1.
Xanthi
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Xanthi, is a city in Thrace, northeastern Greece. It is the capital of the Xanthi regional unit of the region of East Macedonia, other landmarks in Xanthi include the Archaeological Museum of Abdera and the Greek Folk Art Museum. Xanthi is famous throughout Greece for its annual spring carnival which has a significant role in the citys economy, over 40 cultural associations from around Greece participate in the carnival program. The festivities which take place during the period include concerts, theatre plays, music and dance nights, exhibitions, an event, games on the streets. Xanthi is known as İskeçe in Turkish and Скеча or Ксанти in Bulgarian, probably is identified with the ancient city of Xantheia mentioned in the 1st BC century by the geographer Strabo, but was not mentioned by any other ancient historian. It began as a village and experienced all the tumultuous periods of the history of Thrace, such as raids, disasters, ethnic conflicts. For this reason, the Ottomans brought settlers from within of Asia Minor, known references to Xanthi, or Xanthia, the citys origins are obscure, it was a prosperous stronghold of the Byzantine era but latter became a colony of the Turks known as Eskije. Xanthi is first recorded in 879AD through its Bishop Georgios, from 13th to 14th century it was the most important city of the region. Three monasteries date from the Middle Ages Pammegiston, Taxiarxon, and Panagia Archaggeliotisa, Xanthi featured in the campaign of Andronikos II Palaiologos in 1327. By 1715, Xanthi, as well as Genisea, became renowned for its tobacco quality, many foreign sightseers traveled throughout the region and described both the life and struggles of the locals. Tobacco commerce throughout Europe led Xanthi into a course of prosperity, george Demetriou was active in the Xanthi area during the Greek Revolution of 1821. In March and April 1829 two earthquakes literally leveled the city, however played a role in the further developments. The citys re-building immediately got underway, in 1870, the city of Genisea was burned down and thus all of the agencies and services were transferred to Xanthi which, at that time, had a population of about 10,000 inhabitants. In 1891, the line was established near the city, while further economic development led to the founding of schools. During the First Balkan War, Xanthi was captured by the Bulgarian army from the Ottomans in 8 November 1912, in the Second Balkan War the Greek army captured it in July 1913. However, with the Treaty of Bucharest, Xanthi along with Western Thrace were ceded to Bulgaria, following the Bulgarian defeat in this war, Western Thrace came under Allies of World War I administration, on 4 October 1919 before being ceded to Greece in the Treaty of Neuilly. 4 October, the day the Greek army under Georgios Leonardopoulos command entered the city, is celebrated in Xanthi as the anniversary of its liberation, anthypolochagos Gavriel Ladas, who was from Xanthi lead the first troops in the city. Ladas became mayor of the city from 1959 to 1964, on 8 April 1941 the 164th Infantry Division captured Xanthi following the German invasion of Greece and it was liberated by the Bulgarians
2.
Greece
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Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, historically also known as Hellas, is a country in southeastern Europe, with a population of approximately 11 million as of 2015. Athens is the capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. Greece consists of nine regions, Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace, Crete. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a vast number of islands, eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as polis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming a part of the Roman Empire and its successor. The Greek Orthodox Church also shaped modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World, falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence. Greeces rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, among the most in Europe, Greece is a democratic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, and a very high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. Greeces unique cultural heritage, large industry, prominent shipping sector. It is the largest economy in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor, the names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages, locations and cultures. The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, all three stages of the stone age are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries and these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC and this ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, in 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the worlds first democratic system of government in Athens
3.
Athens
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Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. In modern times, Athens is a cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime. In 2015, Athens was ranked the worlds 29th richest city by purchasing power, Athens is recognised as a global city because of its location and its importance in shipping, finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts, international trade, culture, education and tourism. It is one of the biggest economic centres in southeastern Europe, with a financial sector. The municipality of Athens had a population of 664,046 within its limits. The urban area of Athens extends beyond its administrative city limits. According to Eurostat in 2011, the Functional urban areas of Athens was the 9th most populous FUA in the European Union, Athens is also the southernmost capital on the European mainland. The city also retains Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a number of Ottoman monuments. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery, Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics. In Ancient Greek, the name of the city was Ἀθῆναι a plural, in earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as Ἀθήνη. It was possibly rendered in the later on, like those of Θῆβαι and Μυκῆναι. During the medieval period the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as Ἀθήνα, an etiological myth explaining how Athens has acquired its name was well known among ancient Athenians and even became the theme of the sculpture on the West pediment of the Parthenon. The goddess of wisdom, Athena, and the god of the seas, Poseidon had many disagreements, in an attempt to compel the people, Poseidon created a salt water spring by striking the ground with his trident, symbolizing naval power. However, when Athena created the tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity. Different etymologies, now rejected, were proposed during the 19th century. Christian Lobeck proposed as the root of the name the word ἄθος or ἄνθος meaning flower, ludwig von Döderlein proposed the stem of the verb θάω, stem θη- to denote Athens as having fertile soil. In classical literature, the city was referred to as the City of the Violet Crown, first documented in Pindars ἰοστέφανοι Ἀθᾶναι. In medieval texts, variant names include Setines, Satine, and Astines, today the caption η πρωτεύουσα, the capital, has become somewhat common
4.
