In 2003, we marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Loris Margaritis (1895 – 1953), a very important figure in Greek musical creation. To honor this anniversary, the Greek Mozart Community, an association founded by Margaritis, organized a symposium in his memory on October 20 and 22. It is important to emphasize that this symposium was graced by the presence of three distinguished musicologists: Konstantinos Floros from the University of Hamburg, Leon Plantinga from Yale University, and Martin Zenck from the University of Bamberg, while Dr. Konstantinos Kakavelakis, president of the Mozart community, spoke exclusively about Margaritis’s personality and work.
Margaritis’s name might be unfamiliar to the average listener, as they have most likely never heard of him, neither as a composer nor as a teacher or performer. And yet, Margaritis possessed all three of these qualities, which he served with immense love, dedication, and respect for the high art of music. Margaritis was one of the few Greek musicians whose work was so highly esteemed abroad. His role as a teacher, in particular, brought him great prestige, leading to his being honored by the Mozart Academy of Salzburg with the “Grand Mozart Medal”1 in 1953, the year of his death.
But let’s start from the beginning, as Margaritis showed his musical abilities from a young age. He was only seven years old when he gave his first concert at the Athens Conservatory, and everyone began to speak of a “new Mozart,” a “child prodigy” born in Greece. This impression was reinforced after his appearance in the “Richard Wagner” hall in 1903 at the age of eight. At this concert, young Loris presented a program of his own compositions. The audience included members of the Bavarian Royal Court, various officials, and the renowned writer Thomas Mann. This concert inspired Mann to write his short story “The Child Prodigy,” featuring a young eight-year-old pianist named Bibis Sakellafylakas. It is characteristic that many years later, Margaritis met Mann after a lecture by the writer at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and introduced himself as Sakellafylakas2.
The development of Margaritis’s musical talent was rapid, and at the age of thirteen, he began lessons at the Munich Academy of Music despite his young age and the regulation prohibiting enrollment for students under eighteen. A special order had to be issued for Margaritis to be able to attend this school. In 1915, he returned to Greece and took on the duties of a professor at the Thessaloniki Conservatory. Here, it must be emphasized that Thessaloniki is the city that has honored Loris Margaritis by naming the street where his house was located “Loris Margaritis Street.” He, in turn, helped Thessaloniki acquire an artistic life through his lectures, concerts, and the generous assistance he offered to artists of all kinds, as he believed in art as a whole as a force, without limiting his, already given, admiration for music. We could say that Margaritis was an artist in every sense of the word.
In 1925, he married Ida Rosenkrantz, his student and collaborator. Rosenkrantz’s description in the book “Loris Margaritis” of their traditional wedding in Aigio, Margaritis’s birthplace, and her impressions of the landscape, is very vivid and lively. Margaritis was a man who deeply believed in the concept of Hellenism and loved Greece with all his soul. It is worth finding and reading this book about Margaritis to understand the greatness of this man’s spirit.
A great distinction for Margaritis and Greek music in general came in 1928, the year he began his teaching activity at the summer academy of the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He held this position until the last day of his life. There, he met some of the greatest personalities in world music. Margaritis always brought Greek students with him to the Mozarteum summer academy and had managed to have the Greek language recognized as one of the official teaching languages of these seminars.
In the years between 1928 and 1940, Margaritis was active not only as a teacher but also as a performer and composer, although his compositional activity diminished over the years, mainly due to lack of time. A major change in Margaritis’s life occurred during the Occupation years when he was forced to move to Athens due to his transfer to the music department of the Ministry of Education. The reason for this transfer was the involvement of his name as the author of various anti-fascist articles. The ministry transferred him without the knowledge of the occupying forces to save him from certain arrest. It is characteristic of the occupying forces’ anger that many of Margaritis’s manuscripts were destroyed during the search of his home in Thessaloniki.
After the war, Margaritis took over the position of educational advisor to the Ministry of Education for music matters, as well as the class he had at the Mozarteum, as his lessons there had been interrupted due to the war. Another significant distinction for Margaritis came with his appointment as a member of the committee for the Geneva International Competition in 1949. Margaritis had been honored with such distinctions in the past and had been a member of the competition committees in Warsaw, Vienna, and others before the war.
Margaritis fell seriously ill shortly before leaving for Salzburg, as he did every year during the summer months to teach at the summer academy. Despite his illness, he never for a moment considered not going to Salzburg. Upon arriving there, Margaritis was unable to fully perform his duties and appeared to be getting worse. For this reason, he had to be admitted to the hospital. He returned to Greece after a few days abroad and seemed to recover, but unfortunately, this proved temporary. Margaritis died on September 27, 1953.
We have spoken extensively about his pedagogical work and his personality, and it would be good to also talk a little about his compositional work, which was not extensive but is still considered an important aspect of his artistic activity. Margaritis had written works for piano, orchestral pieces, vocal music, and an opera. Unfortunately, some of these were lost, while some are undated, which makes compiling a chronological list of Margaritis’s works difficult. It is a fact that his works are not among the most frequently performed in Greek musical creation; rather, the opposite is true. One of his works that seems to be quite interesting and perhaps would be a good idea to be presented by a Greek orchestra is “Odysseus and Nausicaa,” an epic symphony for large orchestra. This work was written based on the seventh rhapsody of the Odyssey and was first performed in 1929 by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra with Reichenberger conducting, receiving very good reviews. Unfortunately, we must admit that we do not know the work, and even more, we do not know if it has ever been performed in Greece. However, if it has never happened, we consider it an omission that should somehow be rectified, as Minos Dounias said in one of his texts: “the Greek public never knew this symphonic work by Margaritis: a pity, because judging by the high quality of the composer’s musical thought in general, this symphonic creation must be of particular interest”3.
Loris Margaritis was an important figure in Greek music and does not deserve to fall into oblivion, with only the Greek Mozart Community striving to preserve his name. Unfortunately or fortunately, we do not have the luxury of ignoring musicians like Margaritis and failing to honor them as they deserve. Finally, we will conclude with a wish that we hope will come true in 2004: that Greek music and Greek creators will gain the place they deserve in the repertoire.
1 Symeonidou Aleka: Dictionary of Greek Composers F. Nakas (1995), p.255
2 see Ida Rosenkrantz-Margaritis: “Loris Margaritis”, Difros publications (1956), p.40
3 op. cit. p.127
