Abstracts of issue 1/1986 (4)

Dimitry Lèvidis and the Riddle of the “Little Fantasia”

The texts on the composer Dimitry Lèvidis (1886-1951) in this issue were originally published (both in Greek and in English) as a foreword to the edition of the Little Fantasia from the ballet The Talisman of the Gods, op. 41, printed in 1982 by the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sciences. They include:

1. Biographical data.
2. A detailed work list.
3. A report on the extant MSS of the various fragments of the ballet, as well as on literary information about it.
4. A bibliography.

The report (c) suggests that Little Fantasia is the only complete piece existing until now, from a quantity of music in fragments of varying length belonging to the ballet The Talisman of the Gods: a work perhaps never completed, which appears to have been an ambitious compositional project undergoing modifications over the years. It seems to have occupied the composer from 1925, in Paris, until perhaps the middle 1940s.

The detailed work list (b), by no means a definitive one, since so many of Lèvidis’ works have been lost, is the fruit of research made by the author in 1971-1973 (Athens), in May 1976 and November 1977 (Paris), and in 1981-1982 at the National Library of Greece, in Athens. Its inclusion in the foreword to the published score was made necessary partly by the very scope and length of the “report” (c), in its effort to answer so many questions about the ballet.

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