The articles to which this is a postscript were both written for Antipodes magazine. When planning the second article I intended to include a section on the Romancero Gitano song cycle, but space did not permit. This Postscript is my unorthodox solution.

Romancero Gitano

This too is one of my favourite works by Theodorakis, particularly the version recorded by Maria Farandouri and John Williams for the album Songs and Guitar Pieces by Theodorakis.[1] By a happy coincidence, it was released at a time when I was learning to play classical guitar. I never got beyond the novice stage, but I did learn to appreciate virtuoso playing like that of John Williams and Julian Bream.

In those years my beloved wife was studying in Southampton and sharing a house with two other students. Every Friday evening I would jump on my motorbike and head off down the A3 from London to spend the weekend with her. I must have kept a copy of the LP at her place because I recall vividly that I would drive everyone to distraction weekend upon weekend by playing it on the record player in the shared living room over and over—I just couldn’t get enough of it.[2]

The excellence of the “Seven Songs by Lorca” [Romancero Gitano]—the main feature on the album—is not solely down to Theodorakis. Yes, he did compose superb melodies for Elytis’ selection and translation of poems by Federico García Lorca, but his own recording of these songs is by comparison disappointing.[3] It was created in Paris during the junta years when Theodorakis’ performances were often dominated by forceful drumming and a matching epic style from the vocalists.[4] To my mind Maria Farandouri is at her best when her singing is subtle, rather than stridently militant, and I don’t think she has ever sung better than on the John Williams recordings—as well as, yes, but not better.

In a way the album is a collaboration with a second composer, Stephen Dodgson, for it was he who created the classical guitar accompaniment for Theodorakis’ songs. As a composer Dodgson devoted particular attention to the guitar, and he had worked with John Williams before, on the album John Williams Plays Two Guitar Concertos (1968), which included Dodgson’s “Concerto For Guitar and Chamber Orchestra”. In short he was an experienced composer for the guitar.

Unusually, John Williams also made a compositional contribution to the guitar part, for at some points he simplified it, even though, as a rule, he never changed a score, and regarded Dodgson as a composer who was very particular.

… when I worked with Maria, we had to change certain bits of it because some of it was a bit notey and fussy. In the end, we simplified certain aspects of the arrangements. Sometimes you just need to strum a chord! [5]

Theodorakis set the poems from Romancero Gitano to music at the request of the Lyra record company, which wanted them for the singer and guitarist Arletta, so the songs were probably intended for voice and guitar from the outset.[6] They were completed by April 1967, but the junta years intervened, and a recording by Arletta was not released until 1978.

It is noteworthy that Theodorakis was willing to collaborate with a record company and a singer who were identified with the neo kyma [new wave]—a movement in Greek music which has always seemed to me a reaction and a rejection—though that may be too strong a word—of the bouzouki-dominated popular music championed by Theodorakis. (“Hey, there are other instruments and other styles too!”)[7] Clearly, by 1967, Theodorakis was open to other ways of presenting his music to the Greek public.

With the genesis of the Lorca songs in mind, the Theodorakis-Dodgson album could itself be seen as “new wave”, except that, outside of Greece, it could hardly be considered popular music. In England there was no attempt that I am aware of to market the album to a popular music audience. This was an album intended for the many who listened to classical music, and the few who were interested in the music of other cultures. (World music did not really become an established sales and marketing category until the 1980s.) From a communist perspective, it was not an album for “the working class” or “the people” as such, but it might have been of interest to those who were sympathetic to Theodorakis the activist and his campaign to encourage opposition to the junta outside of Greece.

Ironically it seems that, thanks to the junta, Theodorakis had come full circle. This album represents Theodorakis (and friends) creating recordings of έντεχνο λαϊκό [artistic popular] Greek songs for the international classical audience—the audience Theodorakis wrote for before Epitaphios! To add to the irony four pieces from Epitaphios, arranged for solo classical guitar, are included on the album.

Having firmly established the έντεχνο λαϊκό genre, and seen it being taken up by other Greek composers and dominating the popular-music market in Greece, the later Theodorakis was keen and willing to explore additional areas. This included a return to classical music—in his later years he even wrote classical operas, including one where he took up again the story of Antigone. He also revisited the Romancero Gitano twice. In 1981 he created a symphonic setting for six of the songs with the overall title Lorca, and in the mid-90s he used the same melodies to compose a fine work for guitar and symphony orchestra—no vocals—with the title Rhapsodies for Guitar and Orchestra (Lorca). However the Theodorakis-Dodgson setting is still for me the definitive one. When such divine music has been imprinted on one’s brain by enthusiastic repeated listening, it is very difficult for it to be dislodged. I still listen to that album with awe. However, the new versions are growing on me...

Pavlos Andronikos

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Footnotes

1. Songs and Guitar Pieces by Theodorakis, UK, 1971 (CBS – S 72947).

2. Bear in mind that I was the only Greek speaker in the house. I was subjecting the other residents and visitors to songs in a language alien to them. They took it remarkably well.

3. In Theodorakis Conducts Theodorakis vol. 2 (1970, Polydor – 2489 054). Theodorakis was released by the Junta in April 1970 and allowed to leave the country. The recording sounds like a live performance but there are no audience sounds. Its sound quality is poor.

4. Theodorakis’ music immediately after his release was markedly rough-sounding. It is possible that following his experience of intimidation, torture, and helplessness at the hands of the Junta’s fascist thugs Theodorakis found forceful drumming and a martial style of singing particularly appealing–hence the arrangements and performances of those years. Let’s not forget that it was the experience of violence against his person that put him in the right frame of mind to compose Romiosyni. His suffering definitely affected his music.

5. Quoted in O'Toole, Michael, John Williams: An Evaluation of His Impact Upon the Culture of the Classical Guitar (Doctoral thesis), Technological University Dublin, 2018, pp. 171-2.

6. Manuscripts in the archive dated 1967 simply show lyrics and melody plus the chords which a guitarist would play. See https://digital.mmb.org.gr/digma/handle/123456789/15152 .

7. See “Νέο Κύμα του ελληνικού τραγουδιού” in the Greek Wikipedia.