Greek Art and Culture
Greek Art and Culture
Greek Art and Culture
Greek art
Greek art is divided roughly in three periods:
• Greek Bronze age (Cycladic – Minoan -Mycenean art)
and Ancient period (Archaic – Classical - Hellenistic -
Greco-Roman art)
• Byzantine period (5th cent. AD – 1453 AD)
• Modern and contemporary period (1453 AD - today)
Architecture
The Bronze age: The Minoan Palaces
The Minoans began building palaces around 1900 BC to act as
cultural, religious, administrative, and commercial centers for their
increasingly expanding society.
The Minoan palaces are Knossos, Malia, Phaistos, and Zakros.
Reconstruction of the Palace
at Knossos
The Bronze age: The Mycenaean Palaces
Byzantine architecture
Most of the surviving structures of Byzantine era are sacred in
nature, with secular buildings mostly known only through
contemporaneous descriptions.
Two main types of plan are in use:
• the basilican, or axial, type
• the circular, or central, type
Byzantine period
• During the Byzantine period, artists no longer conceived
plastically, and the victory of pictorial over plastic art was
complete.
• Moreover, the times were scarcely propitious to sculpture,
since religion shunned statuesque representation of the
Redeemer, the Madonna or Saints, which would have been too
nearly related to the pagan cult.
• Hence there are very few works known to us of sculpture of
the Byzantine period, or even of bas-reliefs of any size
Ambones and sarcophagi are more numerous, and still more so
are the plastic decorations of buildings.
Greek Music
• Greek music history extends far back into ancient Greece, since
music was a major part of ancient Greek theater. Later influences
from the Roman Empire, Eastern Europe and the Byzantine
Empire changed the form and style of Greek music.
• In ancient Greece music played an integral role in the lives of
people, being almost universally present in society, from marriages
and funerals to religious ceremonies, theatre. Instruments included
the double-reed aulos and the lyre, especially the special kind called
a kithara. Music was an important part of education in ancient
Greece, and boys were taught music starting at age six.
• Music in the Byzantine period is also closely related to the ancient
Greek system, according to Greek and foreign historians.
Greek Folk Music
• Greek folk music or “demotika” are said to derive from the
music played by ancient Greeks.
• Demotika tragoudia are accompanied by clarinets,
guitars, tambourines and violins, and include dance music
forms like syrtó, kalamatianó, tsámiko and hasaposérviko.
Greek Folk Music
There are several kinds of folk music, such as:
• “Nesiotika”, a general term denoting folk songs from
the Aegean Islands. Among the most popular is Ikariótiko
(song from Ikaria).
• Cretan Music. The dominant instrument is the Cretan lyra.
• “Epirotika”, the music of Epirus. Distinctive songs include
lament songs, shepherd's songs etc. The clarinet is the most
prominent folk instrument in Epirus, used to accompany
dances, mostly slow and heavy, like tsamikos.
• Folk music from the Peloponnese. The most famous dance is
the kalamatianos.
• Folk music in central Greece. The most prominent danses are
syrtaki (Zorba's dance), zeibekiko, hasapiko.
• “Pontiaka”, music of Pontus. The prime instrument is
the Pontic lyra.
Classical music
• It was through the Ionian islands (which were under western rule
and influence) that all the major advances of the western european
classical music were introduced to mainland Greeks.
• A prominent representative of this genre is
Nikolaos Mantzaros. His widely known
composition is the musical setting for the poem
of Dionysios Solomos “Ýmnos eis tīn
Eleutherían” (Hymn to Liberty), the first and
second stanzas of which were adopted as the
Greek national anthem.
• Manolis Kalomiris was the founder of the
Greek National School of Music.
Rebetiko
• Rebetiko was initially associated with the lower and poor classes,
but later
reached greater general acceptance as the rough edges of its overt
subcultural character were softened and polished.
• Rebetiko probably originated in the music of the larger Greek cities,
most of
them coastal, in today's Greece and Asia Minor. In 1923, after
the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, many ethnic
Greeks from Asia Minor fled to Greece as a result of the Greco-Turkish
War. They settled in poor neighborhoods in Piraeus, Thessaloniki, and
Athens. Many of these immigrants were highly educated and are
traditionally considered as the founders of the Smyrna School of
Rebetiko.
• During the 1930s, the relatively sophisticated musical styles met
with, and
cross-fertilised, the more heavy-hitting local urban styles exemplified
by the
earliest recordings of Markos Vamvakaris and Batis.
Some of the earliest legends of Greek
music, such as Manolis Chiotis, Markos
Vamvakaris, Soteria Bellou came out of this
music scene.
The core instruments of rebetiko, from the
mid-1930s onwards, have been the
bouzouki, the baglamas and the guitar.