In the Manner of Yorgos Sicilianos: Mediation and Innovation in Yorgos Sicilianos

Abstract or Summary:

A significant aspect of the life and work of Yorgos Sicilianos (1920-2005) involved the integration of European avant-garde elements into the Greek intellectual sphere and connecting Greek musical life with these trends. This chapter critically examines Sicilianos’ dialogue with Samuel Beckett in the Violin Concerto Op. 51, juxtaposing the ‘École du Refus’—associated with the Irish expatriate—and Sicilianos’ subsequent reception and refinement of these ideas nearly three decades later. From the hermetic concept of the French avant-garde of the 1950s (‘l’art pour l’art’), Sicilianos retained the formal introspection. However, he framed it within a musical language designed to facilitate humanistic communication with a broader audience, resulting in a sound that, by 1987, was provocatively romantic.