Tweet
Travellers, Philhellenes and visions of Greek music
The emergence of Greece and Greek nationalism, claims MICHAEL CHRISTOFORIDIS, played an important role in shaping the Romantic music tradition of the 19th century.
13 Oct 2009
Michael Christoforidis
In the early nineteenth century, Western European travellers to the Levant were baffled by Greek music. Unlike the visual arts and literature, music (apart from the accompanying lyrics) is a non-representational art-form and travellers found it difficult to relate what they encountered in contemporary Greek music to what little they knew of musical practice in antiquity or to the refined music of their own cultures.
The few surviving notated fragments of ancient Greek music gave little indication of how the music should be performed.
The employment of unfamiliar scales, rhythms and sonorities likewise made the folk and popular music of Greece, and to some extent the music of the Orthodox Church, seem chaotic or unintelligible to the travellers who encountered it.
Their incomprehension was accentuated by conflicting concepts of music and its function. For instance, the meditative character of Orthodox chant was not well understood in comparison to the Protestant and Catholic liturgical music of the time. Writing in 1830, W. M. Stafford noted:
The church music of the modern Greeks is described as very monotonous, and as being calculated to send the hearers to sleep, instead of rousing and animating them, like the strains of their ancient melody.
Touring Greece in the early years of the 19th century, travellers like Edward Dodwell led some people to doubt the classical descriptions of music’s ability to inspire specific emotions. He attributed any effects to “the natural excitability of the people, rather than to any intrinsic excellence in the music.” Dodwell also observed the “primitive” instruments used by the modern Greeks, describing their sounds in unflattering terms, especially the “whining lyra.”
Several commentators also observed that the Greeks and Turks neither admire nor understand any music but their own.
Curiously, Dodwell claims that: “The only European tune which they sing, and which they confess to have almost equal merit with their own music is ‘Malbrouk,’ which has been introduced into Constantinople by the Franks, and is sung in many of the large towns of Greece. Malbrook is more commonly known in English as the music accompanying ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’”
Dance was seen to be inseparably associated with music making, which served to underline the apparent antiquity and primitive nature of these activities.
The wealth of classical images depicting different styles of dancing encouraged writers to claim that: “Many of these dances are still retained in Greece, and probably with little variation from the original models.”
Gradually, Western writers with greater musical learning and sensibility began to study some of the structures of the music and started to make a case for Modern Greek music shedding light on the practices of antiquity. Here is an extract from The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal published in London in 1823:
The first Modern Greek air we heard sung in the Levant appeared to us, a tune totally unintelligible and ridiculous. On a repetition, and on hearing other Greek melodies, we found reason to qualify our first opinion... A full research into the Modern Greek music would throw considerable light upon some obscure parts of that of Ancient Greece, and perhaps enlarge our ideas of the science in general; in the same manner as the study of the Modern Greek, however deviating from the language of Aristophanes and Plato, would infinitely facilitate and accelerate the acquirement of the Ancient.
But while writers began to engage critically with Greek folk music, some learned Greeks were at pains to westernise this music, especially in its presentation to Philhellene circles in Western Europe.
This practice, while making the music palatable to aristocratic and salon audiences in Paris, Vienna and London, led more informed musicians to speculate that the music did not stem from antiquity.
This style of presentation was also prevalent in several early published collections of Greek melodies. The compilers had westernised the melodies by standardising their rhythm and melody, and with the addition of harmonic accompaniments on the piano, features that were completely foreign to the folk music in its original Greek setting.
As Benjamin Walton has recently pointed out, Europeans (and particularly the French) wanted to express their support for the Greek independence struggle by creating artistic representations of contemporary Greece.
Whereas French painters could merge Classical heroism and exotic modernity, composers were faced with their ignorance and incomprehension of contemporary Greek music.
So, in the absence of any knowledge of Greek music, foreign composers began to write hymns to Greece set to French military marches, and even to the Marseillaise (the revolutionary anthem now known as the French national anthem).
These “Greek” marches were also meant to accompany the French philhellenes fighting in Greece.
For the French, this music provided the soundtrack to the Greek uprising, along with the predominantly Italian music accompanying operatic depictions of the Greek struggle.
The most famous of these operas was Gioachino Rossini’s The Siege of Corinth, which premiered at the Paris Opera in 1826, at the height of a wave of pro-Greek sentiment.
The Marseillaise also became the principal model for post-Napoleonic national anthems. The Greek anthem is among the first of the post-Napoleonic European anthems, although there are some earlier examples in Latin America.
