Do you notice a mistake?
Musician, poet, composer of melodies, songs, and symphonies, fighter, thinker, humanist, universalist — over the years, many words have been used to describe the most enthusiastically creative personality in contemporary Greece, the late composer, politician, and academician Mikis Theodorakis. Far from being contradictory, these words complement each other, as music and politics were two sides of the same coin in his life. Songs and symphonies, melodies and humanist ideals coexist in his music and political writings; Greekness and ecumenism converge and converse.
From poetry to political and philosophical essays, from his autobiography to musical analyses, Theodorakis expressed versatility and dynamism in his writing. While his poetry and his autobiography, Οι δρόμοι του αρχάγγελου (The Roads of the Archangel), are clearly literary, his other texts fall into two broad categories: texts on music and culture, and texts on politics and philosophy.
In the first category: Μουσική για τις μάζες (Music for the Masses, 1972), Ανατομία της μουσικής (Anatomy of Music, 1983), Music and Theater (1983), Για την ελληνική μουσική (For Greek Music, 1986), Μελοποιημένη Ποίηση (Poetry Set to Music, three volumes, 1997-1999), and “Πού να βρω την ψυχή μου…”: Μουσική, Τέχνη και Πολιτισμός (“Where Can I Find My Soul?”: Music, Art and Civilization, Ideology, 2002).
The second category: Το χρέος (The Debt, 1974), Περί Τέχνης (On Art, 1976), Δημοκρατική και συγκεντρωτική αριστερά (The Democratic and Centralized Left, 1976), Οι μνηστήρες της Πηνελόπης (Penelope’s Suitors, 1976), Για μια κυβέρνηση εθνικής συνεργασίας (For a Government of National Cooperation, 1977-1978), Η αλλαγή: Προβλήματα ενότητας της Αριστεράς (Change: Problems of Unity of the Left, 1978), Μαχόμενη Κουλτούρα (Fighting Culture, 1982), Star System (1984), Στοιχεία για μια νέα πολιτική (Elements for a New Policy, 1986), Αντιμανιφέστο (Counter-Manifesto, 1989), Πού πάμε (Where Are We Going?), “Πού να βρω την ψυχή μου…”: Ιδεολογία (“Where Can I Find My Soul?”: Ideology, 2003), Το Μανιφέστο των Λαμπράκηδων (The Lambrakis Youth Manifesto, 2003), and Σπίθα για μια Ελλάδα ανεξάρτητη και δυνατή (Spark for an Independent and Strong Greece, 2011).
Among these works, Μουσική για τις μάζες, Ανατομία της μουσικής, Μελοποιημένη Ποίηση, Το χρέος, the “Πού να βρω την ψυχή μου…” trilogy, and Σπίθα για μια Ελλάδα ανεξάρτητη και δυνατή are particularly useful for understanding Theodorakis’s artistic output and his worldview. But his masterpiece is undoubtedly Οι δρόμοι του αρχάγγελου, a monumental work in five volumes, written and published between 1986 and 1995. It presents Theodorakis’s memories as a combatant and his experiences as an artist. He refers to specific events and important periods in contemporary Greek history, thus evoking the story of his own life, which is entwined with the history of twentieth-century Greece.
Theodorakis’s adventure with words began in his teens; his first collection of poems, ΣΙΑΟ, was published in 1939, under the pseudonym Ντίνος Μάης (Dinos Mais). With poems from this period, “the poet vividly drew the youthful soul, restless and pure”:1
I feel a flame inside me
that consumes me and saves me!
I feel wings opening inside me
and lifting me
far above the lands of an inaudible Harmony,
and an invisible Beauty!2
While he expressed his thoughts, sorrows, joys, and worries in poetry throughout his life, Theodorakis was also an avid reader of the poetry of others, as many of his works testify, including this passage from Οι δρόμοι του αρχάγγελου:
From the beginning of my interest in music, all I did was set the poems I liked to read and recite. I’ll let those who wish to laugh, but I’ll say it again: when I read a poem, sometimes “I listen” and sometimes “I don’t listen” to its music. I love Cavafy’s poetry, but I’ve never heard the slightest melodic sound in the emotional-psychic-spiritual upheaval that reading it provokes in me.3
For his musical settings, Theodorakis chose poems for their originality and for the feelings they could stir in the soul of the people. For this reason, he turned to poets, Greek or foreign, who express “Greekness” in all its forms: grandeur, decadence, freedom, faith, passion, the beauty of nature, and love.
