ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on Greek musical education and the role played in it by the Athens Conservatoire. Collaboration with the Hatzikonstas Orphanage dating from the very first year of the Conservatoire’s life gave many orphans and poor children the opportunity to study music. Music was thus added to the main curriculum at the orphanage, where every child was expected to learn one or more skills, in order to become an artisan by the end of his or her time there. Mikis Theodorakis is probably the most popular living Greek composer. Although his life and political activity are well known, his musical studies at the Athens Conservatoire remain almost unknown. A series of Greek dances that, according to the note on the first page of the score, were ‘elaborated and orchestrated by Theodorakis’ are also found in the Conservatoire Archive.