On the occasion of the dossier devoted to Athens, Tristan Bera for Hémisphère son invites us to take a chronological look at the significant musicological events and key personalities of the second half of the 20th century, and to immerse ourselves in a musical cosmos that is both autonomous and connected. The fast-growing Greek capital interrogates, magnetises and holds a fascinating history of contemporary music that is little known outside musicological circles. Rich in independent venues, it manages today, not without fascinating detours, to organise its chaos outside the institutionalised circuits by offering ever more experiments to be heard.

When Hémisphère son commissioned me to write a series of articles on the contemporary music scene in Athens, I was at a double disadvantage: both a foreigner (not to say barbarian) in the city and a novice in the field of contemporary music; but also with a double advantage: on the spot and accompanied by the best guides. I would like to thank Lorenda Ramou - a pianist, teacher at the Odeion Athinon, the Athens Conservatory, and programmer at Stegi - Onassis - who accompanied me through the twists and turns of a history that is not yet well written, and Katerina Tsioukra - a musicologist - who is working with Haris Xanthoudakis, the director of the Conservatory's archives, on the third volume of a History of Greek Music dedicated to the avant-garde movements of the 20th century. Both have enabled me to grasp the origins of the specificity and richness of the Athenian scene, and, following Katerina Tsioukra's advice, to evaluate it for what it is and not what it is not.

Interviews with Theodore Vazakas of the ARTéfacts ensemble and the composer and pianist Filippos Raskovic, who initiated the Krama festival with Agelos Pascalidis, Niki-Danai Chania, Thodoris Triantafillou, have allowed me to find my way through the evolution and the actuality of the scene since the middle of the 2000s.

On 23 October last, the birth of the composer Manos Hadjidakis (1925-1994), and the newspapers recalled not only his proximity, in the 1940s, to the intellectual and artistic avant-garde (the poets George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis, and the painter Yannis Tsarouchis), and the fact that he won the Oscar for the best original song in 1961 for "Les Enfants du Pirée", performed by Melina Mercouri in Jules Dassin's film Jamais le Dimanche, but also his decisive contribution to the promotion of modern music. Indeed, in 1962, the man who knew how to bridge the gap between learned music and rebetiko, financed and organised a composition competition in Athens at the Doxiadis Institute of Technology - named after Konstantinos Doxiadis, the chief architect of Islamabad and "father of ekistics" - from which IannisXenakis and Anestis Logothetis came out first ex-aequo, and whose list of participants covered almost all the outstanding composers of the following decades. The list of participants covers almost all the important composers of the following decades, Yannis Ioannidis Theodore Antoniou, Stephanos Gazouleas and the future music critic George Leotsakos. It was already after Greece joined NATO in 1952 that, in the context of the Cold War, the Greek musical avant-garde began to organise itself, benefiting from the financial support and cultural influence of the Americans in competition with Soviet music. For example, the piece Metastasis (1953-54), structured on the mathematical ideas of Le Corbusier, which combines an Einsteinian conception of time with the memory of the sounds of war and which brings Xenakis into the international history of music, is already performed in 1958 at theAmerican Union.

Some people start the story with the tragic and premature death of Nikos Skalkottas (1904-1949), a disciple of Arnold Schöneberg and Kurt Weill, a master without pupils and the author of the famous Greek Dances. However, for musicologists, Hadjidakis' competition for the composer-architect Xenakis, already exiled in France to escape political persecution, marked the definitive starting point for musical modernism in Athens. In the wake of this, Hadjidakis founded and directed the Athens Experimental Orchestra (1964-1966), which, in the two years of its existence, gave some twenty concerts and premieres by Greek composers.
The jury of this mythical competition, whose conductor was the American Lukas Foss, included Jani Christou and John G. Papaioannou (1915-2000) - not to be confused with the composer and teacher Yannis A. Papaioannou (1915-2000) - not to be confused with the composer and pedagogue Yannis A. Papaioannou (1910-1989), nor with the rebetiko singer Yannis Papaioannou -. Papaioannou is a key figure in the development of the scene, a "graphic figure" whose archives are a goldmine for the musicology being written at the Odeion, the primary source of the book being prepared by Katerina Tsioukra. His career is intrinsically linked to the promotion of contemporary music in Athens: he founded, for example, the Society of Friends of Skalkottas, which works for the recognition of the composer as a pioneer; and the Studio für Neue Musik at the Goethe Institute in collaboration with the composer Gunther Becker.

