The sudden passing of Dionysis Savvopoulos sparked many discussions, some rather unexpected, as life usually has a way of surprising us. For those aged approximately 50 and above, a prevailing sentiment was the end of an era. The notion that ‘all the greats are gone’ was frequently voiced. I, however, wish to focus on the discussion that arose around the song itself. How its two fundamental components intertwine and merge, sometimes inextricably, like an alloy. These are those ‘special’ songs, where we cannot distinguish the lyrics from their music or vice versa, as one refers to the other.
Such songs have been written by all well-known composers-songwriters, and not only by them. What makes Savvopoulos’s case unique is that while his output, compared to that of many of his peers, is relatively small, these ‘special’ songs are quite numerous. I venture to say here that the limited output might even be one of the reasons for this distinctiveness.
But what is it that makes some songs special and, at the same time, very enduring? Searching for the ‘magic recipe’ won’t get us very far. Firstly, because the song of every era, nationality, or language has its own unique elements, which are not found in other genres or other ‘hits.’ German cabaret is one thing, a musical another, the French chanson of the ’50s and ’60s another, Woody Guthrie’s ballads another, Dylan another, and our own Greek New Wave yet another. In all the above, we come after the fact, with success already established, to analyze, like a historian or musicologist, what and how it happened.
What we can perhaps ascertain is that there are certain creative duos who have ‘bonded’ effectively, leaving a distinctive style: Hatzidakis-Gatsos and Theodorakis-Ritsos. In the first pair, we have the somewhat deliberately ‘light’ and playful lyric resting upon analogous music; in the latter two, political commitment merges with the rhetorical and often grandiose element of the music.
Many things change when the creator writes both music and lyrics. Here, I want to refer to something that circulated these days: Dionysis Savvopoulos’s speech during his honorary doctorate conferment by the Department of Philology at Aristotle University, titled ‘The Music of Words.’
It is a typically ‘Savvopoulos-esque’ text where the vivid style and subjective perspective coexist with very astute observations on the role of song and how one creates it. I highlight here the interesting element of the simultaneous birth of lyrics with music. This is a working method I’ve found in various English-speaking singer-songwriters-performers, such as Paul Simon, Lennon-McCartney, Bob Dylan, and others. I presume it applies to others as well.
Beyond the historical conjuncture that so determines the birth and journey of a song towards ‘minor immortality,’ I would add luck and coincidences, but let’s not overcomplicate things… The historical conjuncture is certainly a necessary condition. Attik’s songs became hits and spawned many successors at a time when, in a way, there was a kind of Greek-Athenian belle époque that ended with the declaration of war. The case of rebetiko is also interesting. At the time when the music of the composers who used it as a starting point (Hatzidakis, Theodorakis, Xarchakos) began to flourish, rebetiko itself fell into obscurity. Much later, during the Metapolitefsi (post-junta era), it underwent a revival that has more or less lasted since then.
I left the most difficult for last: ‘Good taste,’ which is a necessary and sufficient condition, yet at the same time the most vague and ambiguous. Hatzidakis often returns to the subject, but what he says doesn’t make us any wiser. So let’s conclude with a phrase attributed to Shakespeare, being a paraphrase of what he wrote: ‘Art is the mirror which you hold up to nature.’ We hope that this mirror will be good as often as possible!
