Antonios Melissenos
Antonios Melissenos | |
|---|---|
| Αντώνιος Μελισσηνός | |
| Died | 1899 |
| Occupations | Lawer, Poet |
| Family | Melissenos |
Antonios Melissinos (?-Lixouri, 1899) was a Greek lawyer and poet from Lixouri, Kefalonia.[1] He was distinguished for his patriotic and occasional speeches, and he left a strong mark in the field of Greek national poetry and music.
Works
He set to music the dances from his poetic one-act drama Τα βουνίσια παλληκάρια (The Mountain Braves).[2] For many years, especially during the era of the Radicals, he was renowned for the dance Τα ρόδα τα τριαντάφυλλα (The Roses, the Red Roses), which became well known throughout the Ionian Islands and later spread to the rest of Greece as a folk song,[3] with the addition and variation of verses.
He published the following literary works:
- Η σταφιδούλα (The Little Currant), a long poem (1850, Kefalonia).
- A Rita Gaburi, published in Italy.
- A number of national and romantic asmata (lyrical poems), included in a collection titled Euphrosyne, published in 1852 by Theodoros Pefanis in Kefalonia.
However, according to the historian Ilias Tsitselis, several of Melissinos' works were never published and remain, to this day, in the possession of the families of Angelos Melissinos and Charalambos Charitatos.
References
- ^ Tsitselis, Ilias (1904). Kefalliniaka Symmikta: Contributions to the History and Folklore of the Island of Kefalonia, Vol. 2. Athens: P. Leonis. p. 655.
- ^ Tsitselis, Ilias (1904). Kefalliniaka Symmikta: Contributions to the History and Folklore of the Island of Kefalonia, Vol. 1. Athens: P. Leonis. p. 859.
- ^ Military Songs [Pamphlet]. 7th Staff Office, General Staff of the Army. June 1979. p. 20. The song was also performed to a melody from the aria of I Puritani by Bellini; however, in various editions, the melody is attributed to Sakellaridis. Sakellaridis' music for Ta Roda also appears with Byzantine musical notation in various monastic church books of Central Greece and the Peloponnese. The original melody by Antonios Melissinos survives in an early 1900s manuscript in the archive of Gerasimos Sot. Galanos. The same melody, with piano accompaniment, is preserved in B. Randhartinger's edition Greek Songs (Vienna), from the Greek Music Archive of Georgios Konstantzos. In this edition, the lyrics were altered: the tyrants mentioned in the poetic text were changed from "the English" to "the Muslims," reflecting its use as a song for enslaved Greece.
External links
- Kefalliniaka Symmikta by Ilias A. Tsitselis (1904), Three volume work on the history and folklore of the island of Kefalonia (in Greek).
- Galanos, Gerasimos S.; Pefanis, Lambrogiannis P. (2016). Logia Kefalliniaki Mousa: Works of Kefalonian Composers of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Vol. 2. Athens: Technological Educational Institute of the Ionian Islands. ISBN 978-618-81643-5-2.