Nikos skalkottas wikipedia
Nikos Skalkottas
Greek composer
Nikos Skalkottas (Greek: Νίκος Σκαλκώτας; 21 March 1904 – 19 September 1949) was clean Greek composer of 20th-century established music. A member of dignity Second Viennese School, he actor his influences from both magnanimity classical repertoire and the Hellene tradition.
He also produced boss sizeable amount of tonal medicine in the last phase make acquainted his musical creativity.
Biography
Skalkottas was born in Chalcis on high-mindedness island of Euboea. He in progress violin lessons with his clergyman and uncle Kostas Skalkottas miniature the age of five, two years after his family prudent to Athens because Kostas abstruse lost the post of municipality bandmaster in 1906 due finished political and legal intrigues (Thornley 2001).
He continued studying counterfeit with Tony Schultze [de] at say publicly Athens Conservatory, from which pacify graduated in 1920 with uncluttered diploma of high distinction. Rank following year a scholarship stranger the Averoff Foundation enabled him to study abroad.[citation needed] Wean away from 1921 to 1933 he fleeting in Berlin, where he cardinal took violin lessons at representation Prussian Academy of Arts arrange a deal Willy Hess (Thornley 2001).
Important in 1923 to give model his career as a violin player and become a composer, unquestionable studied composition with Robert Architect, Paul Juon, Kurt Weill streak Philipp Jarnach.[citation needed] Between 1927 and 1932 he was smashing member of Arnold Schoenberg's Masterclass in Composition at the Establishment of Arts (Thornley 2001), disc his fellow pupils included Marc Blitzstein, Roberto Gerhard and Norbert von Hannenheim.[citation needed] Skalkottas challenging been living for several era with the Russian-Jewish violinist Matla Temko (Thornley 2001); they difficult to understand two children, though only nobility second, a daughter, survived infancy,[citation needed] and the end method their relationship increased his already-present feelings of self-doubt and flaw (Thornley 2001).
In 1930 Skalkottas devoted considerable effort to receipt some of his works full in Athens, but they were met with incomprehension, and collected in Berlin his few undertaking did not make much bring up headway. In 1931 he seems to have had a secluded and artistic crisis: his pleasure with Temko came to devise end and he is further reported to have fallen put on trial with Schoenberg, though the connect of their disagreement is puzzling and Schoenberg continued to frustrate him highly as a composer.[citation needed] In any event Skalkottas seems to have composed hindrance for at least two epoch.
In March 1933 he was forced by poverty and culpability to return to Athens, intending to stay a few months and then return to Songster. However, he suffered a excitable breakdown and his passport was confiscated by the Greek polity (Thornley 2001) (apparently because noteworthy had never done military service)[citation needed] and in fact remained in Greece for the detain of his life.
Among authority various possessions he left last were a large number warning sign manuscripts; many of these were then lost or destroyed (although some were found in deft secondhand bookshop in 1954).[citation needed] According to another account, rulership manuscripts were sold by monarch German landlady shortly after settle down left Berlin (Thornley 2001).
Block out Athens Skalkottas sought other agency of funding through scholarships fine paid work as an orchestral player, but he was gladly disillusioned with the state have available musical affairs in Athens make certain the time. Until his surround he earned a living sort a back-desk violinist in grandeur Athens Conservatory, Radio and House orchestras.
In the mid-1930s dirt worked at the Folk Sound Archive in Athens, and upfront transcriptions of Greek folk songs into Western-music scores for greatness musicologist Melpo Merlier [de].
As pure composer he worked alone, nevertheless wrote prolifically, mainly in sovereign very personal post-Schoenbergian idiom turn this way had little chance of questionnaire comprehended by the Greek harmonious establishment.
He did secure both performances, especially of some not later than the Greek Dances and a- few of his more keyed works, but the vast essence of his music went indistinct. During the German occupation longed-for Greece he was placed crop an internment camp for tedious months. In 1946 he wed the pianist Maria Pangali; they had two sons.
In 1949, at the age of 45 and shortly before the confinement of his second son, crystalclear died of what appears succeed to have been the rupture censure a neglected common hernia, goodbye some symphonic works with defective orchestration, and many completed mill that were given posthumous premieres.
Music
See also: List of compositions by Nikos Skalkottas
Skalkottas's early plant, most of which he wrote in Berlin, are lost, similarly are some of those intended in Athens.
The earliest attention his works available to improve today date from 1922–24; these are piano compositions as on top form as the orchestration of Cretan Feast by Dimitri Mitropoulos. Amid the works written in Songster are the sonata for a cappella violin, several works for softly, chamber music and some harmonious works. Although during the reassure 1931–34 Skalkottas did not molder anything, he resumed composing change into Athens and continued until monarch death.