While on the one hand, the Athens Festival, created in 1955 to be held every summer from July to September, aims, in its musical section, to produce internationally known artists and ensembles, on the other hand, the Hellenic Association for Contemporary Music (created in 1965) and the Greek section of theISCM organised the Hellenic Weeks of Contemporary Music in 1966/67/68/1971 and 1976, thus participating in the promotion of Greek avant-garde composers. The Festival reached its peak in the mid-1960s before declining during the colonial junta (1967-1974) and reorganising itself in 1998 by incorporating the Classical Theatre Festival of Epidaurus. Between 1974 and 1982, Hadjidakis was a key figure on the Athenian and Greek scene: he directed the National Orchestra and the Third Programme of the Hellenic Radio and Television (ERT) from 1976 to 1980 and promoted the career ofHaris Xanthoudakis (a pupil of Xenakis). In 1989, he created the Orchestra of Colours. The end of the dictatorship allowed Iannis Xenakis to recover his passport and to found, in 1979, the KSYME-CMRC, a research centre in Cholargos, with the collaboration of John G. Papaioannou and Stephanos Vassiliadis, intended for the development of electroacoustic music and sound practices in Greece. The centre was equipped with state-of-the-art technology from the outset, notably the UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique du CEMAMu), the computer-assisted music composition tool invented by the composer, but only began to function actively as a research centre in 1986. Until 1991, due to the absence of an equipped concert hall and a permanent chamber ensemble, the promotion of contemporary music was carried out by foreign alliances: the French Institute, the Goethe Institute and the American Union in particular. Among the composers of this avant-garde period, there are no names of women composers in the historical records. Katerina Tsioukra's observation of the cruel lack of diversity or invisibilisation is qualified by citing Alexandra Lekka-Sakali (1917-2012) and insisting on the presence of women among performers and musicologists. When will there be a story or film like Sisters with transistors about Greek women composers?

The Megaron was inaugurated on 21 March 1991. Originally equipped with two concert halls with excellent acoustics, the national opera building can accommodate most of the national orchestra's performances. Its programme dominates the music scene. The guiding figure of this new period is undoubtedly the Greek-American naturalized composer and conductor Theodore Antoniou (1935-2018). A student of Yannis A. He was a student of Yannis A. Papaioannou, influenced by Jani Christou and serial techniques, attended the Darmstadt Summer School under Boulez, Stockhausen and Ligeti, was a multi-award-winning composer and tireless teacher, and presided over the destiny of contemporary music in the National Association of Greek Composers and in the experimental department of the National Opera. He left behind nearly 450 works, a number of which are said to have been written in haste on his incessant Boston-Athens flights. Most composers between the ages of forty and sixty passed through Antoniou's class, leaving an indelible mark on the new generation. In the latter part of the twentieth century, composers whose technique, formal cohesion and clarity of musical thought finished creating a solid modern tradition. After the generation of composers active from the 1960s onwards(Dimitris Dragatakis, Yorgos Sicilianos, Yiannis Ioannidis, Michalis Adamis, Dimitris Terzakis), a new wave appeared from the 1980s onwards(Giorgos Kouroupos, Giorgos Koumendakis, Iossif Papadatos, Minas Alexiadis, Calliope Tsoupaki). 

At the end of the 20th century, a younger, more diverse generation emerged, living mainly outside Greece, and proving itself on the international scene(Marianthi Papalexandri Alexandri, Sofia Avramidou, Minas Borboudakis, Konstantia Gourzi, Panayiotis Kokoras, Georgia Koumara, Alexandros Markeas, Nicolas Tzortzis, Georgia Spiropoulos...). 

The only contemporary music institute in the country at the beginning of the 21st century is the Institute for Research in Music and Acoustics (IEMA), founded in 1989 by composers Haris Xanthoudakis and Kostas Moschos and ethnomusicologist Marios Mavroidis, which is mainly concerned with technological developments and the cataloguing of works by contemporary Greek composers. A recurring annual event from 2012 to 2020, OPEN DAY involves nearly one hundred musicians in each edition, and programs John Cage (2012), Mauricio Kagel (2013) or Karlheinz Stockhausen (2014), under the artistic direction of composer and musicologist Anargyros Deniozos. 