However, when he felt the need — especially during the difficult periods of his arrest, imprisonment, and exile — he became an author again, producing such poetic works as [work: 38286][ Ο Ήλιος και ο Χρόνος] (The Sun and Time, 1967), Τα τραγούδια του Ανδρέα (Andreas’s Songs, 1968), Αρκαδία Ι (Arcadia I, 1968), Αρκαδία VI (Arcadia VI, 1969), and Αρκαδία X (Arcadia X, 1969). Evoking the conditions under which the collection Ο Ήλιος και ο Χρόνος was born, he explains in Το χρέος: “I’m not a poet, but when the verses began to hammer at my mind, I felt how much words could clothe themselves in blood; how much they could deliver me.”4
From his experience of war in the 1940s, Theodorakis became convinced that spiritual liberation and political rebirth require long struggle and enormous sacrifice. Thus, he revised his own ideology: he saw Christianity as an inevitable sacrifice, adopted the ideas of Marxism and dreamed of a utopian humanism that would save and unite not only Greeks, but all humanity through the beauty created by art.5 He writes in “Πού να βρω την ψυχή μου…”: Τέχνη και Πολιτισμός:
I think what I kept from Christianity is the message of love, which was quickly overturned by my encounter with Marxism, which demanded struggles based on hatred between social classes. There was a huge inner battle between the two theories, which were shaking us up at the time.
Fortunately for me, a third path, or rather a first, entirely personal path, the path of “Universal Harmony,” was revealed to me. The “Law of Universal Harmony” was above love and hate because it functioned as a necessity, if, of course, we wanted to be worthy of the life offered. So, for me, the world of Christianity focused on the message of love, whereas the world of Marxism crystallized the idea of social justice.6
This “cosmo-theory,” which he called the “theory of Universal Harmony,” has two postulates: Love and Justice are the essential elements of universal harmony, and God is the “ideal center” from whom the laws of Nature and Music spring.7
Theodorakis added:
All parts of Pan — the Great Whole — make up a giant crystallized harmony, while they swirl around the sacred Center of the Cosmos. Man is fulfilled when he identifies with this Center. But it is not so much his body, curiously enough, as his mind that handicaps him. His mind is a “devastated universe.” For the breath of disorder, confusion, and chaos has paralyzed and necrotized it. So that the mind continually describes irregular figures, curves, and never straight lines. Yet the “Sacred Center” calls to us. It attracts us like an immense magnet. When we have attained self-knowledge, we feel the irresistible attraction.8
Theodorakis embraced the conviction of the eminent modern Greek poet Kostis Palamas (whose texts had a profound influence on him) that “the rhythm of poetry — the rhythmic stride — symbolizes the rhythm that governs the Universe.” To this idea, he added the concept of Harmony, the rhythmic harmony we see in the movement of the stars when we gaze at the celestial vault.
Without knowing either Pythagoras’ theory or the later theories of his followers, Theodorakis concluded:
Music, spread like light, is the sonic expression of Universal Harmony . . . and can lead us to the Law of Objective Truth that governs our path through timeless Time. . . . It can unite us with the Center of Universal Harmony, that is, it can contribute to our attaining the highest degree of human happiness, serenity, and fulfillment.9
How will this happen? Theodorakis believed that
“Art is the only force that can transmit to us the Law that determines the Harmony of the Universe. Which can transform each of us into tiny solar systems and, in general, star systems. So that each of us is “in tune” with the Universe surrounding us. So that our inner harmony is in tune with the Universal Harmony. And so that we become living molecules of a single Harmony.10
Put differently,
Art, thanks to the harmonic laws that generate it, can, by guiding people’s minds and souls, make them move in exactly the same way as it. In other words, it can transport the Law that creates it into Man. But this Law is none other than the Law of the Universe, of total Creation. As a result, the initiate identifies with Universal Harmony. He lives!11
Theodorakis grew up listening to traditional Greek music (Byzantine and demotic) and the popular music rebetiko, which he first heard during his exile in Ikaria. The two musical genres were essential sources of inspiration, complemented by his advanced musical studies at the Athens and Paris conservatories.