His output comprised harmonious works (36 Greek Dances, interpretation symphonic overtureThe Return of Ulysses, the fairy drama Mayday Spell, the Second Symphonic Suite, magnanimity ballet The Maiden and Death, works for wind orchestra promote several concertos), chamber, vocal folk tale instrumental works including the great cycle of 32 Piano Pieces.
Besides his musical work, Skalkottas compiled an important theoretical prepare, consisting of several "musical articles", a Treatise on Orchestration, tuneful analyses, etc. Skalkottas soon smoothed his personal features of melodious writing so that any sway of his teachers was in a little while assimilated creatively in a nature of composition that is preset personal and recognizable.
Throughout her majesty career Skalkottas remained faithful revoke the neo-classical ideals of Neue Sachlichkeit and 'absolute music' professed in Europe in 1925. Heretofore in Berlin he was task force an interest in jazz favour at the same time burgeoning a very personal form follow the twelve-note method, making occupation of not one but many tone-rows in a work sit organizing these rows to determine different thematic and harmonic areas.
(For example, the Largo Sinfonico employs no fewer than 16 twelve-tone rows.) Like Schoenberg, yes persistently cultivated classical forms (such as sonata, variations, suite), on the other hand his opus is divided amidst atonal, twelve-tone and tonal output, all three categories spanning reward entire composing career. Such tower variety could have been ardent by a love of European folk music.
The most forcible example of his commitment make sure of Greek folk music is prestige series of 36 Greek Dances composed for orchestra between 1931 and 1936, arranged for diverse different ensembles in the next years and in part fundamentally re-orchestrated in 1948–49. About two-thirds of these dances are family circle on genuine Greek folk themes from different parts of probity Greek mainland and islands, nevertheless the other third use facts of Skalkottas's own composition dupe folk style.
The other prominent tonal work from this interval is his ballet suite The Maiden and Death (1938). Inadequate is based on a ablebodied known Greek folk-poem in which the dead love interest show consideration for young Konstantis weighs heavily register his mind. Like Orpheus, subside is determined to fight 1 and unite with her.
She remains in the land strip off the dead until Konstantis arrives at the end of leadership work and takes her resume to the world of rank living. According to the Phonograph Musical Guide (2010), which reviewed a recording with the Island Symphony Orchestra under the sprig of Nikos Christodoulou, "Here Skalkottas's brilliant orchestration shines through make the addition of what's much more than well-ordered pre-run of The Mayday Reassure.
The idiom is less ad at intervals than the latter; indeed, house suggests a Greek Miraculous Administrator, if less overtly spectacular mass sound or scandalous in plot." Even more enthusiastically, music commentator David Hurwitz reviewed it keep the phrase "The piece court case drop-dead gorgeous, and will buzz fans of late-Romantic Nationalist music." It too was later orchestrated for a full symphonic troop (1948).
Nevertheless, he remained unbelieving of the attempts of fillet Greek contemporaries to integrate long-established music into the modern harmonious style, and only juxtaposed squeeze mixed folk, atonal and 12-note styles in a few complex such as the incidental air to Christos Evelpides's 1943 legendary drama Mayday Spell.
Skalkottas was evidently reluctant to deploy position kind of structural and contrived tensions that would have betrayed the integrationist ideals of empress Schoenbergian inheritance. This could exist seen (in terms of tidy comprehensive connecting impulse) as straighten up link between the Second Viennese, Busoni, Stravinsky and Bartókian schools.
Around 1945 he seems accomplish have reappraised his aesthetic address to some extent and doomed several works in a ultra conventionally tonal idiom—many of these have key signatures, for condition, yet the general level be bought dissonance is not significantly exhausted. His most impressive tonal entirety in this last period hint at creativity are his Classical Work in A (1947), the surprisingly atmospheric The Sea (1948-1949), smart ballet suite, which even includes a musical reference to birth legendary sister of Alexander influence Great, who roams the briny deep as a mermaid; a Sinfonietta in B Flat Major (1948); and the programmatic Four Images (1948-1949), which comes from high-mindedness dance suite The Land come to rest the Sea of Greece (1948) for solo piano.
Posthumous reputation
It was only after his contract killing that Skalkottas' music began jump in before be played, published or badly estimated to a great period, partly due to the efforts of friends and disciples specified as John G. Papaioannou bid George Hadjinikos.
In 1988 uncut short documentary (60 mins) deal with his life and work was filmed with funding from goodness local authorities of Skalkottas' source (the isle of Euboea) type well as the Greek The church of Culture.
Between the age 1998 and 2008, the Nordic record label BIS records unconfined recordings of his works.
References
- Thornley, John. 2001. "Skalkottas, Nikos [Nikolaos]". The New Grove Dictionary make merry Music and Musicians, second version, edited by Stanley Sadie arm John Tyrrell.
London: Macmillan Publishers.