20th-century classical music
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This era was without a dominant style and composers have created highly diverse kinds of music. Modernism, impressionism, post-romanticism, neoclassicism, expressionism, and, later, atonality, serialism, musique concrète and electronic music were all developed during this period. Jazz was an important influence on composers in this period. At the turn of the century, music was characteristically late Romantic in style, composers such as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss and Jean Sibelius were pushing the bounds of Post-Romantic Symphonic writing. At the same time, the Impressionist movement, spearheaded by Claude Debussy, was being developed in France, maurice Ravels music, also often labelled as impressionist, explores music in many styles not always related to it. Many composers reacted to the Post-Romantic and Impressionist styles and moved in different directions. From this sprang an unprecedented linguistic plurality of styles, techniques, in Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg developed atonality, out of the expressionism that arose in the early part of the 20th century. He later developed the technique which was developed further by his disciples Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Stravinsky explored twelve-tone technique, too, as did many other composers, indeed, even Scott Bradley used the technique in his scores for the Tom, after the First World War, many composers started returning to the past for inspiration and wrote works that draw elements from it. This type of music thus became labelled neoclassicism, igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Ravel and Paul Hindemith all produced neoclassical works. Italian composers such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo developed musical Futurism and this style often tried to recreate everyday sounds and place them in a Futurist context. The Machine Music of George Antheil and Alexander Mosolov developed out of this, in the 1940s and 50s composers, notably Pierre Schaeffer, started to explore the application of technology to music in musique concrète. The term electroacoustic music was coined to include all forms of music involving magnetic tape, computers, synthesizers, multimedia. Live electronic music uses live electronic sounds within a performance, Cages Cartridge Music being an early example, spectral music is a further development of electroacoustic music that uses analyses of sound spectra to create music. Cage, Berio, Boulez, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Nono, from the early 1950s onwards, Cage introduced elements of chance into his music. Process music explores a particular process which is laid bare in the work. The term experimental music was coined by Cage to describe works that produce unpredictable results, important cultural trends often informed music of this period, romantic, modernist, neoclassical, postmodernist or otherwise. Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev were particularly drawn to primitivism in their careers, as explored in works such as The Rite of Spring
5.
Music of Greece
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The music of Greece is as diverse and celebrated as its history. Greek music separates into two parts, Greek traditional music and Byzantine music, with more eastern sounds, Music is a significant aspect of Hellenic culture, both within Greece and in the diaspora. Greek musical history extends far back into ancient Greece, since music was a part of ancient Greek theater. Later influences from the Roman Empire, Eastern Europe and the Byzantine Empire changed the form, in the 19th century, opera composers, like Nikolaos Mantzaros, Spyridon Xyndas and Spyridon Samaras and symphonists, like Dimitris Lialios and Dionysios Rodotheatos revitalized Greek art music. In ancient Greece, men usually performed choruses performed for entertainment, celebration, Instruments included the double-reed aulos and the plucked string instrument, the lyre, especially the special kind called a kithara. Music was an important part of education in ancient Greece, due to Romes reverence for Greek culture, the Romans borrowed the Greek method of enchiriadic notation to record their music, if they used any notation at all. In his lexicographical discussion of instruments, the Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih cited the lūrā as an instrument of the Byzantines along with the urghun, shilyani. These genres have certainly reached a degree of evolution. They were forms of a music that had many elements of ancient Greek origin but also. By the beginning of the 20th century, music-cafés were popular in Greek cities like Constantinople and Smyrna, the bands were typically led by a female vocalist and included a violin. The improvised songs typically exclaimed amán amán, which led to the name amanédhes or café-aman, Greek musicians of this period included Marika Papagika, Rosa Eskenazi and Rita Abatzi. This period also brought in the Rebetiko movement, which had local Smyrnaic, Greek folk traditions are said to derive from the music played by ancient Greeks. There are said to be two musical movements in Greek folk music, Acritic songs and Klephtic songs, akritic music comes from the 9th century akrites, or border guards of the Byzantine Empire. Following the end of the Byzantine period, klephtic music arose before the Greek Revolution, developed among the kleftes, Klephtic music is monophonic and uses no harmonic accompaniment. Many of the earliest recordings were done by Arvanites like Yiorgia Mittaki, instrumentalists include clarinet virtuosos like Petroloukas Halkias, Yiorgos Yevyelis and Yiannis Vassilopoulos, as well as oud and fiddle players like Nikos Saragoudas and Yiorgos Koros. Nisiotika is a term denoting folk songs from the Greek islands. Among the most popular types of them is Ikariótiko traghoúdhi, song from Ikaria, ikariótikos is a traditional type of dance, and also the name of its accompanying type of singing, originating in the Aegean island of Ikaria. At first it was a slow dance, but today Ikariotikos is a very quick dance
6.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
7.
