Greece is in mourning. The man who was associated with the most important moments of its modern history, the inexhaustible composer and unstoppable fighter, is no longer with us. Ο Mikis Theodorakis «left» at the age of 96 for the neighborhood of angels, leaving behind an invaluable legacy.
Mikis Theodorakis has written all kinds of music, from operas, symphonic music, chamber music, oratorios, ballets and choral sacred music, to music for ancient drama, theatre, cinema, art folk singing and post-symphonic works. His work can be distinguished into three main periods: In the first period (1937-1960) he composed symphonic and chamber music in accordance with Western European forms and contemporary techniques; in the second period (1960-1980) he attempted a coupling of the symphony orchestra with folk instruments and created new forms based on the voice, while from 1981 he returned to symphonic forms and became involved with opera.
The setting of poems to music has been considered the «central pillar of his creativity», as the performer Nena Venetsanou has said. It's where poets parade: Angelos Sikelianos, Andreas Kalvos, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, Yannis Ritsos, Manolis Anagnostakis, but also Pablo Neruda, Lorca, Bernard Beam. Their lyrics thus become accessible to a wide audience, accompanying popular songs that set fundamental values and constants in contemporary Greek musical creation. He himself, moreover, when he was a prisoner in the Oropou prison, wrote: «In the beginning was the reason....my greatest ambition is to faithfully serve the mainly modern Greek poetry. My greatest ambition is to serve my native Greek poetry to such an extent that when listening to a song, you cannot imagine the music in another text, nor the poem with different music.» Mikis Theodorakis essentially created the movement of poetry set to music, contributing to the emergence of a multitude of poets and the upgrading of the song. At the same time, he helped an entire generation to acquire its own language.
His fame went beyond the borders of the country early on. He composed perhaps the most internationally recognizable Greek rhythm, the syrtaki from the film «Alexis Zorbas» (1964), while his songs were performed by famous artists such as the Beatles, Shirley Bussey and Edith Piaf. He scored well-known films such as «Z» (1969), which won the BAFTA award for original music, «Phaedra» (1962), with songs with lyrics by Nikos Gatsos, and «Serpico» (1973), for the music of which he was nominated for a Grammy in 1975 (he claimed the same award for the music of «Alexis Zorbas» in 1966).
At the same time, from a very young age he developed a rich resistance and political activity, while he remained active with various interventions, books and interviews until the end of his life.
Curriculum vitae
Michael (Mikis) Theodorakis was born in Chios on 29 July 1925, to a Cretan father and a mother from Asia Minor. His father was a senior civil servant, so he spent his childhood years moving to various cities in Greece, from Mytilene, Syros and Athens to Ioannina, Argostoli, Patras, Pyrgos and Tripoli. His first musical experiences were the chants of the Orthodox Church, in which he took part as a cantor.
Between 1937 and 1939 he took his first violin lessons at the Patras Conservatory and created his first songs, compositions based on lyrics by Solomos, Palamas, Drosinis and Valaoritis, which he found sometimes in school books and sometimes in the library of his home. In Tripoli, at the age of 17, he gave his first concert, presenting his work «Cassiani» and took part in the resistance against the occupiers. During the great demonstration of 25 March 1943, he was arrested for the first time by the Italians and tortured.
He escaped to Athens, where in 1943 he began studying music at the Athens Conservatory and became acquainted with European art music. By this time, he had been influenced by Byzantine music, had formed a choir and composed songs and pieces for violin and piano. At the same time he develops resistance activities. He joined the EPON and in 1944 he became secretary of civilization. In the same year he joins the reserve ELAS of Athens and takes part in battles against the Germans and the Security Battalions, as well as in the Decembrance. Because of his progressive ideas, he was persecuted by the police authorities. For a time he lived illegally in Athens without giving up his revolutionary activity. In 1947 he was exiled to Ikaria and a year later he was transferred to Makronissos, from which he was dismissed in August 1949.
Because of his political activities and the persecution he suffered, he was delayed in obtaining his diploma from the Conservatory in harmony, counterpoint and fugue, which occurred in 1950. From 1954 to 1957, he studied in Paris on a scholarship and composed the three ballet scores Antigone, Les Amants de Teruel and Le Feu aux Poudres, which were successful in the French capital and in London, and during the same period he composed Oedipus Tyrant. In 1957 he was awarded the gold medal at the Moscow Festival for his «First Symphony for Piano and Orchestra».
In 1960 he returned to Greece. Already in Paris he had made his major musical decisions. Disagreeing radically with the new trends and laden with sentimentality, lyricism and tradition, he composed in 1958 «Epitaph», with lyrics by Yannis Ritsos, a work that was to have a serious impact on the development of Greek folk music.
