Entrusting the leading role to the guitar for the performance of incidental music during the first postwar period; a historical – musicological approach

The paper examines whether, how and when the position of the guitar on the Greek theatrical stage changed. Until the Second World War the guitar remained at an amateur level, in an accompanying role. The first generation of professional soloists, Gerassimos Miliaressis and Dimitri Fampas, opened the way to the stage. Miliaressis performed on his own, offstage, Manos Hadjidakis’s music for a production of a play by Lorca at the National Theatre: it was the first time in Greece that the incidental music of a production was entrusted exclusively to a professional guitarist. In April 1962, in the production The Hostage at the Kykliko Theatre, with music by Mikis Theodorakis, Fampas played on stage and took part in the action. The paper links the change to the subversive character of the production and to the spread of the guitar in the Greek art-popular song, in cinema and in the recording industry.