The music for the Greek national anthem was written by Corfu composer Nikolaos Mantzaros in 1828 (to verses from Dionysios Solomos’ 1824 poem).
It displays a combination of musical influences, primarily following the model of the French Marseillaise, and employing elements of Italian opera (then in vogue in Corfu).
While admired by King Otto, it was not adopted as the official national anthem until 1862.
The early 19th century also gave rise to musical works that constructed Greece as Western in opposition to Turkey as Oriental. This was especially the case in Vienna, an important centre of philhellenism.
It was achieved through reference to the alla turca style (evident in Mozart’s popular classic, ‘Ronda alla turca’), which appeared after the 1683 Siege of Vienna by the Ottomans, and is meant to evoke the Turkish military Janissary bands.
Works such as Beethoven’s The Ruins of Athens (1811) began evoking the struggle for Greek independence as a contrast between the Turks, as represented by this alla turca style, and a Greece represented by the most exalted of European choral and symphonic styles (without any reference to any form of contemporary or historical Greek music).
In the his famous Nineth symphony, Beethoven weaves this struggle into the fabric of the famous choral Finale, with his setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy acting as the ultimate representation of this style of “Greek” philhellene music.
However, in the aftermath of the War of Independence we also see the start of Greek music being viewed as Oriental, and this coincides with the rise of musical exoticism in Western music. From the 1820s the increasing number of foreigners in Greece saw the rise of musical souvenirs of the Orient penned by these such visitors.
These musical works tried to approximate some elements of the melody, rhythm or accompaniment of Greek folk music, that differentiated it from Western music of the time.
Felicien David, the recognised pioneer of Romantic musical exoticism, actually had his first encounter with ‘Oriental’ music among the Greeks in Smyrna in 1833.
His first piano pieces from this period, included in his Oriental Melodies of 1836, were based on the music he heard in Smyrna.
Music initially provided great challenges for Europeans trying to construct an identity for the Modern Greeks.
The arguments over Greece’s classical heritage and the exotic-Western dichotomy set up in the early decades of the 19th century continued to resonate in European depictions of Greek music for decades, and presented challenges for Greek composers well into the 20th century.
Michael Christoforidis is a senior lecturer in musicology at the Faculty of the VCA and Music at The University of Melbourne.
The emergence of Greece and Greek nationalism, claims MICHAEL CHRISTOFORIDIS, played an important role in shaping the Romantic music tradition of the 19th century.
13 Oct 2009
Michael Christoforidis
In the early nineteenth century, Western European travellers to the Levant were baffled by Greek music. Unlike the visual arts and literature, music (apart from the accompanying lyrics) is a non-representational art-form and travellers found it difficult to relate what they encountered in contemporary Greek music to what little they knew of musical practice in antiquity or to the refined music of their own cultures.
The few surviving notated fragments of ancient Greek music gave little indication of how the music should be performed.
The employment of unfamiliar scales, rhythms and sonorities likewise made the folk and popular music of Greece, and to some extent the music of the Orthodox Church, seem chaotic or unintelligible to the travellers who encountered it.
Their incomprehension was accentuated by conflicting concepts of music and its function. For instance, the meditative character of Orthodox chant was not well understood in comparison to the Protestant and Catholic liturgical music of the time. Writing in 1830, W. M. Stafford noted:
The church music of the modern Greeks is described as very monotonous, and as being calculated to send the hearers to sleep, instead of rousing and animating them, like the strains of their ancient melody.
Touring Greece in the early years of the 19th century, travellers like Edward Dodwell led some people to doubt the classical descriptions of music’s ability to inspire specific emotions. He attributed any effects to “the natural excitability of the people, rather than to any intrinsic excellence in the music.” Dodwell also observed the “primitive” instruments used by the modern Greeks, describing their sounds in unflattering terms, especially the “whining lyra.”
Several commentators also observed that the Greeks and Turks neither admire nor understand any music but their own.
Curiously, Dodwell claims that: “The only European tune which they sing, and which they confess to have almost equal merit with their own music is ‘Malbrouk,’ which has been introduced into Constantinople by the Franks, and is sung in many of the large towns of Greece. Malbrook is more commonly known in English as the music accompanying ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’”
Dance was seen to be inseparably associated with music making, which served to underline the apparent antiquity and primitive nature of these activities.
The wealth of classical images depicting different styles of dancing encouraged writers to claim that: “Many of these dances are still retained in Greece, and probably with little variation from the original models.”
