| Giorgos
Amargianakis was born in 1938 and grew up in the village of Anatoli at Ierapetra.
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| Giorgos'
great interest in music and folk tradition was awakened early in his
childhood. As the son of a priest, the liturgical Byzantine music came
naturally to be of great importance to his life, but also the local folk
music - and especially the violin player Pantelis Baritantonakis - came to
influence Giorgos'
further life.
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| After
having finished school he studied theology and Byzantine music in Athens.
At the beginning of the 70'ies
Giorgos taught at the upper secondary school in Ierapetra
and had simultaneously a job as the lead singer (protopsaltis) at the
Timios Stavros Church.
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| In
the years from 1971 until 1984 Giorgos worked at the Centre
of Ethnography
under the Academy of Athens, where he among other things worked at
gathering and registering folk music.
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Giorgos
never forgot the Byzantine music, and he came to Denmark in 1973 to write
his doctoral dissertation "An analysis of Stichera in the Deuteros
Modes" on fixed formulas in Byzantine chants in the manuscript of
"Sinai 1230" from 1365. In Denmark he worked out his manuscript
under guidance of the late lecturer
Joergen Raasted, and it was later published in the series of "Cahiers de L'Institut du Moyen-Âge
Grec et Latin" from the University of Copenhagen (1977).
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| During
Giorgos' two years'
stay I had the great pleasure of getting to know him personally. We became
close friends, and through Giorgos, who was a very inspiring teacher, I
learned my first hesitant Greek. In addition to this, Giorgos contributed
greatly to my growing interest of Greece and Crete in particular.
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| In
1984 Giorgos Amargianakis was engaged as a senior lecturer at the newly
established musicology section at the University of Crete in Rethymnon,
where he among many other tasks invested a gigantic work in creating a
large collection of books and sounds with recordings of folk musicians
from all Greece.
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University
of Crete in Rethymno |
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| Simultaneously
with his work at the university Giorgos was the leader of "Programme
for Traditional
Greek Music"
under the Institute
of Mediterranean Studies,
where he and his group worked particularly with the Cretan folk music and
its
way of improvising over various themes.
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| In
1986 he founded the Byzantine Choir of Iraklion, which has performed
several concerts as well in Greece as abroad.
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| In
1990 Giorgos moved to Athens, where he was engaged at the University of
Athens as the first professor of musicology ever, and where he organized
the newly established music section. In the same period of time Giorgos
was also the leader of Fivos Anogianakis' beautiful and extremely
informative Museum
of Greek Popular Musical Instruments
at Plaka in Athens. |
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Museum of Greek
Popular
Musical Instruments |
| Giorgos
Amargianakis died on July 17th
2003 after a long period of illness.
Giorgos was a modest man with an eagerness in his work and a knowledge in
his field, which was deeply admired by everybody who knew him. Giorgos was
also a warm man, who will be missed by his friends and acquaintances.
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Giorgos Amargianakis in 1998 |
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(photo: Vivi
Lund) |
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