Greek “page” in the piano album history: regularities and paradoxes

Abstract

The article studies the features of the development of the genre of the piano album for youth in the works of Greek composers of the twentieth century. Composers’ interpretations of the genre are considered in the general context of the development of Greek and European piano art. The specifics of the national embodiment of the genre, its attributes, and place in the Greek piano repertoire are clarified. For the first time in Ukrainian musicology, piano albums for youth by Greek composers of the twentieth century, Manolis Kalomiris, Dimitris Kapsomenos, Yannis Papaioannou, and Theodoros Charidis are analyzed. The peculiarities of the interpretation of the fugue and variation genres in the album “For Greek Children” by M. Kalomiris are investigated in works addressed to young performers. Among the means of such adoption are the repeated use of simple harmonic sequences, uniform alternating loading of the material performed by the right and left hands. The figurative and genre components of the piano cycles for the youth of the above-mentioned composers are determined, the main of which are poetics, portraiture, and landscape. The ancient Greek roots of the portraiture of the Greek piano album are investigated, as well as its connections with French literature and harpsichord music of the XVII–XVIII centuries. Conclusions are drawn about the deep figurative and artistic content of Greek piano albums, which determines their purpose as an unlimited repertoire. These genres have become a fertile field for the formation of special means of expression in Greek piano music to reflect the national figurative palette. Among such means are the variability of the accompaniment texture, emphasizing the modal specificity through small details of the texture, finding compromises for the limited, specific use of features of classical harmony in the general monadic environment, and subtle experiments with modern and archaic modal manifestations.