TRAGEDIES Prometheus was composed in 1997. My main inspiration came after I read the poems Prometheus Savior by Charalambos Stoforos. The orchestration calls for guitar, flute, violin and percussion. It’s written in a very traditional tonal and rhythmic way inspired by Greek music and meters. Prometheus was a Titan in Greek Mythology a figure who is credited with the creation of man from clay and the theft of fire for human use an act that enabled progress and civilization. The punishment of Prometheus as a consequence of the theft is a major theme of his mythology, and is a popular subject of both ancient and modern art. Zeus king of the Olympian gods sentenced the Titan to eternal torment for his transgression. The immortal Prometheus was bound to a rock, here each day an eagle, the emblem of Zeus, was sent to feed on his liver, which would then grow back to be eaten again the next day. Chase Dance (1996) incorporates many elements of the Greek musical tradition, like the melodic and harmonic material of the introduction, played without notated meter. The slow introduction gradually evolves into a fast, agitated chase, as the title suggests. As the composer remarks, ìthe alternation of 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, and 9/8 meters increases the tension of the piece and the “nerves” of the performer as he approaches the end. At the peak of this frenzied dance the piece ends abruptly, as the result of a chase. The work was commissioned by and dedicated to David Starobin, who also gave its world premiere during the “Bath International Music Festival” in London. Eftychia Papanikolaou Neoptolemos, for string quartet was composed in 1993. The first performance took place in Boston at Boston University on May 3, 1994. It consists of three movements (Allegro e Ritmico, Dark-Slow, Allegro-Marcato) and its duration is 19 minutes. During this time I was exploring in finding ways to discover my compositional style. The quartet in spite of its complexity has a very clear melodic and rhythmic line. It's written in a very virtuosic approach but in many ways it’s simple in its form and function. I used techniques of sea-gull effects, fugues, canonic imitations, ostinatos and of course a lot of Greek color. The name of the quartet comes from Neoptolemus the son of the warrior Achille and the princess Deidamia in Greek Mythology. (My inspiration to name it though Neoptolemos came from an airplane (baring this name) I took from Salonica to Athens in Greece in order to say goodbye to a part of myself). ...tell my wife I love her... The last words of a dying soldier. His last 5 minutes. A lament full of love, beautiful memories and the eminent shadow of Death. A simple melody unfolds onto a variation of agony and ecstasy. End comes closer and closer as the heart beat accents and descents. Still the last beat says ...I love you... Lamentations are eulogies to love not to death. We lament because we love life. Death needs life to exist, not vice versa. (A.P) When I composed Lamentation? back in 1995, my main goal was to portray elements of a tragedy (usually dealing with Death) with all those idiosyncrasies someone could find in certain cultures. Always there is a point, in the sadness of the His presence (Death), when people (especially in some cultures) need to laugh, dance. The “dance” part in Lamentation comes to portray this aspect. Lamentation? starts with a narrative and mournful way. Melancholic would be a more sufficient characterization. The dance that follows is this specific element that keeps the balance between sadness and joy in certain devastating situations. Characteristic lament sounds are the quarter-tones and the existence of a glissando chord which the performer realizes by playing and singing at the same time. For this work I did use thoughts and feelings derived from my homeland in Greece that I tried to transfer with a direct and at the same time a dynamic way for the performer. (A.P) Slave Story (1992) is one of the first pieces where the composer’s experimentation with novel guitar sounds becomes evident. In the words of Mr. Paraskevas “with this piece I wished to give the listener as many unconventional and new sounds on the guitar as possible”. In order to understand the function of the sounds used one has to be aware of the programmatic elements hidden behind the music. The story is that of a slave; first we hear the chains, represented by scratching of the nails on the strings, while immediately afterwards the leitmotiv of the slave is introduced. As the music grows faster, the slave is caught in a dream, where he is being pursued (musically illustrated by the strikes on the wood and other techniques that produce percussive sounds). This hectic effect culminates in the emancipation of the slaveís mind, whereby he recalls sounds of the timpani that he used to hear when once free in his homeland. In order to achieve these different timpani-like sounds, the player has to cross the strings of the guitar in pairs, thus forming six different sounds of timpani, and improvise rhythmically on them. As the sound gradually fades out, the opening scratching of the string returns, bringing the slave out of his illusions and back to reality. The sound of the lowest note is not enough to lament on the slaveís fate, so the performer has to start untuning the lowest string, until a very low and uncertain pitch is heard. At this point he lays the guitar flat, and, with the use of a Ping-Pong ball that he slides between the fourth and the fifth strings of the guitar he creates a sound that represents a dream, an escape from the reality. At the same time, however, the lamenting bass persists - that proves to be the only reality. Serpent is my first electronic piece (and only) that I composed in the studios of Boston University back in 1992. All the sounds come from a Yamaha sequencer. The sounds I used where recordings of birds, classical guitar, Ping-Pong balls, a camera, paper and human voice. The main thematic material comes from a guitar suite I composed the same year with the title The Garden of Eden. The story behind is of the serpent in the Garden of Eden and its devious interaction with the first man and the first woman (Adam and Eve). Nadir (1994) is written for ‘prepared’ guitar, a term usually associated with a piano in which certain objects have been placed on the strings in order to alter the conventional sound of the instrument. Many composers have written music for ‘prepared’ piano, among them John Cage, who, according to Mr. Paraskevas, was the inspiration for his transferring of the same technique to the guitar. It is quite possible that nobody has used this kind of technique on the guitar before. After experimenting with various materials, he decided on the use of two metal paper clips, which he puts at specific locations on the fingerboard, so that they best produce the desired sound effect, a sound both harmonic and percussive. Nadir suggests the lowest point, here associated with the notion of death. The piece bears many programmatic references to the struggle between good and evil, life and death, musically portrayed in the persistent ostinato rhythms and the fragmented melodic phrases. Death cuts through in the form of an abrupt strike on the wood, the fingers continue to play but no sound is heard, until two more strikes make their movement stop. Little by little life and sound start again, but the final strike brings about the pessimistic message that fate and death predominate in the end. The piece ends with the inscription “...but sooner or later we live forever” - a final optimistic touch. Nadir was the outcome of continuous experimentation on the capabilities of the guitar as an instrument, and all the potential sound effects that one can draw from it. The Storm is music for an imaginary film. The orchestration consists of Strings, French horn, cello, Middle Eastern string and percussion instruments, electronic and music concrete sounds. My interest in film as well inspires me to write simple melodies that portray images that we could associate with in many occasions. I was caught in a storm few months ago and under a shelter I videotaped all the electricity that was produced and the variations of motions that were happening during the storm. It initiated my inspiration to compose The Storm and record it soon after.