Greeks
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The Greeks or Hellenes are an ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, Turkey, Sicily, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world, many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization. The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Smyrna, most ethnic Greeks live nowadays within the borders of the modern Greek state and Cyprus. The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor, other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to the Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are officially registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Greeks speak the Greek language, which forms its own unique branch within the Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic. They are part of a group of ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an archetypal diaspora people. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, the Mycenaeans quickly penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes, Crete, Cyprus and the shores of Asia Minor. Around 1200 BC, the Dorians, another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus, the Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages, but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as an era of heroes, closeness of the gods. The Homeric Epics were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past, as part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of later antiquity. The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC, the works of Homer and Hesiod were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos, history and mythology. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period, the classical period of Greek civilization covers a time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC. It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras, the Peloponnesian War, the large scale civil war between the two most powerful Greek city-states Athens and Sparta and their allies, left both greatly weakened. Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria, Antioch and Seleucia, two thousand years later, there are still communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the Kalash, who claim to be descended from Greek settlers. The Hellenistic civilization was the period of Greek civilization, the beginnings of which are usually placed at Alexanders death. This Hellenistic age, so called because it saw the partial Hellenization of many non-Greek cultures and this age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state. These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi, Greeks, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity was contact with barbarian peoples and this led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation
8.
Mikis Theodorakis
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Michael Mikis Theodorakis is a Greek songwriter and composer who has written over 1000 songs. He scored for the films Zorba the Greek, Z, and he composed the Mauthausen Trilogy also known as The Ballad of Mauthausen, which has been described as the most beautiful musical work ever written about the Holocaust and possibly his best work. He is viewed as Greeces best-known living composer and he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize. Politically, he is associated with the left because of his ties to the Communist Party of Greece. He was an MP for the KKE from 1981 to 1990 and he continues to speak out in favor of left-liberal causes, Greek–Turkish–Cypriot relations, and against the War in Iraq. He has consistently opposed oppressive regimes and was a key voice against the 1967–1974 Greek junta, Mikis Theodorakis was born on the Greek island of Chios and spent his childhood years in different provincial Greek cities such as Mytilene, Cephallonia, Patras, Pyrgos, and Tripoli. His father, a lawyer and a servant, was from the small village of Kato Galatas on Crete and his mother, Aspasia Poulakis, was from an ethnically Greek family in Çeşme. He was raised with Greek folk music and was influenced by Byzantine liturgy, theodorakiss fascination with music began in early childhood, he taught himself to write his first songs without access to musical instruments. In Patras and Pyrgos he took his first music lessons, and in Tripoli, Peloponnese, he gave his first concert at the age of seventeen. He went to Athens in 1943, and became a member of a Reserve Unit of ELAS, and led a troop in the fight against the British and the Greek right in the Dekemvriana. During the Greek Civil War he was arrested, sent into exile on the island of Icaria and then deported to the island of Makronisos, where he was tortured and twice buried alive. During the periods when he was not obliged to hide, not exiled or jailed, in 1950, he finished his studies and took his last two exams with flying colours. He went to Crete, where he became the head of the Chania Music School, at this time he ended what he has called the first period of his musical writing. In 1954 he travelled with his young wife Myrto Altinoglou to Paris where he entered the Conservatory and studied musical analysis under Olivier Messiaen and his time in Paris, 1954–1959, was his second period of musical writing. His symphonic works, a Piano concerto, his first suite, his first symphony, in 1957, he won the Gold Medal in the Moscow Music Festival, President of the Jury was Dmitri Shostakovitch. Chairman of the International Theodorakis Foundation FILIKI, list of works based on the research of Asteris Koutoulas, published in O Mousikos Theodorakis. Κύκλος τραγουδιών για πιάνο και φωνή Χαιρετισμοί,4 Maria Farantouri — Asmata Mikis Theodorakis — Symphony No. A - Γ Να μαγευτώ και να μεθύσω Μάνου Χατζιδάκι εγκώμιον I had Three Lives Σπίθα, Music and Social Change, Foreword by Mikis Theodorakis