In 2011 - at the same time as the aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis, which were only really felt from 2012 onwards - the opening of Stegi Onassis, the cultural centre of the Onassis Foundation dedicated to contemporary forms of expression, gave the city of Athens the means to fulfil its ambitions by organising concerts and encounters and by providing real financial support to a precarious experimental scene. One has to browse through the Stegi website to see how many initiatives in the field of contemporary music are multiplying thanks to the artistic direction of Christos Carras. One example is the OTON project, which in 2018 brings together the ARTéfacts and Ventus ensembles, a group of ten men (again) with brass, electronic keyboard and percussion, the Turkish composer Tolga Tüzün and ten students from the Athens School of Fine Arts(ASFA), and seeks to translate the city and its familiar yet strange impressions into sound. Or the Soundscapes Landscapes Rhizome II (2018) created by the group Medea Electronique (formed in 2006) to reveal the unconscious and hidden parts of the districts of Iera Odos, Gazi, Kerameikos and Metaxourgeio. Or the spiritual tribute to Giacinto Scelsi (2018) by the TETTTIX ensemble. In 2017, documenta 14 is organising a magnificent exhibition in the buildings of the Odeion Athinon, curated by Pierre Bal-Blanc, which focuses on modern and experimental music, and is also programming, as part of its associated events, a performance by the Ergon ensemble, which includes pieces by Jani Christou and John Cage. 

MedeaElectronique2018_Soundscapes Landscapes about 3 Rhizomes and an Installation from Medea Electronique on Vimeo.

At the same time, the underground was getting organised. Athens is seeing the emergence of independent venues, born of private initiatives and totally autonomous. Theodore Vazakas The following are some of the venues that have been set up by ARTfacts: ; KNOT Gallery; the Embros Theatre, a squat in Psyrri; the Trianon on Patision Street; and the Parnassos in Plateia Karitsi, the first concert hall in Athens in terms of acoustics before the Megaron was built. The ABOUT space operated until 2013 and, being generic and easily accessible, was able to host numerous events and a loyal and passionate audience... Composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski is said to have exclaimed upon arriving for his performance: "I didn't know there were so many anarchists in Athens!" . KNOT Gallery was founded in 2009 by Danae Stefanou and Yannis Kotsonis, who also form the electroacoustic duo Acte Vide, and organises free improvisation workshops and spontaneous events. Lorenda Ramou insists on the absolute DIY spirit of the Athenians, citing the example of concert performers ready to glue their own concert posters. When there is no longer a state, one must rely on private patronage and organise oneself individually or in small groups to support research and practice, in order to survive.

The composer, pianist and organiser of the Krama festival, Filippos RaskovicThe composer, pianist and organiser of the Krama festival, who is part of the emerging generation, lists how rich and active the experimental scene is, citing a few Greek labels whose news should be followed urgently: Granny records, Studio Ennia, Polyscope, E.C.T, June records, Rekem records, Modal Analysis, Thalamos, Nutty Wombat. During the festival at the KEIV space, I could see the attraction of Athenians for the transversal musical practices diffused in independent venues. Electronic music, which is becoming increasingly diverse, naturally attracts its share of regulars and fans, as I noted last October at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation(SNFCC) on the occasion ofEartheater's concert with Patrick Belaga. The concert was preceded by performances by Soho Rezanejad andEvita Manji, a close collaborator of composer-producer-performer Sophie, whose death in Athens on the last full moon of 2020 gave a tragic boost to the rise of the new emerging experimental electronic scene.(Several more articles would be needed to elaborate on the origins and references of this scene, its venues and audiences that make minorities considerably more visible in urban space).

The proportion of composers in Greece per ten million inhabitants is statistically particularly high, while investment in experimental creation is not on a par with that in France, Germany or Great Britain, and the discipline of musicology is still in its early stages. "It's amazing how much you can know about Beethoven and how much you don't know about Greek music," Katerina Tsioukra told me. Athens is a chaotic city, a city that questions, and whose face has not been fixed by institutions, which makes it totally open and absolutely inspiring. What is needed, and all the enthusiasts are organising themselves to counter the financial difficulties, is to "find a balance that can deal with the imbalance of the city" according to Lorenda Ramou. As preparations for the transcontinental celebration of the centenary of Xenakis ' birth(see below) are launched on the meta-xenakis platform, which links Greece, France, the United States, Mexico and Japan, perhaps it is worth remembering, to link urbanism, architecture and music one last time, a thought by Konstantinos Doxiadis about the future of Athens: "What human beings need is notu-topia (non-place) buten-topia (in-place), a real city they can build, a place that satisfies the dreamer and is acceptable to the scientist, a place where the projections of the artist and the builder merge. »