Michail "Mikis" Theodorakis ( ; 29 July 1925 – 2 September 2021) was a Greek composer and lyricist credited with over 1,000 works.Athensnews Interview: Theodorakis' call to arms Famous composer Theodorakis addresses protesters during a rally against a new austerity package, outside the University of Athens, in 2011
He scored for the films Zorba the Greek (1964), Z (1969), and Serpico (1973). He was a three-time BAFTA nominee, winning for Z. For the score in Serpico, he earned Grammy nominations. Furthermore, for the score to Zorba the Greek, with its song "Zorba's Dance", he was nominated for a Golden Globe.
He composed the "Mauthausen Trilogy", also known as "The Ballad of Mauthausen", which has been described as the "most beautiful musical work ever written about the Holocaust" and possibly his best work. Up until his death, he was viewed as Greece's best-known living composer. He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.Yearbook of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian). Moscow: Sovetskaya Enciklopediya. 1983
Politically, he was associated with the left because of his long-standing ties to the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). He was an MP for the KKE from 1981 to 1990. Despite this, however, he ran as an independent candidate within the centre-right New Democracy party in 1989, for the country to emerge from the political crisis created by the numerous scandals of the government of Andreas Papandreou.Theodorakis: / The Ways of the Archangel, Autobiography, Volume V, p. 331 sq He helped establish a large coalition between conservatives, socialists and leftists. In 1990, he was elected to the parliament (as in 1964 and 1981), became a government minister under Konstantinos Mitsotakis, and fought against drugs and terrorism and in favor of culture and education. He continued to speak out in favour of leftist causes, Greek–Turkish–Cypriot relations, and against the War in Iraq. He was a key voice against the 1967–1974 Greek junta, which imprisoned him and banned his songs.Theodorakis: Journal of Resistance
Early life Theodorakis was born on the Greek island of Chios and spent his childhood years in provincial Greek cities including Mytilene, Cephallonia, Patras, Pyrgos, ... Σύρος και Αθήνα (1929), Γιάννενα (1930- 1932),Αόλι (1933-1936), Πάτρα (1937-1938), Πύργος (1938-1939), Τρίπολη and Tripoli. His father, a lawyer and a civil servant, was from the small village of Galatas on Crete and his mother, Aspasia Poulakis, was from an ethnically Greek family in Çeşme, in what is now Turkey. He was raised with Greek folk music and was influenced by Byzantine liturgy; as a child he had already talked about becoming a composer.
His fascination with music began in early childhood; he taught himself to write his first songs without access to musical instruments. He took his first music lessons in PatrasTheodorakis: Οι δρόμοι του αρχάγγελου Ι / The Ways of the Archangel, Autobiography, Volume I, p. 72 sq. and Pyrgos,Theodorakis, op. cit., p. 82 sq. where he was a childhood friend of George Pavlopoulos,Levi, Peter. (1980) The Hill of Kronos. and in Tripoli, Peloponnese,Theodorakis, op. cit., Chapter II, p. 95 sq. he gave his first concert at the age of seventeen. He went to Athens in 1943, and became a member of a Reserve Unit of ELAS. He led a troop in the fight against the British and the Greek right in the Dekemvriana.Theodorakis: / The Ways of the Archangel, Autobiography, Volume II, Ch. 3, p. 11 sq; cf. also p. 174sq; Mikis Theodorakis, / My December '44, 1944: / The Fateful December, special supplement of newspaper 'Vima', Sunday, 5 December 2010, p. 54. During the Greek Civil War he was arrested, sent into exile on the island of IcariaTheodorakis, op. cit., Ch. 4, p. 95 sq. and then deported to the island of Makronisos, where he was tortured and twice buried alive.Theodorakis: / The Ways of the Archangel, Autobiography: Read the complete, deeply moving Volume III ("The Nightmare")
During the periods when he was not obliged to hide, not exiled or jailed, he studied from 1943 to 1950 at the Athens Conservatoire under . In 1950, he finished his studies and took his last two exams "with flying colours".George Giannaris: Mikis Theodorakis. Music and Social Change, p. 81 He went to Crete, where he became the "head of the Chania Music School" and founded his first orchestra.Theodorakis: / The Ways of the Archangel, Autobiography, Volume IV, p. 259 sq
Studies in Paris
Theodorakis married Myrto Altinoglou on 16 March 1953. The following year, they travelled to Paris, where he entered the Conservatory and studied musical analysis under Olivier MessiaenJean Boivin, 'Messiaen's Teaching at the Paris Conservatoire: A Humanist Legacy', in Siglind Bruhn, Messiaen's Language of Mystical Love (New York, Garland, 1998), p.10 and conducting under Eugene Bigot.George Giannaris, op. cit., p. 90 sq
His symphonic works: a Piano concerto, his first suite, his first symphony, and his scores for the ballet: Greek Carnival, Le Feu aux Poudres, Les Amants de Teruel, received international acclaim. In 1957, he won the Gold Medal in the Moscow Music Festival. In 1959, after the successful performances of Theodorakis's ballet Antigone at Covent Garden in London, the French composer Darius Milhaud proposed him for the American Copley Music Prize – an award of the "William and Noma Copley Foundation", which later changed its name to "Cassandra Foundation" as the "Best European Composer of the Year". His first international scores for the film Ill Met by Moonlight and Honeymoon (aka Luna de Miel), directors: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, were successful: The Honeymoon Song, title song of the later, became part of the repertoire of The Beatles.
