Gerassimos Miliaressis was a dominant figure in the development of the guitar during the first post-war period. His activity as a soloist, and his contribution as a composer and teacher, helped to develop and cultivate the instrument in Greece. Contemporary musicological research ought to bring to light these aspects of the artist, of which little is known, both to the general public and to the new generation of Greek guitarists. Of even greater interest, perhaps, is an approach to Gerassimos Miliaressis as a person: as a thinker, as a modern philosopher, who until the end of his life retained a rare clarity of mind. Perhaps the sensitivity with which he perceived the outside world, together with the insight with which he approached every detail, form the prism through which his unique artistic personality is revealed.
The text that follows comes from an interview that Gerassimos Miliaressis gave to Tassos Kolydas, in which he refers to the experiences that shaped his artistic personality and to his first contact with the guitar. The interview was given in the context of a university seminar entitled “Biographies of Living Greek Composers”, held at the Department of Music Studies of the University of Athens. The seminar was founded by Professor Apostolos Kostios and put into practice the principle that he himself introduced into the field of historical musicology, according to which “history is recorded today in order to be written today or tomorrow”. This regularly repeated seminar produced the material that was later used for doctoral dissertations on the life and work of Greek composers.
The interview took place in the house where Miliaressis spent many years of his life, on the fifth floor of an apartment building at 180 Ippokratous Street. It was the morning of Wednesday, 16 June 1995, at about ten o’clock. It was the first of four interviews in all, given over a period of seven months. At that time, Miliaressis and his wife were moving to a home of their own in the area of Thrakomakedones. So it happened that the first interview took place in the living room of a fully furnished house, and the last in a literally empty house, in which there were only two wooden chairs.
The interview has remained unpublished until now and is a historical source of particular value, since it includes Miliaressis’s views on the value of singing, the stimuli that influenced his personality, and the characteristics of the guitarists of the 1930s generation. He was born on 5 January 1915 in the town of Brăila, Romania.