Ioannis
Fulias, “Dimitri Mitropoulos’
Sonata ‘My soul’ and its position
in the broader work of the composer”, in: Ioannis Fulias – Yannis Belonis – George
Vlastos – Tassos Kolydas (ed.), Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960): fifty
years after (Congress
proceedings, Athens Concert Hall, 12-13 November
2010), Ionian University / Music Department / Hellenic Music Research Lab –
Edition Orpheus (Ě. Nikolaidis), Athens 2011, p.
33-43.
Having been in the
shadow of Mitropoulos’ large-scale composition Eine griechische Sonate, his earlier piano sonata entitled “My
soul” still remains a completely unrecognised fragment. Yet, a resent research on Mitropoulos’ manuscript revealed
much new information about this work, including the identity of its lost first
movement and the exact date of its composition. So, in this paper, the history
of the work is critically reconstructed from the hitherto known and unknown data
and the music score is very roughly presented as a rare case of a programmatic
piano sonata in romantic style. Moreover, the fact that Mitropoulos reused many
sections of this sonata in his opera Sœur
Béatrice provides the opportunity for a more thorough understanding
of the meaning of both the sonata and the opera, and also highlights the
particular importance of this neglected piano sonata for Mitropoulos’ whole
compositional work.
© Ioannis
Fulias