Before his departure for France, he presented some of his compositions to Greek audiences, notably Πέντε Κρητικά τραγούδια (Five Cretan Songs) and Συρτός Χανιώτικος (A Song from Hania). But it was through the premiere of [work: 38361][Το Πανηγύρι της Ασή-Γωνιάς] (The Festival of Assi-Gonia), with his teacher Philoktitis Oikonomidis conducting, that he was recognized as a “truly talented young composer” by the founder of the Greek national school Manolis Kalomoiris (in an article in Έθνος, 12 May 1950). Around this time, he also began collaborating with Chorodrame, Greece’s first contemporary dance company, founded by Rallou Manou in 1952, and gradually became familiar with ballet music.
Theodorakis’s time in Europe, 1954-1960, was characterized by intense activity as he tried to discover his “personal system”12 of composition. He studied both Greek folk music and the latest trends in contemporary music, then virtually unknown in Greece. He composed without respite: song cycles, such as Ο Κύκλος (The Circle), Les Quatre Éluard, and Les Six Éluard; symphonic works, such as Concerto for Piano, Suite No. 2, Suite No. 3: The Mother, and Suite No. 413; film scores, ballet music, and so on. His First Symphony14 — which reflects the tragedy of the Greek Civil War — is his most important work of the period; it was premiered in 1955 by the Athens State Orchestra, conducted by Andreas Paridis.
After the success of the orchestral works Theodorakis composed for Michael Powell’s films, Ill Met by Moonlight (1957) and Honeymoon (1958), he was offered an exclusive contract as a film composer in Hollywood. The melody of “Honeymoon Song,” which plays during the film’s opening credits, became an international hit when English lyrics were added to it and the Beatles performed it. The Spanish version, “Luna de miel,” was popular in Latin America and was even broadcast on Cuban state radio’s first program. Because of the song’s popularity, Theodorakis was welcomed to Cuba by Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara in 1962.
Theodorakis’s main passion, however, was dance. He composed for ballets by Ludmilla Tchérina for Covent Garden (with the Royal Ballet) and Stuttgart. The 1959 Covent Garden production of Antigone (with Svetlana Beriosova, Leslie Edwards, and Rudolf Nureyev) was a huge success, with over a hundred performances, and entered the repertoire of the Stuttgart Ballet in 1961.
Despite these accomplishments, Theodorakis remained dissatisfied and began to question the role of art and its relationship with society. When he heard Yannis Ritsos’s poem Επιτάφιος (Epitaph) recited in 1958, he felt as if he had been suddenly freed from exile. It seemed evident that the poem should be set to music, which Theodorakis did immediately — it was a revelation for him. The impact of the work on the public made him realize that he no longer wanted to create music for an “elite” or consider himself part of a musical elite. Inspired by the idea that an artist should be the most sensitive seismograph of their time, a concept he drew from Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, Theodorakis dreamed of creating “music without frontiers.” He envisioned music that could resonate with both the elite and the masses, appealing to the solitary individual as well as the crowd — music that could be both “the murmur of the hermit and the clamor of men.”15
Theodorakis returned to Greece in the early 1960s, influenced by the idealism of Dionysios Solomos and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, as well as Marxist-Leninist ideology and the model of the Soviet cultural revolution. He became the head of the “politico-cultural renaissance movement” and set about creating “music for the masses,” where the term “masses” referred not to a disorderly crowd, but to an educated and engaged populace.16 As an artist, Theodorakis aimed to reach “the living, educated, concerned, responsible citizen,” rather than a small group of so-called initiates who consider themselves better than others.17
He sought to revive the ancient idea of “the union of the poet, the composer, and the people.”18 Theodorakis’s work was dedicated to advancing great humanist ideals such as world peace, democracy, and collaboration.
“Music for the masses,” which Theodorakis believed could contribute to “the education of the people . . . and consequently to their liberation,” emerged from the fusion of traditional and popular Greek music with contemporary Greek poetry.19 Starting with songs was a deliberate pedagogical strategy by Theodorakis. He aimed to gradually familiarize people with the concept of musical form, moving from simple, isolated songs to more complex structures such as song cycles, contemporary popular musical tragedies (inspired by Bertolt Brecht), popular oratorios, and chanson-fleuve, which he defined as “metasymphonic music.”20 These forms of popular art song were intended to be shared with the public through a new medium, the popular concert, which Theodorakis modeled after the ancient Eleusinian mysteries.21
Theodorakis’s melodies clearly show the influence of Greek folk and traditional music, as well as his classical training. But he aimed to create authentic melodies, which led him to experiment with new sound combinations, such as by combining traditional folk instruments with those of the symphony orchestra. For example, he was the first to include the santouri in a symphony orchestra in his popular oratorio Άξιον Εστί (Axion Esti). In his popular musical tragedy Το τραγούδι του νεκρού αδελφού (The Ballad of the Dead Brother), he added the violin, cello, trumpet, and trombone to a folk music ensemble.
