In Greece, few know Dimitris Terzakis, a composer and educator. Abroad, however, and particularly in Germany, his works captivate European audiences, and he himself excels in music schools and academies.
Son of writer and playwright Angelos Terzakis, Dimitris Terzakis was born in Athens on March 12, 1938. He took his first composition lessons at the Hellenic Conservatory with Yiannis G. Papaioannou and then continued in Cologne with Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Herbert Eimert. He composed music for Karolos Koun’s Art Theatre, taught as a visiting professor at the Berlin University of the Arts (1985-1986), at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf (1974-1993), directed the composition department of the Bern University of the Arts (1990-1995), and was a full professor at the Leipzig University of Music and Theatre (1994-2003). Additionally, he served as a professor in the Department of Music Science and Art at the University of Macedonia, from which he was recently honored on March 14, 2007, with the title of honorary doctor, an distinction he considers honorable, even though titles do not move him, because, as he states, they are sometimes abused. For him, the fact that the proposal for this distinction came from his students is of greater value, and this means that the short time he taught there was well spent.
A characteristic of his music is its melodic element, in contrast to Western music, which has been experimenting with timbres since 1950. When asked why his works are not performed in Greece, Terzakis replies: “Greece severely punishes anyone who dares to surpass mediocrity.”
As he himself mentions, he has been influenced more by Southeast European origins and less by Western ones, mainly from the musical cultures of the Mediterranean, such as Arabic music. He uses Eastern techniques but writes music that is not monophonic, although he has also written monophonic pieces. In this way, he accepts the view attributed to him as a “composer situated between two worlds.”
However, in his music, there are no notes that are even externally Greek, either from folk or Byzantine music. He uses the musical system because, as he points out, it offers him other possibilities of tonality, apart from the major-minor system, other possibilities of melodic constructions, and also the ability to use micro-intervals. He also writes in the tempered system, but not dogmatically, as he himself claims. Nevertheless, his music could be Greek in mentality, but not in its melodic construction.
In his musical preferences, Verdi comes first, though this does not mean he excludes Central and Western composers. His view of the 19th-century Italian composer is that he was a great melodist, a born man of the theatre. Dimitris Terzakis himself loves theatre very much but has not engaged with the genre of musical theatre, specifically opera. He believes that this genre reaches its zenith and ends with Strauss and Puccini: “contemporary production is vast, but all operas end up in a drawer after the premiere.”
His father Angelos’s musical tastes had a great influence, as he adored Verdi, as well as his great rival, whom Dimitris himself also adores, Wagner. And how is this preference for two different worlds justified? Dimitris Terzakis explains: “Nature gives Southern Europeans melodic talent and Central Europeans the ability for construction. Thus, there is this very interesting difference in abilities, and that’s why prejudices exist: for Germans, Italians are lyrical, while for Italians, Germans are very cerebral. Both are right in their own way. But if we look at them from a distance, both temporal and geographical, we see that these are two equally respectable abilities. We, the rest, who are far from these two traditions, have the privilege of seeing them objectively.”
He believes that stylistically, Western music has reached a dead end in our time because for centuries it did not accept influences, new blood from non-European cultures, a result of the arrogance of colonialists. But what does he say about music in Greece? “Of all the arts, music is the most foreign to Greeks. If we add to this the abysmal music education, it is not admirable that the ‘poor’ Greek falls victim to cunning evaluations where any songwriter is called ‘Great’ or ‘Famous’ because two of their notes were heard in Sudan. The music news in the media is of the style: so-and-so Tadopoulos has a recent flirtation with so-and-so Tadopoulou. Malicious tongues say they will soon walk down the aisle to be united forever!”
Dimitris Terzakis lives and works in Leipzig. He has composed chamber music, orchestral, and vocal works. His most recent work is the Sapphic Cycle, which premiered in Düsseldorf and was subsequently performed in Bern. Performances in Munich and Leipzig followed, with Brigitte Fassbaender as narrator. In August, the piano cycle Lux et Tenebrae will be performed in Santiago, Chile. With this work, Terzakis inaugurated a new piano art that radically differs from contemporary Western styles. The piano is used purely melodically without harmonies. It requires great virtuosity and sensitivity in interpreting the melodic lines. Many pianists have performed his works to date, a selection of which was recently released on CD by Label Profil Edition.
On the occasion of the centenary of Angelos Terzakis’s birth, he is currently working on composing a piece for voice and piano based on one of the few poems his father wrote. In the past, he dedicated the orchestral work Lachesis, from Plato’s famous myth, to him. He is also composing a second work for the St. Thomas Choir of Leipzig, the choir founded by Bach, which will premiere as part of the “Bach” festival in 2008. In this work, he uses Kassiani’s troparion as text, but without any trace of Byzantine music.
