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2025 marks 100 years since the birth of Mikis Theodorakis (1925–2021), arguably the most globally renowned Greek composer of the twentieth century and, for many, the architect of modern Greek musical identity. While the bouzouki theme of Zorba’s Dance from the film Zorba the Greek (1964), alongside his other popular film scores, continues to dominate public memory, Theodorakis was far more than the composer of these iconic melodies.
Over the course of his prolific career, he composed more than a thousand works, including operas, symphonic and chamber music, and politically charged song cycles.
He also
published numerous monographs on music theory and analysis, and on music’s
relationship to its social, cultural, political and historical context.
Anchored in a deeply patriotic political-cultural vision, Theodorakis's music
gave voice to the collective struggle of the Greek people for freedom from
oppression.
The British Library holds an array of material relating to Theodorakis: editions of his published scores including in various arrangements, recordings of his music, and a number of his monographs. This blog post spotlights a selection of these collection items to illustrate how Theodorakis’s published legacy offers crucial insights into his enduring cultural impact on both the musical and political life of the twentieth century, and the complex relationship between the two.
Early years: Political background and musical studies
Born on 29 July 1925, Theodorakis moved to Athens in 1943 and began studies at the Athens Conservatoire. During the Second World War and the Nazi Occupation of Greece (1941–1944), he became involved in the military wing of the largest and most popular resistance group, the Greek People’s Liberation Army or ELAS (Ellinikós Laïkós Apeleftherotikós Stratós).
The relief at the withdrawal of German occupying forces from mainland Greece in October 1944 was short-lived, as Athens descended into brutal internecine fighting. The clashes between leftist resistance organisations and right-wing groups became known as the December Events (Dekemvrianá). These escalated into a full-scale Civil War, which raged until 16 October 1949.
Due to his communist convictions and involvement in ELAS, Theodorakis was arrested and exiled to the prison islands of Psitalia and Ikaria, and later to Makronisos. There, a programme of forced anti-communist re-education was implemented under conditions of unscrupulous violence and terror and Theodorakis was brutally tortured. Owing to family connections, he was released from Makronisos in August 1949, after which he travelled to Crete.
During his recovery, Theodorakis began to write essays on Greek music. In these, he condemned the musical establishment and its entrenched divisions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. After completing his mandatory military service in 1950, he graduated from the Athens Conservatoire and began working as a journalist. He continued publishing critiques of the Greek musical landscape, especially its failure, in his view, to produce an ‘authentic’ national music.[i]
In 1954, he moved to Paris, where he studied musical analysis with Olivier Messiaen and conducting with Eugene Bigot.
Between two worlds: Studies in Paris
In Paris, Theodorakis encountered a musical climate
characterised by high modernist, avant-garde aesthetics. He faced the challenge of navigating these
prevailing musical trends while remaining faithful to his nationalist and
Marxist ideals: to create art that was accessible, inclusive, and politically
edifying for the people. Expressing this tension, he stated in 1960: ‘I am unable to follow strictly any of the aesthetic trends
prevailing in the West, [within which] my Greek sensibility feels more than
restricted: it feels betrayed.’
Theodorakis returned to Greece in 1960, coinciding with the publication of a manifesto he co-authored entitled A Draft Plan for the Reorganization of Greek Music. The text, published in the journal Kritiké (Criticism), declared that ‘Most sectors of [Greek] musical life are seriously ailing’, and called for reforms in music education, the creation of independent symphony orchestras, and a greater emphasis on the study of both Greek Church and popular music.
Music for the masses: Art-popular song
Theodorakis’s vision for a politically conscious, national-popular aesthetic was beginning to take shape, but it was not emerging in the concert hall. In the 1950s and 1960s, he rose to prominence with the consolidation of a genre which became known as éntechno laïkó tragoúdi, or art-popular song.
Assuming the role once occupied
by representatives of the Greek National School of Music including Manolis
Kalomiris (1883–1962), Theodorakis
sought to redefine Greek music for a new era. Art-popular song aspired to bring high art to the
masses by setting renowned Greek poetry to music that brought together elements
of Western symphonic tradition, rebetiko
(Greek urban blues), Greek folk song, and Byzantine musical idioms such as
modes and plainsong.
The agenda of art-popular song was fuelled by Theodorakis’s communist political beliefs and his relationship with the Soviet Union, qualities that set him apart from fellow composer Manos Hadjidakis (1925–1994), who also helped define the art-popular song genre but was not as politically engaged. Although Theodorakis maintained that there could be no fixed ‘communist principles in art’,[iv] his art-popular song was nonetheless ideologically grounded in in the social, cultural, and political principles of Socialist Realism. He was not just, as musicologist Jim Samson writes, ‘politically committed to the Marxist left; he had political ambitions and indeed a political career’,[v] and these politics were channelled into his art-popular songs, which ‘substituted for a possible socialist popular music’.
Solidarity and resistance: Theodorakis’s legacy
Widely regarded as a symbol of resistance and solidarity against fascism, Theodorakis went into hiding during the right-wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.
Listening to and performing his
music was banned, and he was once again arrested and eventually interned in a
concentration camp. Following an international solidarity campaign calling for
his release, he was able to return to Paris in 1970.
Theodorakis made a triumphant return to Greece from his exile in Paris in 1974. He continued to compose and remained active in Greek political life, though some of his political activities, including a brief alliance with the centre-right New Democracy party, provoked controversy among his supporters.
Although his political career involved affiliations with various political parties, Theodorakis remained committed to the political ideals that shaped the genre of art-popular song. A few years before his death in 2021, he elucidated his stance in a political testament sent to the General Secretary of the Greek Communist Party or KKE (Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas):
Now, at the end of my life, at the time of reckoning, the particulars are erased from my mind and the “Big Picture” (ta Megála Megéthi) remains. This is how I recognise that my most crucial, powerful, and mature years were spent under the banner of KKE. For this reason, I want to leave this world as a communist.
This year, events are unfolding around the world to commemorate Theodorakis as a composer who challenged aesthetic boundaries and fought—through both music and politics—for a different world. He is remembered not only for his masterful and wide-ranging works, but also for the life of exile, resistance, and profound struggle that shaped them.
Dr Eirini (Irene) Diamantouli, Content Developer,
Discovering Music
https://blogs.bl.uk/music/2025/07/100-years-of-mikis-theodorakis.html
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