Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 37(1), (2025):95-161 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2025.012

The Sixteen Songs (16 Τραγούδια, 1941) by Nikos Skalkottas

Joan Grimalt
Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, ORCID: 0000-0002-1375-7171

This article presents a hermeneutic and analytical study of Nikos Skalkottas's Sixteen Songs (1941), focusing particularly on the first song of the cycle. After an outline of Skalkottas's biography and cultural context, the work explores the complex interplay between poetic text, musical rhetoric, and dramaturgical structure within the song cycle, emphasizing their roots in both Greek tradition and European modernism. Employing tools of topical, textual, and serial analysis, the study demonstrates how Skalkottas fuses dodecaphonic techniques with references to folk music, popular contemporary dances, and rhetorical devices, creating a unique and ironic sound world that transcends the boundaries of tonality, atonality, and genre. The article highlights the cycle's oscillation between lyrical and agitato moments, its dense web of literary and musical topoi, and the innovative handling of form and voice. In addition to presenting a detailed analysis of the first song - including its motivic, harmonic, and structural features - the article provides new English translations of the cycle's lyrics and offers a broader dramaturgical and interpretive perspective on the work as a whole. By considering the technical, symbolist, and expressive dimensions together, the study situates Skalkottas's songs as a singular synthesis of tradition and avant-garde, urging greater recognition of their artistic quality and significance for both Greek and international repertoire. Nikos Skalkottas; Hermeneutic analysis; Sixteen Songs (1941); Musical rhetoric; Musical dramaturgy

Keywords: Nikos Skalkottas; Hermeneutic analysis; Sixteen Songs (1941); Musical rhetoric; Musical dramaturgy

Accepted: February 27, 2025; Published: May 30, 2025  Show citation

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Grimalt, J. (2025). The Sixteen Songs (16 Τραγούδια, 1941) by Nikos Skalkottas. Musicologica Olomucensia, 37(1), 95-161. doi: 10.5507/mo.2025.012
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