Ανδρέας Νεζερίτης (1897-1980)

Abstract

The present thesis examines the life and the work of the Greek composer Andreas Nezeritis (1897-1980). Nezeritis was born in Patras but moved at the age of 20 years to Athens where he lived the rest of his life. He studied piano, harmony and counterpoint at the Conservatory of Athens and thereafter orchestration and composition with Dionyssios Lavrangas. Nezeritis was a founding member of the Greek Composers Union where he was joined by Manolis Kalomiris and the rest of the other composers of the National Music School having as a common ideal the development of the Greek art Music. Nezeritis was initially influenced by impressionism, and then for a decade (1931-1940) he was a loyal “fellow traveller” to the trend of the Greek National School of Music when he eventually turned into neo-classicism through the application of traditional classical forms (sonata, rondo, scherzo-trio, etc.) mainly to orchestral music but always in the frame of expanded tonality. At the same time, after 1940, his personal harmonic idiom consolidates, as it coexists with characteristics of his premature impressionistic music language (parallel motion of perfect 4ths and 5ths or dissonant harmonic intervals of 2nds and 7ths, mixture of tone and modal writing, the use of whole-tone and pentatonic scale, an overturn of the order of the conventional succession to harmonic functions) and to the “national colour” (folk-like themes, rhythmic dance motives, use of traditional modes etc.). His personal harmonic idiom is also always structured in accordance with classical patterns in terms of macrostructure, as mentioned above, and of microstructure (established thematic structures, contrapuntal processing treated with techniques such as canon, fugato, diminution, augmentation etc). This eclecticism is guided by a personal aesthetic attitude which develops a special musical symbolism, that is evident not only in works combined with poetic text but sometimes also in purely musical ones through the constant matching of musical data and non-musical content. In his latest complete work, Symphony no. 3 (1969) along with some of his posterior unfinished projects, (i.e. Symphony no. 4) it can be distinguished a concluding move to neo-romanticism through the use of free forms that are intended to attribute an emotional expression associated with 19th century Romanticism. In this thesis a detailed biography of the composer is initially recorded, based on information obtained from studying his personal archive and other material collected from every possible source. Besides, a composer’s works thematic catalogue in chronological order is edited presenting, for the first time, the inclusive series of his works (complete and incomplete), in combination with the most useful information regarding them (date, duration, first performance, etc.) Indeed, a special effort has been made in order to present the exact form of the starting extract (incipit) of each work. In addition, all the information that is collected and related to the following performances of the…