Oeuvre complète
Notice
On one of my first trips to Athens in the 1950s, I found an old 78 rpm record of the folklore of the Greeks of Pontus, a people forced to leave the shores of the Black Sea where their ancestors had lived for more than two thousand years, in a department store that was clearing out its stocks. Reference: gaïda: Theokharis Kazantzidhis. Columbia D.G.7115 C.G.3224-1 n°3078-31814. When I returned to listen to my purchase, I was overwhelmed by the immensity of the imaginary landscape opened up by the few notes of the gaïda bagpipes playing a traditional Omal dance. Since then I have tried several times in vain to understand how apparently rudimentary means – a scale reduced to five notes and ostinati – could arouse such intense emotions. This time, using Midi files, I’m trying once again to find the key to this mystery by transcribing exactly the abundance of notes and embroidering variations on their transcription.