Gradually, Western writers with greater musical learning and sensibility began to study some of the structures of the music and started to make a case for Modern Greek music shedding light on the practices of antiquity. Here is an extract from The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal published in London in 1823:
The first Modern Greek air we heard sung in the Levant appeared to us, a tune totally unintelligible and ridiculous. On a repetition, and on hearing other Greek melodies, we found reason to qualify our first opinion... A full research into the Modern Greek music would throw considerable light upon some obscure parts of that of Ancient Greece, and perhaps enlarge our ideas of the science in general; in the same manner as the study of the Modern Greek, however deviating from the language of Aristophanes and Plato, would infinitely facilitate and accelerate the acquirement of the Ancient.
But while writers began to engage critically with Greek folk music, some learned Greeks were at pains to westernise this music, especially in its presentation to Philhellene circles in Western Europe.
This practice, while making the music palatable to aristocratic and salon audiences in Paris, Vienna and London, led more informed musicians to speculate that the music did not stem from antiquity.
This style of presentation was also prevalent in several early published collections of Greek melodies. The compilers had westernised the melodies by standardising their rhythm and melody, and with the addition of harmonic accompaniments on the piano, features that were completely foreign to the folk music in its original Greek setting.
As Benjamin Walton has recently pointed out, Europeans (and particularly the French) wanted to express their support for the Greek independence struggle by creating artistic representations of contemporary Greece.
Whereas French painters could merge Classical heroism and exotic modernity, composers were faced with their ignorance and incomprehension of contemporary Greek music.
So, in the absence of any knowledge of Greek music, foreign composers began to write hymns to Greece set to French military marches, and even to the Marseillaise (the revolutionary anthem now known as the French national anthem).
These “Greek” marches were also meant to accompany the French philhellenes fighting in Greece.
For the French, this music provided the soundtrack to the Greek uprising, along with the predominantly Italian music accompanying operatic depictions of the Greek struggle.
The most famous of these operas was Gioachino Rossini’s The Siege of Corinth, which premiered at the Paris Opera in 1826, at the height of a wave of pro-Greek sentiment.
The Marseillaise also became the principal model for post-Napoleonic national anthems. The Greek anthem is among the first of the post-Napoleonic European anthems, although there are some earlier examples in Latin America.
The music for the Greek national anthem was written by Corfu composer Nikolaos Mantzaros in 1828 (to verses from Dionysios Solomos’ 1824 poem).
It displays a combination of musical influences, primarily following the model of the French Marseillaise, and employing elements of Italian opera (then in vogue in Corfu).
While admired by King Otto, it was not adopted as the official national anthem until 1862.
The early 19th century also gave rise to musical works that constructed Greece as Western in opposition to Turkey as Oriental. This was especially the case in Vienna, an important centre of philhellenism.
It was achieved through reference to the alla turca style (evident in Mozart’s popular classic, ‘Ronda alla turca’), which appeared after the 1683 Siege of Vienna by the Ottomans, and is meant to evoke the Turkish military Janissary bands.
Works such as Beethoven’s The Ruins of Athens (1811) began evoking the struggle for Greek independence as a contrast between the Turks, as represented by this alla turca style, and a Greece represented by the most exalted of European choral and symphonic styles (without any reference to any form of contemporary or historical Greek music).
In the his famous Nineth symphony, Beethoven weaves this struggle into the fabric of the famous choral Finale, with his setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy acting as the ultimate representation of this style of “Greek” philhellene music.
However, in the aftermath of the War of Independence we also see the start of Greek music being viewed as Oriental, and this coincides with the rise of musical exoticism in Western music. From the 1820s the increasing number of foreigners in Greece saw the rise of musical souvenirs of the Orient penned by these such visitors.
These musical works tried to approximate some elements of the melody, rhythm or accompaniment of Greek folk music, that differentiated it from Western music of the time.
Felicien David, the recognised pioneer of Romantic musical exoticism, actually had his first encounter with ‘Oriental’ music among the Greeks in Smyrna in 1833.
His first piano pieces from this period, included in his Oriental Melodies of 1836, were based on the music he heard in Smyrna.
Music initially provided great challenges for Europeans trying to construct an identity for the Modern Greeks.
The arguments over Greece’s classical heritage and the exotic-Western dichotomy set up in the early decades of the 19th century continued to resonate in European depictions of Greek music for decades, and presented challenges for Greek composers well into the 20th century.
Michael Christoforidis is a senior lecturer in musicology at the Faculty of the VCA and Music at The University of Melbourne.
Interesting read....... Ancient music by MODERN Greeks......