Through his “popular art song movement,” Theodorakis brought the poetry of figures like Angelos Sikelianos, Yannis Ritsos, Odysseus Elytis, Paul Éluard, and Léopold Sédar Senghor — previously appreciated by only a select few — to a wider audience. His songs, many of which have reached beyond Greece’s borders, have become deeply embedded in the collective memory, often accompanying periods of protest in Greece and elsewhere.
However, this powerful movement came to a sudden stop in 1967 because of the military coup and the dictatorship that followed. Theodorakis responded by resisting through his words and music, even during his imprisonment and exile. After his release, he took refuge in France, where he continued to condemn the regime and organized protest concerts across the world. During this period, he composed works like Νύχτα του θανάτου (Night of Death, 1968), Τα τραγούδια του Αγώνα (The Songs of the Struggle, 1967-1969), 18 λιανοτράγουδα της πικρής πατρίδας (18 Songs of the Bitter Fatherland, 1972), and the period’s masterpiece, Canto General (1972), inspired by Pablo Neruda’s poetry.
After the dictatorship fell, despite the success of his erudite-popular works, the “music for the masses” movement gradually lost momentum. Disappointed, Theodorakis returned to Paris in the early 1980s and shifted his focus to symphonic music. This change was liberating for him, like a return to himself. Notable works from this period include Symphony No. 3, Symphony No. 7 (“Spring Symphony”), Κατά Σαδδουκαίων (The Passion of the Sadducees), Symphony No. 4: Of Choirs, Requiem, the operas Κώστας Καρυωτάκης (Kostas Karyotakis), the Μήδεια (Medea)-Ηλέκτρα (Electra)-Αντιγόνη (Antigone) trilogy, and his final opera Λυσιστράτη (Lysistrata, 2004). Based on the play by Aristophanes, Lysistrata is anti-militaristic, reflecting Theodorakis’s reaction to the multiple wars that were occurring around the world at the time; it served as his final appeal for peace and solidarity.
Theodorakis’s political awareness, first as a member of the resistance and then as a Communist, exuded an intensity and precociousness that influenced more than his music. He took part in public affairs not only as a citizen, but also as an elected representative and political leader: he was a member of parliament from 1981 until his resignation in 1986, then from 1989 until his resignation in 1992; and minister of state without portfolio from 1990 until his resignation in 1992. Other political commitments punctuated his career: he founded the Movement for Civilization and Peace in 1976; helped organize the Civilization and Socialism congress (Crete, 1977), attended by a number of foreign personalities including François Mitterrand, Roger Garaudy, and Jacques Attali; held concerts to protest the unreasonable use of nuclear energy (in 1986, after Chernobyl); organized peace congresses in Tübingen and Cologne (1988), involving politicians (Oskar Lafontaine, Johannes Rau), writers (Friedrich Dürrenmatt), and artists; embarked on European concert tours under the auspices of Amnesty International (1990) and Eurosolar (in favor of solar energy); and held demonstrations against illiteracy and drugs.
Theodorakis also worked toward dialogue with Turkey. He initiated Greek–Turkish friendship commissions with the participation of such important figures as Aziz Nesin and Yaşar Kemal (1986). He held concerts in Turkey with the composer Zülfü Livaneli, who performed Turkish translations of Theodorakis’s songs. Later, he was the unofficial ambassador to the Turkish government of the successive Greek prime ministers Andreas Papandreou and Konstantinos Mitsotakis. As a minister, he made official visits to Turkey and Albania to defend the rights of the Greek minorities there. As president of an international commission in Paris, he fought against the imprisonment of members of the Turkish opposition, Haydar Kutlu and Nihat Sargin, whose release he obtained.
During his tour of the United States and Canada in 1994, aimed at strengthening cultural centers for Greeks abroad, the US Senate received Theodorakis and paid tribute to his cultural contributions and his human rights work.
