Nikolaos Mantzaros Sets the “Hymn to Liberty” to Music
The Corfiot composer Nikolaos Mantzaros proceeded with the first musical setting of the Hymn to Liberty. According to testimonies, he had already begun the work before the poet arrived in Corfu. His student, Spyridon De Viasis, writes that the first setting was composed “in a folk style, in a most beautiful choral form for two tenors and two basses, with piano accompaniment.”
Mantzaros would set the Hymn to music more than once, collaborating closely with the poet.
“Many times we heard Mantzaros say,” writes De Viasis, “that whenever, during the composition of the two settings of the Hymn, he would play a passage before Solomos, he would stand before him inspired, placing the notes upon the paper, and then strike them upon the piano, singing; and the poet would leap with enthusiasm. He too would sing together with his musician friend. Seeing that the music was worthy of the poetry — that the notes interpreted the very idea of the poem — the poet would dissolve into tears from emotion.”
At that moment, fired by ecstasy, the composer himself, even more inspired, continued writing.
“So great,” Mantzaros would continue, “was our emotion at that moment, that we felt we were no longer upon the earth, and weeping, one embraced the other. These were tears born, on the one hand, from the exhilaration of the work’s success, and on the other… from the awareness that art had succeeded, fittingly, in hymning the freedom of the reborn fatherland, sanctified by the blood of so many holy heroes.”
