From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Greek composer
Dimitrios Levidis
(
Greek
:
Δημ?τριο? Λεβ?δη?
; 8 April 1885 or 1886,
Athens
- 29 May 1951,
Palaio Faliro
) was a
Greek composer
, later naturalized
French
(1929).
Background
[
edit
]
He descended from an aristocratic family with Byzantine roots in Constantinople.
Levidis studied in Athens,
Lausanne
and
Munich
. His teachers included
Friedrich Klose
,
Felix Mottl
and
Richard Strauss
, the latter being his composition teacher from 1907 to 1908. Levidis won the
Franz Liszt
Prize for his Piano Sonata op.16. After a short period in
Greece
he settled in
Paris
(1910?1932), served in the
French Army
during
World War I
and took French nationality in 1929.
[1]
Career
[
edit
]
He wrote abundantly, in many genres, with a refined technique combining Straussian harmony and
Ravelian
impressionism
,
[2]
also exploiting Greek modes, in an appealing style of greater homogeneity than that of many of his Greek contemporaries. Levidis was more impressed by Debussy's harmonic brevity as shown in his last works.
[3]
He was a notable experimenter with novel combinations and new instruments: His interest in new sounds led him to be among the first to write for the
Ondes Martenot
(his
Poeme symphonique
, a modernistic Symphonic Poem for Electrical Instrument and Orchestra, (op.43-B) was given on the occasion of the first public appearance of the instrument, premiered on 20 April 1928, at the
Paris Opera
) and conducted by Rhene-Baton. The soloist was Maurice Martenot, performing for the first time in public on an electronic device of his own invention.
[4]
Following its impressive debut, the conductor
Leopold Stokowski
brought Martenot to the United States to perform the Levidis work with the
Philadelphia Orchestra
. This led to a tremendous flurry of composition for the device.
[5]
After his return to Greece in about 1932, Levidis was appointed to the Ministry of Education to teach at the
Hellenic Conservatory
and at the Music Lyceum. In 1934, he founded the Phaleron Conservatory, later subsumed into the Hellenic Conservatory, and he was president of the Union of Greek Composers (1946?1947). He was in Paris again from 1947 to 1948.
[6]
Work list
[
edit
]
(List not Complete)
- Menuet (1898)
- Tristesse (1899)
- Piano Impromptus (1902)
- Erste Griechische Romantische Piano Sonate op.16 (1908)
- Preludes In d. minor (1910)
- Divertissent Orch. (1911)
- 4 Persian Rubajats (1912?1914)
- Chant payen for oboe and strings
- Divertissement op.25 (1911)
- Patre et Nymphe (1924) Ballet
- Poeme Symphonique, pour solo d'Ondes Musicales et Orchestre, op.43-B (1928)
- De Profundis (1929)
- 4 tableaux en un acte op.45(?)
- L' illiade, Orch. Oratorio. (1942?1943)
- La Terre dans l'Espace. Symphonic Poem for Orchestra
- The Talisman of The Gods op.41 ballet. (incomplete) (1925?1945)
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Levidis, Dimitry 1886-1951"
.
worldcat.org
.
- ^
The New Grove Dictionary Of Music and Musicians. Macmillan 1980
- ^
The Music Review, Geoffrey Newton Sharp. 1940
- ^
Musical Times , winter 2001
- ^
T B Holmes, Electronics and Experimental Music:Pioneers in Technology and Composition. p.68, 2002
- ^
"Greek History: May | WindyCity Greek"
.
WindyCity Greek
. Retrieved
2018-08-26
.
- Phonoarchive.org
- Everyman's dictionary of music p. 321
- The
Oxford Companion to Music
- P.K. Bouboulidis: Neohellines moussourgoi: I. Dimitrios Levidis: symvoli eis tin historian tis neohellenikis moussikis (Athens, 1949)
- S.K. Spanoudi: ‘Levidis, Dimitrios’, Helios, xii (Athens, c1950), 168 only
- G. Sklavos: ‘Dimitrios Levidis’, Helleniki dimiourgia, viii (1951), 67?8
- A.S. Theodoropoulou: ‘Dimitrios Levidis’, Nea estia, xlix (1951), 819 only
- F. Anoyanakis: ‘I moussiki stin neoteri Hellada’, in K. Nef: Eisagogi eis tin istorian tis moussikis (Athens, 1958), 590?92 [Gk. edn of Einfuhrung in die *Musikgeschichte]
- Nicolas Slonimsky: NEW MUSIC IN GREECE Musical Quarterly.1965; LI: 225?235
- G. Leotsakos: ‘O Dimitrios Levidis ke to aenigma tis “Mikris fantasias”’ [Dimitrios Levidis and the riddle of the ‘Little Fantasia’], foreword to D. Levidis: *Little Fantasia (Athens, 1982) [in Gk. and Eng.]; repr. in Moussikologhia, no.1 (1986), 9?25
- The Harvard
Biographical Dictionary
of Music
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