Searching for Nikos Skalkottas

Searching for Nikos Skalkottas

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The spring of 1933 was a time of profound upheaval: for the Weimar Republic, which was at the edge of the abyss; for Europe, which was to plunge into its greatest catastrophe during the following years—and for the 29-yearold Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas, who, caught in an untenable economic situation, had to leave his adopted home, Berlin. Returning to Athens, the city of his childhood, he left all his possessions and his musical manuscripts behind.

Up to this point, Skalkottas’s story sounds like the beginning of a highly promising musical career. At the age of 17, he had arrived in Berlin. A scholarship enabled the highly talented violinist and prize-winning graduate of the Athens Conservatory to continue his studies at the Hochschule für Musik from 1921 onward. Skalkottas lived in the rapidly expanding metropolis during one of its most fascinating eras. Berlin had become one of the leading musical centers of Europe; the most renowned musicians of the time gathered here. Skalkottas took lessons from Kurt Weill, then from Philipp Jarnach; composition quickly became his new goal. In 1927 he joined the circle of students taught by Arnold Schoenberg in his

composition master class at the Academy of Fine Arts. The encounter with Schoenberg was decisive for Skalkottas’s further development: he was highly esteemed by his teacher, conducted concerts with his own compositions and those of his classmates as well as rehearsals of Schoenberg’s works, claiming in a letter that he was the master’s “right hand.” Skalkottas’s Octet for Winds and String Quartet, his Concerto for Winds, and the First String Quartet were featured on the programs of the Academy’s concerts. He supported himself by performing in Berlin’s cafés and cinemas, accompanying silent films. For a while he lived together with a fellow student, the violinist Matla Temko, and in 1927 they had a daughter. After his graduation in 1930, however, his scholarship ended and he lost the financial support of a wealthy friend. Within the growing recession, finding work became increasingly difficult for Skalkottas. Schoenberg, as a jury member of the competition for the Mendelssohn Scholarship for Composers in 1932, proposed a joint first prize for Norbert von Hannenheim and Skalkottas, but the prize was given to Hannenheim. In 1933, Skalkottas had run out of option s

—he left Berlin, without knowing that Schoenberg was already out of the country because of the political situation. All this was not without consequences for his health. He seems to have suffered a nervous breakdown as early as 1931; the crisis continued after his return to Athens.

There, Skalkottas worked as an orchestral musician until the end of his life. But his formerly energetic character, albeit prone to mood swings, changed and he became withdrawn and reticent. The greater part of his oeuvre, including several orchestral works, was written over the following 15 years. But his compositions were not performed, with the exception of a few tonal works. The harsh marginalization of Skalkottas was due to his artistically conservative surroundings but also related to his extremely introverted personality. To add to his troubles, the situation in Greece in those years— from his return to his death, dictatorship was followed by a world war, occupation,

and civil war—made it near impossible for his demanding music to be performed. Yet ignoring all difficulties, Skalkottas composed prolifically, with ambition and confidence. In 1946 he married the pianist Maria Pangali. Two days before the birth of their second son in 1949, he died unexpectedly from the consequences of a hernia.

His music was largely discovered after his death. Skalkottas composed more than 120 orchestral, chamber, vocal, incidental, and ballet works. Simultaneously or alternatively, he explored virtually all contemporary styles of his era: dodecaphony, free atonality, extended tonality, and neoclassical tonality, and made use of material from Greek folk music. In some works there are reminiscences of Berlin’s cabaret and jazz sounds. From the beginning he developed an original twelve-tone method, based on the use of an organized group of tone rows, as opposed to Schoenberg’s principle of a single row. A master of forms and styles, Skalkottas was distinctively original and a pioneer. As the conductor Nikos Christodoulou writes, in Skalkottas’s unified world, different perspectives coexist—avant-garde and tradition, atonality and tonality, serial and free structures, classical and folk music, European and national aspects: today, his work seems almost prophetic.

Christoph Schaller

With thanks to Nikos Christodoulou and the Skalkottas Academy, Athens

Translation: Alexa Nieschlag