The Axion Esti will be his first major work with choir, which the composer calls a «popular oratorio - post-symphonic», a characterization that indicates «not so much the temporal distance as the qualitative difference between Western and modern Greek musical art». The work is inspired by the poetry of Elytis, but also by folk singing, while there are many modernist elements in the work, such as the simultaneous presence of the narrator-singer and the folk singer on the one hand, and the classical and folk orchestra on the other.
In 1963 he founded the Athens Small Symphony Orchestra together with Manos Hadjidakis and gave many concerts all over Greece, trying to familiarize people with the masterpieces of symphonic music. In the meantime, he continues his political activity. He became a founding member of the Lambrakis Democratic Youth, of which he was president (1964-67), and in 1963 he was arrested for taking part in the 1st Marathon Peace March, while he was already known as a composer and with great popularity.
In 1964 he was elected for the first time as a deputy of the EDA in the second constituency of Piraeus and, a year later, a member of the Executive Committee of the same party. In 1967, the dictatorship of the colonels banned the performance, sale and listening of his songs. In the same year (1967) he became a founding member of the resistance organisation ’Patriotic Anti-Dictatorial Front« (PAM) and was arrested for his activities in August 1967. This was followed by his imprisonment in Bouboulinas Street, solitary confinement, Averoff Prison, the long hunger strike, the hospital, his release and house arrest, his displacement with his family to Zatouna in Arcadia and, finally, the Oropou camp. Throughout this period he composed continuously, while many of his works were sent abroad in various ways, where they were performed by Maria Farantouri and Melina Mercouri.
In Oropos his health condition is deteriorating dangerously. A storm of protests is stirring up abroad. Personalities such as Dmitry Shostakovich, Arthur Miller, Laurence Olivier and Yves Montagne set up committees for his release. Finally, in 1970, under these pressures and with the mediation of the French politician and writer Jean-Jacques Srevan Schreber, the dictatorship let him leave for Paris.
In the same year he became president of PAM and a member of the Political Bureau of the KKEes. From his liberation until the fall of the dictatorship in August 1974, he gave concerts all over the world, propagandizing the resistance of the Greek people and calling for the fall of the dictatorship. At the same time, in Greece his songs are heard illegally and he becomes a symbol of resistance.
In 1972 he founded the political movement «New Greek Left» and co-founded the National Council of Resistance. In 1974, he was a candidate for MP for Piraeus with the «United Left». In 1975, he was re-elected member of the Executive Committee of EDA, while in 1978 he participated in the municipal elections as a candidate for mayor of Athens supported by the KKE. A year later he became a founding member of the Movement for the Unity of the Left (KEA).
From 1967 to 1980, he turned his attention to the composition of song cycles, composing 22 cycles, including «Songs of the Struggle», «The Sun and Time», «Myth», «Arcadia I, II, III, IV, VIII, X, XI», «Ballads» and others. Memorable is the composition of Canto General, a universally beloved work based on Pablo Neruda's poem. The work began to be composed in Paris in 1972, where it was first performed at the Humanité festival in September ’74, while in Greece it was first performed at the major concerts at the Karaiskakis Stadium and the Panathinaikos Stadium in August 1975.
In 1981 he was elected MP for Piraeus with the KKE ticket and in 1985 he was elected MP for the State again with the KKE. In 1987 he was a founding member of the Greek-Turkish Friendship Committee. In 1989, together with the director Theodoros Angelopoulos, he became a founding member of the European Film Academy, which awards the «Felix» prizes. On 16 October 1989, he was included on the New Democracy's State Electoral List. He was elected in the elections of 5 November and re-elected in the April 1990 elections. On both occasions he filed a declaration as an independent member of parliament, cooperating with the New Democracy party. As he had stated in the press, he joined the New Democracy party «which is the powerful force that can lead the country out of the national deadlocks into which it was driven by the eight-year policy of PASOK». From 29 November 1989 until the elections of 8 April 1990 he was an independent MP working with New Democracy.
In April 1990 he took up his first government post as Minister without Portfolio in the government of Konstantinos Mitsotakis, until August 1991, when he became Minister of State. On 30 March 1992, he resigned as minister to devote himself, as he put it, to his compositional work. At the same time, he declared his support for the Mitsotakis government and participated in the work of Parliament as an independent MP working with the New Democracy Party.
In early September 1992 he resigned from the European Film Academy because it accepted a film from the Republic of Skopje as coming from the «Republic of Macedonia» in its competition section. In 1992 he composed the anthem of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and in the same year, on 12 October, he submitted a declaration of independence to the Presidency of the Parliament, ending his cooperation with the parliamentary group of the New Democracy party, while declaring his support for the policy of the Mitsotakis government. On 9 March 1993 he resigned as a member of parliament and became general director of ERT's music programmes.
