contemporary Greek composers, polyphonic genres that require certain structural canons and tonal proportions are rarely presented. Instead, the imitationand polyphonic development is typical of New Greek folk instruments for piano, in particular for the works by G. Lambellet, as well as for the collection of Yiannis Konstantinidis “44 children’s plays on Greek melodies”. Simple, but with specific additions, the intonations and imitations in these plays cause neo‑Baroque associations, first of all, with the presence of peculiar “lexical structures”. The principles of selection and the genre structure of Greek piano music are discussed in details in the article. As one of the examples of the use of typical European genres, the genre of piano sonatina in the works of Greek composers is being investigated. It is often presents in Greek piano music, unlike the genre of sonata. In particular, M. Varvoglis and N. Skalkotas (both in 1927) composed piano Sonatinas and M. Theodorakis created his piano Sonatina in 1952–1953. The genre of etude, rarely present at the contemporary Greek composers, undergoes unexpected transformations in the work of N. Scalcotas. In the cycle of Etudes for piano (1941), the composer demonstrates the style of writing, which is based on individual rethinking of serial techniques. The great value of the local folk genres for Greek piano music is also established. Local manifestations of the dance genres of the Greek islands demonstrate the conservatism of the processes of transferring folk traditions from generation to generation. In the XX century, folk dance genres, includingtheir archaic varieties, attract the attention of Greek composers to their special regular rhythmic formulas. The mentioned and other archaic features are also present in modern Greek piano music. The research work in folklore archives is a continuation of European education, in particular for N. Scalcotas. The archaic features ofthe authentic and authored themes ofthe works of Yi. Constantinidis, I. Ksenakis, D. Kapsomenos and T. Haridis have certain connections with the ancient tradition in organic unity with the folklore and church tradition of musical culture of the Byzantine period. Modern Greek composers bring into their works original patterns of local genres, absent in folklore of other peoples. Among them are the Cretan “voices”, which have a pantheistic nature: “Voice of the Mountain” from the suite “Cretan lands” and “Voice of the island” from the series of fantasies “Thalassina” organically present in the piano suite D. Kapsomenos. Different positions in connecting of Greek monody and European stylistics are compared. Tthe influences of typical contemporary tendencies of the XX century Western European music are analyzed in several piano works by New Hellenic neofolclorism, neoromantism, dodecaphony. While working with folklore, the New Greek composer Yi. Constantinidis sought to reproduce the peculiarities of authentic material without introducing typically piano texture that could have disrupted the general stylistic coloring. An example of such compositions is the already mentioned cycle of piano miniatures “44 children’s plays on Greek melodies” (1951). Continuing the tradition of G. Lambellet, due to modal changes and reintroduction of singing, Yi. Constantinidis creates his own musical material, which is organically combined with an authentic primary, reinforcing its characteristic features. Apart from the linguistic signs of antiquity that have already been mentioned by investigators, piano works based on the archaic genres of Greek folklore, also featuring the signs of ancient Greek musical thinking, among them the combination and partial crossing of tetrachords with an free range – “ambituses” – and their intersection – “repercussa”, which is the equivalent of the stable tone. The presence of transitional constructions-modulations for combining different levels of the system is also employ in Ancient Greek music as well as in contemporary archaic folklore samples used by Greek composers. The development of Ancient Greek music theory in the methods of composition of the Greek – French composer I. Xenakis were investigated. The results of the research support the idea that mentioned features is the evidence of common perception the music moduses as an object of thinking, for both ancient Greek musicians, and for the contemporary folk performers and Greek composers. This position allows the Greek composers to apply the analogy of historically distant musical phenomena to combine the sound world of archaic folk material and elements of modern composer’s technique. During the XX century Greek composers not only solved the problem of creating a national musical language, but also became the founders of new composer trends of world scale. They created vivid regionally colored national versions of typical European genres, among which varied peculiar piano genre palette is. At the same time, Greek piano music of the XX century reveals to the world unknown samples of authentic local variations related to the music of ancient Hellas and Byzantium. The present results are significant for understanding deep historical links of Greek piano music which reveals the integral paradigm of Greek ethnic consciousness, organically combines signs of different historical stages at the level of musical thinking.