reimagining-abstracts - University of Birmingham

eflection of the German sociologists M.Weber and W.Sombart, who argued that the
beliefs, the ideas and the meaning that people give to their actions are very important
in order to study a society; the method that is going to be applied is the classic
thematic analysis of discourse.
Anastasia Siopsi
siopsi@ionio.gr
The birth of music out of the spirit of tragedy: On the role of music
in productions of ancient drama in twentieth-century Greece
The main purpose of this paper is to offer readings of the ways that Greek composers
depict ‘images’ of Greece in music for stage productions of ancient dramas and
comedies in twentieth-century Greece, by taking into account the broader attitudes of
Greek archeology and of how Greeks view their past.
In modern Greece of the first decades of the twentieth century, the
predominant notions of ‘Hellenism’, or ‘greekness’, interpret Greek history as an
uninterrupted evolution from the classical past to Byzantium. In terms of music,
continuity was believed to be found from ancient Greek music to Byzantine hymns
and folk songs. This theory, supported by important scholars and composers like
George Pachtikos and Ioannis Sakellaridis who wrote music for productions of
ancient dramas at that era, was also encouraged by foreign intellectuals such as Louis-
Albert Bourgault-Ducoundray. The incorporation of folk songs and Byzantine modes
into the musical means of narration became a central compositional practice for a
large part of music written for ancient dramas throughout the twentieth century, with
or without nationalistic undertones.
Music written for productions of ancient drama in modern Greece distanced
itself from the mainstream of European operatic tradition. Productions of ancient
drama and comedy in twentieth-century Greece, as I will attempt to prove,
deliberately and systematically avoided the adaptation of operatic forms. Also,
symphonic music in productions of ancient dramas was introduced as early as the
interwar period. However, characteristics like folk tradition and byzantine music, nonwestern
elements, a more lyrical approach due to respect of the words, the use of
magnetic tapes and electronic sounds and other experimental approaches formed
alternative approaches to ancient drama as musical theatre, especially from 1960s
onwards, by important composers like Jani Christou, Jannis Xenakis, Theodoros
Antoniou, Argyris Kounadis, Giorgos Kouroupos and so forth.
Anastasia Stouraiti
a.stouraiti@gold.ac.uk
Greek Antiquaries and Archaeological Knowledge in Early Modern
Venice
Current research on the emergence of archaeology in modern Greece has largely left a
blind spot around the period preceding the formation of the Greek nation-state. On the
one hand, traditional historians imply that Ottoman-ruled Greeks directly identified
with antiquities through notions of continuity with the ancient Greek civilisation.
Against these assumptions, other studies have argued that early modern Greeks
regarded antiquities as alien artefacts belonging to the realm of legend, and that
contact with European neoclassicism and the rise of Greek nationalism since the
eighteenth century reversed this perception.
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