In February 1999, he supported Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdish cause. A month later, he was one of the first to denounce the Kosovo War and the NATO attacks on Serbia. He protested by lodging a complaint with the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague “against the political and military leadership of NATO for war crimes committed during the bombings of 24 March and 1 May 1999.” In 2001 he took part in a demonstration against the war in Afghanistan. He condemned the terrorist attacks against the United States, but added that the Americans and their allies were “attempting another genocide with their attack on Afghanistan.” In February 2003, he took part in a large demonstration in central Athens against the war in Iraq. In 2004 he supported the Palestinian people alongside Yasser Arafat by organizing a major concert-demonstration in Syntagma Square in Athens.
Two dates stand out in Theodorakis’s sociopolitical work: the founding of the Lambrakis Youth on 8 June 1963 and the founding of Spark: Independent People’s Movement on 1 December 2010. These initiatives arose at crucial moments in contemporary Greek history, during periods of profound political, social, economic, and cultural instability and uncertainty. In the first case, Theodorakis, wishing to pay tribute to the pacifist and United Democratic Left parliamentarian Grigoris Lambrakis, murdered in unexplained circumstances, created a movement whose “aim is to incite Greeks of all ages to revolt for a more democratic Greece where Justice and Culture will dominate.”22 In the second case, almost fifty years later, he again sought to rouse the Greek people, stunned by the socioeconomic decisions imposed by the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Union. He founded a movement whose main aims were “national independence, the dominant people, patriotic rebirth.” A study of the manifestos and principles defended by the two movements shows that they are both expressions of the “theory of Universal Harmony,” defined as “personal deliverance and social liberation, through Art, with the aim of conquering Social Harmony.”23
Translated from the French by Chrisoula Petridis
1. Mikis THEODORAKIS, Οι δρόμοι του αρχάγγελου, Athens, Kedros, 1986, vol. 1, p. 208. ↩
2. Ιbid., p. 204. ↩
3. Ιbid., pp. 135-136. ↩
4. Mikis THEODORAKIS, Το χρέος, Athens, Pleias, 1974, vol. 1, p. 258. ↩
5. Kalliopi STIGA, “Mikis Theodorakis: le chantre du rapprochement de la musique savante et de la musique Populaire,” doctoral thesis, Université Lumière-Lyon 2, 2006, vol. 1, p. 62. ↩
6. Mikis THEODORAKIS, “Πού να βρω την ψυχή μου…”: Τέχνη και Πολιτισμός, Athens, Livanis, 2002, p. 39-41. ↩
7. Mikis THEODORAKIS, Μελοποιημένη Ποίηση, Athens, Ypsilon, 1999, vol. 3, p. 156. ↩
8. Mikis THEODORAKIS, Οι δρόμοι του αρχάγγελου, p. 99-100. ↩
9. Mikis THEODORAKIS, Μελοποιημένη Ποίηση, p. 162. ↩
10. Ibid., p. 151. ↩
11. Ibid. ↩
12. Mikis THEODORAKIS, Περί Τέχνης, Athens, Papazissis, 1976, p. 100. ↩
13. Suite No. 4 is unfinished. ↩
14. This work, composed between 1948 and 1953 in Ikaria, where Mikis Theodorakis was in exile, should not be confused with Symphony No. 1, which he composed in Athens between 1943 and 1945 while he involved in the Resistance. ↩
15. Iakovos KAMPANELLIS, “A Tribute to Mikis Theodorakis,” Ελίτροχος (Elitrochos), 8 (1996), p. 38. ↩
16. Kalliopi STIGA, Mikis Theodorakis, vol. 1, p. 123. ↩
17. Mikis THEODORAKIS, “Πού να βρω την ψυχή μου…”: Μουσική, Athens, Livanis, 2002, p. 261. ↩
18. Georgios GIANNARIS, Μελοποιημένη Ποίηση και Μουσικά Έργα, Athens, Theoria, 1985, p. 53. ↩
19. Mikis THEODORAKIS, Μουσική για τις μάζες, Athens, Olkos, 1972, p. 22. ↩
20. “The difference between metasymphonic and symphonic music can be seen in the existence, in metasymphonic music, of the following elements: a) folk song, b) traditional instruments and folk singers, c) symphonic instruments, d) choirs, e) learned poetic text” (Mikis THEODORAKIS, Ανατομία της μουσικής, Athens, Sychroni Epohi, 1983, p. 36). ↩
21. Mikis THEODORAKIS, Μουσική για τις μάζες, p. 23. ↩
22. Kalliopi STIGA, Mikis Theodorakis, vol. 1, p. 100. ↩
23. Mikis THEODORAKIS, Οι δρόμοι του αρχάγγελου, p. 142. ↩
Do you notice a mistake?