In the beginning was the Word!
My whole work is an illustration of this truth. In order to explain my music, one must first study the text.
It was not moreover by accident that I had announced from the very beginning that I intended to be a faithful servant of modern Greek poetry. I wanted to take this idea so far, that it would be impossible to imagine text and music in any other relationship.
In the introduction to the oratorio "Axion Esti", I used techniques out of the last phase of my symphonic period. Elytis' text begins with the words: "And in the beginning he spoke and the seas were created." In order to emphasize the idea of Genesis, I introduced, very briefly, a musical expression of chaos. This was for me a symbolic gesture. It was as if I was saying: I found myself in the chaos of contemporary European music and am now leading myself out of this chaos towards the Genesis of a new musical world.
(From "My Artistic Credo", 1970)
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