Back to Greek roots
In 1960, Theodorakis returned to Greece and his roots in Greek music. With his song cycle Epitaphios, he contributed to a cultural revolution in his country.George Giannaris, op. cit., p. 118 sq His most significant and influential works are based on Greek and world poetry – Epiphania (Giorgos Seferis), Little Kyklades (Odysseas Elytis), Axion Esti (Elytis), Mauthausen (Iakovos Kambanellis), Romiossini (Yannis Ritsos), and Romancero Gitano (Federico García Lorca) – he attempted to give back to Greek music a dignity which in his perception it had lost. He developed his concept of "metasymphonic music" (symphonic compositions that go beyond the "classical" status and mix symphonic elements with popular songs, Western symphonic orchestra and Greek popular instruments).
He founded the Athens Little Symphony Orchestra and gave many concerts in the country, trying to familiarize people with symphonic music.Λάδης, Φώντας (2005). Μίκης Θεοδωράκης το χρονικό μιας επανάστασης 1960–1967. Αθήνα. σελ. 20–250.
After the assassination of Gregoris Lambrakis in May 1963 he founded the Lambrakis Democratic Youth ("Lambrákides") and was elected its president.Gail Holst. Mikis Theodorakis. Myth & Politics in Modern Greek Music, p. 74 sq Under Theodorakis's impetus, it started a vast cultural renaissance movement and became the greatest political organisation in Greece with more than 50,000 members.Mikis Theodorakis: Journal of Resistance, (Dictionary), p. 328 Following the 1964 elections, Theodorakis became a member of the Greek Parliament, associated with the left-wing party EDA. Because of his political ideas, the composer was black-listed by the cultural establishment; at the time of his biggest artistic glory, a large number of his songs were censored-before-studio or were not allowed on the radio stations.Gail Holst, op. cit., p. 78
During 1964, he wrote the music for the Michael Cacoyiannis film Zorba the Greek, whose main theme, since then, exists as a trademark for Greece. It is also known as "Syrtaki dance", inspired by old Cretan traditional dances.
During the dictatorship
On 21 April 1967 the Regime of the Colonels took power in a putsch. Theodorakis was a symbol of resistance to the military regime. He went into hiding, issued the first call for resistance against the dictatorship on 23 April. and founded the (PAM). On 1 June, the Colonels published "Army decree No 13", which banned playing, and even listening to his music. Theodorakis was arrested on 21 August,Mikis Theodorakis: Journal of Resistance, p. 71 sq and jailed for five months. He was released at the end of January 1968, and then deported in August to Zatouna with his wife, Myrto, and their two children, Margarita and .Mikis Theodorakis, op. cit., p. 169 sq Later he was interned in the concentration camp of Oropos.Mikis Theodorakis, op. cit., p. 263 sq
An international solidarity movement, headed by such personalities as Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, and Harry Belafonte demanded to get Theodorakis freed. On request of the French politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Theodorakis was allowed to go into exile to Paris on 13 April 1970. Theodorakis' flight left secretly from an Onassis-owned private airport outside Athens. He arrived at Le Bourget Airport where he met Costa Gavras, Melina Mercouri and Jules Dassin. Theodorakis was immediately hospitalized with tuberculosis.Mikis Theodorakis, op. cit., p. 280 sq His wife and children joined him a week later in France, having travelled from Greece via Italy on a boat.The story of this rescue in French, cf. Guy Wagner: Mikis Theodorakis. Une vie pour la Grèce, p. 387 sq.; in German, cf. Guy Wagner: Mikis Theodorakis. Ein Leben für Griechenland, p. 420 sq
He would compose, alongside Pagani, the anthem of the French Socialist Party, in 1977.
Resistance in exile
In 1971, Mikis Theodorakis was invited to Chile by then-president Salvador Allende. In Valparaíso, he listened to a group of young people who introduced him to part of the work of the poet Pablo Neruda. Theodorakis loved it and promised to give Chile his musical opinion on the Canto General. Back to Paris, in 1972 Theodorakis met Pablo Neruda when the Greek composer was rehearsing the musicalization of Canto General. Neruda was impressed and asked him to include poems such as "Lautaro" and "A Emiliano Zapata".
He was received by Gamal Abdel Nasser and Tito, Yigal Allon and Yasser Arafat, while François Mitterrand, Olof Palme and Willy Brandt became his friends. For millions of people, Theodorakis was the symbol of resistance against the Greek dictatorship together with Melina Mercouri.Gail Holst, op. cit., p. 206 sqFrançois Mitterrand: Je peux me dire son ami (Preface to: Mikis Theodorakis: Les Fiancés de Pénélope)
Return to Greece After the fall of the colonels, Mikis Theodorakis returned to Greece on 24 July 1974 to continue his work and his concert tours, both in Greece and abroad.Gail Holst, op. cit., p. 271 sq His return was in triumph, with huge crowds and his music playing on the radio. At the same time he participated in public affairs. In 1978, through his article For a United Left Wing, he had "stirred up the Greek political life. His proposal for the unification of the three parties of the former United Left (Greece)—which had grown out of the National Liberation Front—had been accepted by the Greek Communist Party which later proposed him as the candidate for mayor of Athens during the 1978 elections." (Andreas Brandes) He was later elected several times to the Greek Parliament (1981–1986 and 1989–1993) and for two years, from 1990 to 1992, he was a minister in the government of Constantine Mitsotakis. After his resignation as a member of Greek parliament, he was appointed General Musical Director of the Choir and the two Orchestras of the Hellenic State Radio (ERT), which he reorganised and with which he undertook successful concert tours abroad.
He was committed to raising international awareness of human rights, environmental issues, and the need for peace. For this reason, he initiated, along with the Turkish author, musician, singer and filmmaker Zülfü Livaneli, the Greek–Turkish Friendship Society.