Dimitris Papadimitriou – C. P. Cavafy | “an Alexandrian writing on an Alexandrian”

“Cavafy can be set to music, a task so hard, if not impossible, if you are not an Egyptiot Greek; it is still hard even if you are one. Indeed, you can set Cavafy to music. In the sense that sometimes you may feel him smirking at you in a sardonic way. Only if he sees something in you will the cunning Alexandrian slowly clean his lenses—in a secret gesture where he will let your hazy reflection flicker on his fable round and little glasses as he polishes them meticulously. This is what it means to set Cavafy to music.”

Dimitris Papadimitriou’s “an Alexandrian writing on an Alexandrian” was composed and first presented at the official opening of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in October 2002. Later, it was staged in major venues throughout the world, such as the Tully Hall at Lincoln Center (with Rolando Villazón as a performer, among others), the Salle de Conférences II at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris with the same performers, Megaron―The Athens Concert Hall, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, and many other venues. In May 2024, the work that bore the artistic signature of the eminent composer was shrouded in applause at the Onassis Stegi Main Stage in an eleven-member chamber orchestra version.

“Following that, the need to present my later works made the ‘Cavafy’ works give room for those. Until, out of the blue and under the influence of external sources upon which I place my entire artistic trust, I was reminded of this very need to revisit him, as his remembrance reawakened like an old habit, a teen love hard to get over, yet by no means forgotten.

Cavafy is a celestial body of a monstrous gravitational field. If you step into its pull, you can hardly escape. The fact that other poetry exists besides his seems absurd.

My initial stakes here are no longer in effect. Cavafy is set to music, a task so hard, if not impossible, if you are not an Egyptiot Greek; still hard even if you are one. Yet, it can indeed be set to music, but only if the layered medium called symphonic orchestra is discarded. To the foreground comes a Greek Song Orchestra of eleven instruments, with other voices then added to the music’s arch. It becomes a subtler musical texture, more evocative and less eloquent than my conscious efforts in the first version, where I have stripped the orchestra of the verbalisms it excels in so beautifully, narrowing it down to the moments it is really needed. The orchestral arrangement was overseen here by Tassos Rossopoulos, following this exact outline as a guideline. It now remains to see an aspect of Cavafy verging closer to the idea of the song as envisioned in my ‘The Great Provocateur’ song cycle in its three parts, or my Transformations (‘Songs of the Eternal Flight,’ ‘Of Love’s Black Glory’), or even ‘The Ballads of Atthidon Street.’ Besides, what if the ‘Alexandrian’ preceded this stylistic ‘revolution’ of mine? He surely remains the grand inspirer behind it.”

-Dimitris Papadimitriou

Giota Negka, Artemis Bogri, Babis Velissarios, Veronica Davaki, Emilianos Stamatakis and Constantine Markoulakis.