Towards the Institutionalization of Musical Life in Nineteenth-Century Greece and Southeastern Europe: The First Steps of the Formation of New Creative and Cultural Industries

This chapter attempts to trace the evolutionary path towards the institutionalization of music life in 19th c. Greece, a new European state just recovering and struggling to re-connect with the Western world after more than 400 years of Ottoman rule. Greece constitutes an especially interesting case study, as it functioned as a cultural cross-roads between East and West within a geographically wide and culturally complex space at the southeastern edge of Europe, characterized by a still resonant Ottoman past and a fast pace of westernization.
Within the area investigated, the gradual acquaintance with Western culture is effectuated initially as a private activity, only later acquiring a public character through consecutive stages of institutionalization. The proposed overview includes landmarks such as the developing of a network of musical and theatrical activity and the foundation of musical and theatrical institutions, namely opera houses, as the cultivation of art music became inherently connected with the development of theatrical activity, and in particular with the diffusion of opera and musical theatre. Consequently, the trajectory of art music in Greece will be connected with the development of Greek urban life and the continuous trend for westernization running through the huge area between the Adriatic Sea, the Black Sea, the Aegean archipelago and the Eastern Mediterranean. Concerts, opera, ballet and theatre productions, balls, light musical theatre, were all instantiations of an urban civilization, linked to city public life, and bourgeois needs and habits.
Additionally, this paper attempts to relate the path towards institutionalization with the developments in the cultural market in general, by examining factors which affect musical and theatrical activity in a decisive way, such as: the evolution of new social customs (evening entertainment), the introduction and gradual establishment of musical education, the commercialization of art, and the gradually increasing professionalism of the performers and artists which leads to the formation of a creative industry.