ABSTRACT
The ancients wanted their bodies strong and beautiful so that these bodies might be receptacles for balanced, healthy minds. Greek historiographers and folklorists in particular claimed that the Byzantine era bridged the historical gap between classical antiquity and modern Greece. The modern Greek nation, as they proclaimed, had shown remarkable endurance and had resiliently survived a continuous historical evolution from remote antiquity to Byzantium and from there to the present time. Manolis Kalomiris was particularly proud of his Greek-Anatolian heritage and had an enduring nostalgia for his native Smyrna, the city that before its destruction in 1922 had been the financial and cultural hub of Hellenism for the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Kalomiris was undoubtedly alarmed by the rapidly changing musical milieu. He was particularly concerned for his posterity and the likelihood of being remembered in Greek music history as the ‘anti-modernist’ conservative figure that had held back the evolution of Greek music.
