Nikolaos Skalkottas

Nikolaos (Nikos) Skalkottas (Greek: Νικόλαος Σκαλκώτας) (born 1901 in Chalcis, died 1949 in Athens) was a Greek composer of 20th-century music. A member of the Second Viennese School,He drew his influences from both the classical repertoire and the Greek tradition. This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... 1901 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Chalcis or Chalkida, Halkida, Halkis or Chalkis (Greek, Modern: Χαλκίδα, Ancient/Katharevousa: _is), the chief town of the island of Euboea in Greece, situated on the strait of the Euripus at its narrowest point. ... 1949 is a common year starting on Saturday. ... The Acropolis in central Athens, one of the most important landmarks in world history. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Music Look up Music in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Wikisource, as part of the 1911 Encyclopedia Wikiproject, has original text related to this article: Music Wikicities has a wiki about Music: Music Music City : a collaborative music database All Music Guide... The Second Viennese School was a group of composers made up of Arnold Schoenberg and those who studied under him in early 20th century Vienna. ... Classical music is music considered classical, as sophisticated and refined, in a regional tradition. ... The musical legacy of Greece is as diverse as its history. ...

Very early on he started violin lessons with his father and uncle. He continued studying at the Athens Conservatory and graduated in 1920. From 1921 to 1933 he lived in Berlin, where he first took violin lessons with Willy Hess. In 1923 he decided to give up his career as a violinist and become a composer. He studied composition with Paul Kahn, Paul Juon, Kurt Weill, Philipp Jarnach and Arnold Schönberg. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, Skalkottas returned to Athens, where he earned a living playing in different orchestras. This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Paul Juon (March 6, 1872–August 21, 1940) was a Moscow-born composer and student of Anton Arensky, Sergei Taneyev and Woldemar Bargiel. ... Kurt Weill, a photo taken in Salzburg, Austria, 1934 Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950), born in Dessau, Germany and died in New York, was a German composer active from the 1920s until his death. ... Arnold Schoenberg, Los Angeles, 1948 For the American music critic and journalist, see Harold Charles Schonberg. ...

Skalkottas' early works, most of which he wrote in Berlin and some of those written in Athens, are lost. The earliest of his works available to us today are dating from 1922-24 and are piano compositions as well as the orchestration of "Cretan Feast" by Dimitris Mitropoulos. Among the later works written in Berlin are the sonata for solo violin, several works for piano, chamber music and some symphonic works. During the period 1931-1934 Skalkottas did not compose anything. He started composing again in Athens continued until he died. His works comprise symphonic works (Greek Dances, the symphonic overture Return of Ulysses, the fairy drama Mayday Spell, the second symphonic suite, the ballet The Maiden and Death, the Classical Symphony for winds, a Sinfonietta and several concertos), chamber music works, as well as vocal works. Dimitris Mitropoulos (Greek: Δημήτρης Μητρόπουλος) (March 1, 1896 – November 2, 1960) was a Greek conductor, pianist, and composer who spent most of his career in the United States. ...

Skalkottas died unexpectedly in 1949, leaving some symphonic works with incomplete orchestration. Besides his musical work, Skalkottas compiled an important theoretical work, consisting of several "musical articles", a treatise on orchestration, musical analyses etc. Skalkottas soon shaped his personal features of musical writing so that any influence of his teachers was soon assimilated creatively in a manner of composition that is absolutely personal and recognizable. Thus --in view of his works available to us-- Skalkottas' evolution as a composer follows certain invariable axes that define his confrontation with the historical, technical and musical challenges of his epoch, throughout his life.

Skalkottas's short life seems to symbolise the special vulnerability of the Schoenberg pupil whose musical roots lay a little outside Austro-Germanic traditions. Throughout his career Skalkottas remained faithful to the neo-classical ideals of Neue Sachlichkeit and "absolute music" proclaimed in Europe in the 1925. Like Schoenberg, he persistently cultivated classical forms, but his worklist is divided between atonal and 12-note and tonal works, both categories spanning his entire composing career. Such apparent heterogeneity could have been intensified by a love of Greek folk music. Nevertheless, he remained sceptical of the attempts of his Greek contemporaries to integrate it into the modern symphonic style, and only in one major work he juxtaposed and mixed folk, atonal and 12-note styles: the incidental music to Christos Evelpides's 1943 fairy-tale drama Mayday Spell, Skalkottas was evidently reluctant to deploy the kind of structural and stylistic tensions that would have betrayed the integrationist ideals of his Schoenbergian inheritance. This could be seen (in terms of a comprehensive connecting impulse) as a link between the second Viennese, Busoni and Stravinsky schools. Skalkottas was able to draw diverse and in some ways conflicting threads together and not to compromise, rather to enhance, his own originality, range and power of expression. Nevertheless, his music has had only limited influence on postwar trends, even in Greece, probably due to its generally uncompromising demands on listener and performer alike, and its seemingly conservative formal and thematic aspects. Arnold Schoenberg, Los Angeles, 1948 Arnold Schoenberg, (the anglicized form of Schönberg—Schoenberg changed the spelling officially when he became a U.S. citizen) (September 13, 1874 – July 13, 1951) was a composer, born in Vienna, Austria. ... Die Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) was an Expressionist art movement founded in Germany in the aftermath of World War I, by Otto Dix and George Grosz. ... Absolute music is a term used within the classical music field to describe music that is not explicitly about anything. ... Atonality in a general sense describes music that departs from the system of tonal hierarchies that are said to characterized the sound of classical European music from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. ... The adjective tonal can refer to: tonality in music a tonal language the opposite of Nagual, in the specific context of Carlos Castaneda, the tonal is what makes the world. ... Dante Michaelangelo Benvenuto Ferruccio Busoni (April 1, 1866 – July 27, Italian composer, pianist, music teacher and conductor. ... Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky () (June 17, 1882 – April 6, 1971) was a composer of modern classical music. ...

As far as I am aware, Skalkottas's centenary day, 21 March 2004, passed without any significant acknowledgement from the musical world at large.

External link

• The Friends of Nikos Skalkottas`s Music Society, official site
• Feinberg-Skalkottas Society
• article in Greek newspaper, Ta Nea (in Greek)
• Concerto for 3 bouzoukis and orchestra