Some music of the light for those dark days...
This is "Ναοί στο σχήμα του ουρανού" (Temples in the shape of the sky) composed by one of Greece's most illustrious composers and contemporary cultural and political icons, Mikis Theodorakis (1925-2021).
It is inspired by the poem written by Odysseus Elytis, from his poetic collection Το Áxion Estí, his most decisive work for his awarding with the Nobel prize for Poetry. This above is an instrumental version, while there is also the hymn version, in which a psalt (Byzantine music baritone) sings the lyrics of the poem accompanied by a choir. I believe the bare melody serves the essence of the poem even better than the recitation of the poem itself! Yet I include a version of this for good measure too. Chose this one because I rarely see a priest conductor lol... but also because this version performed by the Diocese of Nea Krini and Kalamariá contrasts or completes (whichever you prefer) the orchestral version with all those images of ancient temples. I personally see it as a completion, and it is the completion that Áxion Estí is about...
Below are some excerpts from Mikis Theodorakis' thoughts as he was writing the music for this poem:
"The postman of Fontaine au Roi in Paris passed by every day at 3 p.m. I think it was in the spring of ’61 that I received To Axion Estí, a kind gift from the poet, and that same evening I had the first two parts planned. Genesis and The Passion*. I want to show with this how much this music already existed within me and all that was left was the strike of the sword on the rock for the living water of sounds to spring up. Even the form of the work, with the rich alternations of poetic language, sometimes vast as an archipelago, sometimes devout as a psalm or disciplined as a folk song, offered me astonishing possibilities, which I am very afraid I did not manage to exhaust in this first musical training. The problem was how to balance a purely people's song with the artistic forms of folk music, as they are presented either by the orchestra or by the psalt (baritone) or by the choir. Here, in the artistic treatment, I proceeded with a completely subtractive intention. With a conscience - I would say - like that of a hagiographer, who hates the flesh, wanting to identify the form with the soul. To the devil, I said, with the cerebral counterpoints and the complex harmonic, rhythmic and orchestral relationships. Let the soul of our music come out intact, dressed in frost and dewdrops. Dancing to the Romaic tambourine. Let us leave the demonstrations for the peoples who lost their souls and let us simply sing the sorrows and hopes of Romanness**."
*The "Temples in the shape of the sky* was also called as the Passion by Theodorakis.
*Please remember, for the Greeks Romanness is the medieval and modern Hellenism, don't confuse it with Classical Roman / Latin antiquity, and don't confuse Hellenism with an isolated definition of the ancient Greek religion.
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And this is my clumsy translation of the lyrics of the Elytis' poem:
Temples in the shape of the sky and beautiful girls with the grape in their teeth, who befitted us.
Birds - the weight of our hearts nullifying up high - and the very blue that we loved.
Gone, gone they are - July with the luminous shirt and rocky August with his small uneven steps.
Temples in the shape of the sky and beautiful girls with the grape in their teeth, who befitted us.
Birds - the weight of our hearts nullifying up high - and the very blue that we loved.
Gone, gone they are - Mistral with his pointed sandal and Gregale the reckless with his slanting red sails.
They fled and deep beneath the earth it clouded up, raising black gravel and thunder, the wrath of the dead. And slowly, with the wind creaking, they returned again with their chests forward, formidable, the statues of the rocks.
