I began the sketches for my »First Symphony« in 1948
I had already put my skill in orchestration to the test three years earlier, composing »The Feast of Asi-Gonia«. This work was only to receive its first performance five years later though, on 5th May 1950. (The number five has always had a special significance in my life).
In the meantime, my only way of telling if the contrapunctal and orchestral relations were right lay in my imagination.
I spent all my spare time conducting endless concerts in my head.
In the first draft of the symphony, I articulated first and foremost feelings and thoughts that were preying on my mind at the time and urgently demanded an outlet.
The feeling of pain and protest at a youth that more for subjective than objective reasons had led me into a dead-end, was intensified by the harrowing experience of the Occupation and its consequences. If there is a glimmer of hope in this music, in its melodies, rhythms and tone colours - breaches in a gloomy wall, so to speak - then that is only because I believed in man and his future for philosophical and ideological reasons; I was less convinced on the other hand of his biological survival, in so far as joy and hope can be seen as biological factors.
What was the position of Greece in this tonal world?
In fact, Greece appeared to me not as a concrete musical place, but more as a spiritual entity, turned inside out by its recent history, inhabited by a race of martyrs, crucified in the name of freedom and human salvation.
My awareness and participation in national events since the Albanian War had instilled in me an unshakeable feeling of pride and hope: with one blow, we had raised our Greek identity up out of the slough of insignificance to the level of the pioneers in the struggle for freedom and human dignity. The certainty that we had risen above history never left me for a moment. And I believe that the objective analysis of the historical events clearly bears out this opinion. Even today, I still believe that all we lack is the miracle of national unity to place us in the forefront of humanity. The reason is perhaps that our long centuries of suffering have gradually shaped a precious spiritual psychic and moral being: the Greek.
That is one part of the background to my »First Symphony«.
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Vassilis Zanos
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Makis Karlis
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I remember that the first sketches were made in 1948, in a village called Daphni on the island of Ikaria.
One evening, just as the western Aegean was casting its shadows over us, news came that sub-lieutenant Makis Karlis had been killed by an exploding mine somewhere near Salonica. The beloved friend of my childhood, my first close friend, disappeared, dissolved and fell as a fine rain of flesh and blood on the Macedonian plain. The same evening, despite my morbid fear of the dark, a feeling of shame drove me out into the olive-groves of Mesaria; shame at the thought that I could get undressed and lie down on my wooden pallet, living and warm, unharmed; that I would rest, dream, wake up and be hungry again. As a final deliverance from these incongruous questions to which human destiny - should such a thing exist - never provides an answer, the dawn brought music with its liturgy of consolation. I believe the greater part of the work had taken shape in my unconscious during that night.
I had first met Vassilis Zannos in 1944 in the Palio Faliro district of Athens, on what was a dreadful day for me. (Even now, I cannot write about that day). We got to know each other better when we were both in Ikaria in 1947.
At that time, I had planned the major part of a symphonic work entitled »Greek Carnival«. I remember taking Vassilis to one side and going with him to a church in one of the villages on the island. There we sat down on the step and I sang it to him, one movement after the other. He stood up and kissed me for joy. That was our last meeting.
We learnt of Vassilis' end two days after the death of Karlis. (Vassilis Zannos was executed in 1948, by judgment of the Athens Military Tribunal). My unhappiness was boundless, as I admired Zannos beyond measure. I had recognised in him my better, which is no trifle for a self-centred twenty-two-year-old.
Even if they came from opposing camps, in the world of my imagination, sub-lieutenant Makis and the revolutionary Vassilis became friends. They gave one another their hand, for they were both holy martyrs to that great idea called Greece, which wounded and lamenting, must offer up her finest sons.
Analysis
The First Movement of the symphony is coloured by the idea of revolt. I was meanwhile sure enough of my musical language to venture to enrich it with elements from other composers, without losing depth or individuality in the process. This was a period of upheaval and if I absorbed outside influences without digesting them, then it was quite simply a necessity: on the one hand, to get to know the latest developments in contemporary modes of musical expression, without repeating them; on the other, to reassure myself of the authenticity of my own contribution. In this very symphony, the influence of Dmitri Shostakovitch is unmistakable: he is the composer, next to Igor Stravinsky, who has made the greatest impression on me.
In the first movement, I broke with the classical sonata form and tried to develop a new architecture, better adapted to the subject-matter of the work. I use four subjects instead of two, though I know of course that close analysis will reveal that all four have the same musical roots.
The harmonics come predominantly from the counterpoint of the individual voices and their compression; the orchestration is just as dense and polychromatic. Three of the four subjects are my own melodies and motifs, whose only Greek element is the origin of the composer. The fourth subject, the only shaft of light amidst great towering walls, resembles a lullaby and is characterised by Greek composition and gesture.
Highly personal subjects are also present in the Second Movement, »Elegy and Threnody«, and in the Finale, in which the elegiac themes of lament are given new dimensions by means of urgent rhythms and triumphant chords. I should also mention the sudden insistence of the rhythm and the opening up of abysmal depths in the middle of the Third Movement: a symbol of the final exorcism of the dead and the final hymn for them. After this, the original rhythm returns: even among ruins and the struggles of civil war, life goes on.
No end: it goes on and on; and only the constraint to close the artistic work like a circle, places the final chord.
© Mikis Theodorakis. English translation © Ariel Wagner-Parker
PREMIÈRE SYMPHONIE - PROTI SYMFONIA, AST 54
Composition: 1948-1953 in Dafni (Icaria), Makronissos, Chania, Athens
Mouvements:
1. Allegro - Andante - Allegro
2. Andante - Piu mosso - Andante
3. Allegro moderato - Adagio - Allegro
Creation: 13.11.1955 in Athens
KOA, Andreas Paridis
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