NINE GREEK DANCES for Wind Band by NIKOS SKALKOTTAS (Greece 1904 – 1949)

[#322] Sep 22, 2025 Greece | 1934/1936 | Wind Band | Grade 5 | 23' | Dance Suite

Purchase score at Margun Music World

Nine Greek Dances, by Greek composer and violinist Nikos Skalkottas is our Composition of the Week.

The Greek Dances are part of a series of 36 Greek dances that Skalkottas composed from 1933, originally for symphony orchestra.

Skalkottas arranged different sets of these dances for various instruments, such as string orchestra, string quartet, violin and piano, as well as a set for wind band, that were arranged a sometime later, around 1940. Gunther Schuller has produced a new edition in 1990.

The set of nine dances for winds has a duration of about 23 minutes, distributed as follows:

1. Epirotikos (Dance from Epirus)

2. Peleponnisiakos (Dance from Peleponnisia)

3. Kalamatianos (Dance from Kalamata)

4. Mariori mou (My Mariori)

5. Pedia ke Pios to Petaxe (Boys, Who Threw it?)

6. Kritikos (Dance from Crete)

7. Sifneikos (Dance from Sifnos)

8. Makedonikos (Dance from Macedonia)

9. Enas Aitos (An Eagle)

The nine dances are scored for large symphonic band, and are available on rental at Margun Music World through Wise Music Classical. “Anyone who thinks Skalkottas is difficult should hear his GREEK DANCES. Not only are they delightful (and modal/tonal), they also transcend their origins (which are not all dances from the Greek mainland, or even strictly authentic). Like the dances of Bartók, Arnold or many Spanish composers, these three series of 12 have much to offer beyond their native area. Especially notable are the ways they vary and develop material. They are original compositions, not arrangements, and reveal a musical imagination worth experiencing.” Notes by Paul Rapoport for Fanfare Magazine

Nikos Skalkottas is a leading figure in Greek music (with Manolis Kalomiris [1883-1962], the founder of a 'modernist national school'). Skalkottas and Dimitri Mitropoulos--later to establish himself as a world-renowned conductor--were the first Greek composers to adopt atonality and the twelve-tone method in the 1920s. Skalkottas also explored 20th-century tonal idioms.

Nikos Skalkottas was born on March 8, 1904, in Halkis (island of Eubea, Greece). His great-grandfather, Alexander Skalkottas, from Pyrgos (island of Tinos) was a renowned folk singer, violinist and composer; his father, Alexander Skalkottas, was a flutist. A child prodigy himself as a violinist, Nikos pursued his studies first in his hometown with his uncle Costas, later at the Athens Conservatory, graduating with the First Prize Gold Medal in 1920. In 1921, on a series of scholarships, he left for Berlin where he stayed until 1933, first taking violin master courses with Willy Hess at the Berlin Hochschule, then in the winter of 1923-24 turning definitely to composition, for which his main teachers were Phillipp Jarnach (1925-27), Paul Juon, Kurt Weill and Arnold Schoenberg (1927-31).

He composed prodigiously, in a personal atonal idiom, using the twelve-tone system rather seldom and somewhat reluctantly at that time. When the mounting wave of Nazism made life for exponents of new music difficult, Skalkottas returned to Athens in May 1933, the same month that Schoenberg left Germany. In Greece, unfortunately, Skalkottas met with a great deal of incomprehension and enmity and was obliged to accept a position as one of the last violins in the State Orchestra of Athens. He isolated himself, refusing to talk about music to all but a few people who, he thought, appreciated contemporary music, all the while composing feverishly until his death on September 19, 1949, in Athens as a result of a neglected constricted hernia. Practically his entire output remained unknown, unpublished, and unperformed during his life.

In 1935 he turned to a new, quite complex but highly concise version of the twelve-tone system of his own invention, which he used extensively until his death, parallel with, beginning around 1938, a non-serial method that sounds only slightly different from the other technique. His main innovations consist of creating an entirely new sound world by developing formal structures operating at multiple concurrent levels, and by the intensity and directness with which he used harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, and articulation to serve maximum expressive purposes. Another important feature of Skalkottas's music is the presence of Greek folk material in his works. For a period, he professionally transcribed and analyzed Greek folksongs. Of particular interest is his integration of folk elements in his atonal composition, most notable in his famous collection of Greek Dances for orchestra.

In his 25-year long career, Skalkottas composed more than 170 works, often short, but sometimes of "gigantic" dimensions and of remarkable sophistication and complexity. Manuscripts for over 110 works are gathered at the Skalkottas Archives in Athens, representing more than 80% of his work (since the missing ones are generally quite short). BIS has recently released three recordings of his orchestral and chamber music (BIS CD-1014, BIS CD-1024, BIS CD-904). His three Piano Concertos, Concerto for Violin, Viola and Wind Orchestra, Greek Dances, Symphony in One Movement ("The Return of Ulysses") and Symphonic Suite are among his key works. Gunther Schuller is currently recording Skalkottas's Piano Pieces Volumes I--III.

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Other works for winds include:

• Concerto No.3 for Piano and Wind Orchestra (1939)

• Concerto for Violin, Viola and Wind Orchestra (1940)