On 16 June 1994 he resigned from his position as general director of ERT's music ensembles, denouncing the government of A. Papandreou and the general management of ERT for trying to kill the organisation through the method of suffocation. His resignation was accepted by ERT's Board of Directors on 5 October. In June 1996, he was appointed a member of the National Tourism Council set up by the Minister of Development, Vaso Papandreou.
On December 1, 2010, he announced the establishment of an Independent Citizens« Movement under the name »Spark« against the »Memorandum« regime, aiming at the participation of every independent citizen for the exit of the country from the deep crisis, in which it was forced by the international crisis of capitalism and the prominent political and economic circles dependent on international centers. On 1 February 2012, together with Manolis Glezos and Professor of Constitutional Law George Kasimatis, they presented the political movement »ELADA" (United Popular Democratic Resistance) with the aim of forming a large anti-memorandum front.
On 19 September 2013, he announced his «retirement» from the political life of the country, but without stopping his interventions until the end, as when in May 2017, together with other people of spirit, he called on the people to come to the Constitution to protest «against the coup d'état and destructive 4th Memorandum».
Finally, two important musical events marked 2017 for the great composer: The concert given on 24 May 2017 in Düsseldorf, Germany, by the city's historic orchestra, playing three symphonic works by Mikis Theodorakis (Symphonies 2 and 3 and Oedipus Tyrant) under the direction of Baldur Brönnimann, and the performance - tribute «ALL OF GREECE FOR MIKIS» at the Kallimarmaro on 19 June. For the first time, 1,000 choirs from 30 cities in Greece formed a huge choir, which, accompanied by a Symphonic Mandolinata, performed some of the great composer's masterpieces.
Awards and distinctions
Mikis Theodorakis has been honoured with many awards and distinctions, such as the «Lenin» Peace Prize of the Soviet Union (1983), the Order of the Order of the Phoenix, awarded to him on 24 July 1995 by the President of the Republic, Costis Stephanopoulos, as well as the Order of the Officer of the Legion of Honour, the highest distinction of the French Republic (March 1996). On 27 May 1996, the University of Athens awarded him an honorary doctorate of the Department of Music Studies and in March 2000 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of the Department of Music Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH). In July 2002 he was awarded the German music prize «Erich Korngold» and in May 2005 he was awarded the International Music Prize for 2005 by the International Music Council and UNESCO. In March 2007 he was also awarded the Legion of Honour of the French Republic, while in May 2013 the Plenary Assembly of the Academy of Athens elected him an honorary member of the Academy and in December of the same year an official reception ceremony was held.
Books
Mikis Theodorakis« literary work is also rich. Among other things, he wrote the books »The Debt« (two volumes), ed. »Music for the masses«, published by the »Terradia tetradias tis Democracy 1970-1971«, »Music for the masses« (two volumes), ed. »Elements for a new politics«, »Democratic and centralized left«, published by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1972, »Elements for a new politics«, »Democratic and centralized left«, published by the Greek Academy of Sciences, 1972. »The suitors of Penelope«, Papazisis, 1976, »The suitors of Penelope«, ed. Papazisis, 1976, »On Art«, 1976, Papazisis, 1976, ed. Papazisis, »Change. Problems of Unity of the Left«, 1978, »Fighting Culture«, 1982, »For Greek Music«, 1983 (republished by Kastaniotis in 1986), »Anatomy of Contemporary Music«, Synchroni Epochi, 1983, »Star System«, ed. Kaktos, 1984, »The Roads of the Archangel« (autobiography in five volumes), ed. Cedros, 1986-1995, »The Left is Wanted«, Sideris, 1989, »Antimanefesto«, ed. »Where are we going?«, ed. Gνώσεις, 1989, »Anatomy of Music«, ed. Alpheios, 1990, »To be enchanted and drunk«, 2000, ed. Livani, »The Lambrakis Manifesto", published by Livanis, "The Lambrakis Manifesto", ed. Hellenic Literature, 2003, the trilogy "Where to find my soul...", 2003, ed. Livani, with excerpts from his interviews, articles and speeches of the last decade, "Praise of Manos Hadjidakis", 2004, published by Janos, "Spark for an independent and strong Greece", published by Janos, 2011, "Dialogues in the twilight-90 interviews", published by Janos, 2016, and "Monologues in the twilight", published by Janos, 2017, and "Monologues in the twilight", published by Janos, 2017.
He also wrote many cycles of poems that he set to music himself, including «The Song of the Dead Brother», «The Sun and Time», «Arcadia I», «Arcadia VI» and «Arcadia X» and the «Song of the Earth» from Symphony No.2. He has also published several works in French.
His personal archive was given by him to the Lillian Voudouri Music Library and is accessible to interested scholars.
