Cypriot Music

The music of Cyprus includes a variety of traditional, Western classical and Western popular genres. Cypriot traditional music is similar to the traditional music of Greece with Turkish and Arab influences, and includes dances like sousta, syrtos, ballos, tatsia, antikristos, arabiye, karotseris, sinalik, chiftetteli, zeimbekiko and the mandra dance.

History

Medieval music

Cyprus changed hands numerous times prior to the medieval era, and was an important outpost of Christianity and Western European civilization during the Crusades. The island's peak as a cultural capital of Europe occurred from 1359 to 1432. During that peak, Pierre I de Lusignan made a three-year tour on Europe, bringing with him an entourage of musicians that impressed Charles V in Rheims so much that he donated 80 francs in gold to them. On his return to Cyprus, Pierre I brought with him the French Ars Nova and, later, the Ars Subtilior. French musicians became well established in Cyprus, and the city of Nicosia became a capital of the Ars Subtilior style. Janus I de Lusignan saw Cypriot music evolve into its own variety of music. His daughter, Anne de Lusignan, brought a manuscript after her marriage to Louis, Count of Geneva, which contained 159 folios with over two hundred polyphonic compositions, both sacred and secular. The manuscript is now a part of the collection of the National Library of Turin.

Renaissance music

A key-figure of that era was Ieronimos o Tragodistis (Hieronymus the Cantor), a Cypriot student of Gioseffo Zarlino, who flourished around 1550-1560 and, among others, proposed a system that enabled medieval Byzantine chant to correspond to the current contrapuntal practices via the cantus.

Byzantine music

The music of the island is influenced also by the Byzantine music. Athanasios Demetriadis, also known as Kasavetis, was a Cypriot deacon in Constantinople when Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople was his uncle Yerasimos (1794–1797). A secular song lamenting Death's preference for the young, written and set to music by him survives in a collection by Nikiforos Naftouniaris. Chrysanthos of Madytos, Gregory the Protopsaltes, and Chourmouzios the Archivist were responsible for a reform of the notation of Greek ecclesiastical music. Essentially, this work consisted of a simplification of the Byzantine musical symbols which, by the early 19th century, had become so complex and technical that only highly skilled chanters were able to interpret them correctly.

Recent and current music scenes

Traditional music

Traditional music on Cyprus is similar to the traditional music of Greece and includes dances like the tatsia, sousta, syrtos, ballos, zeibekiko, karotseris, sinalik, chiftetteli, arabkyes, mandra dance and the karsilama suites. Note that unlike Greece and Turkey, there are suites of five karsilama dances, different for men and women some of them other than the standard 9/8 rhythm. The fifth karsilama dance is also known as ballos for both men's and women's suites. Traditional Cypriot music – similar to Greek and Turkish traditional music – is modal, based on the musical systems of the Byzantine echos / Turkish makam. The traditional music of Cyprus is also influenced by the music of the surrounding Arab countries. Both Greek and Turkish Cypriots use the violin as the main solo instrument, accompanied by the lute. The ''tamboutsia'' and the ''pithkiavlin'' are also used. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the davul and the zurna (daouli and zournes in Greek) were used by both communities (although mostly by Turkish Cypriots) in village festivals and weddings, but these instruments were later excluded from the Greek Cypriot soundscape. Another instrument that was played earlier in Cyprus was tambouras, which is known in Greece as ‘pandoura’ or ‘trichordo’ (a three-stringed instrument). Notable performers of Greek Cypriot folk music include singers Theodoulos Kallinikos, Michalis Tterlikkas, Christos Sikkis, Michalis Hadjimichail and Ilias Kouloumis. A niche artist of traditional music is Gianni Delfinogamis, a champion of many ''chiatistá'' (Cypriot Greek: τσιαττιστά, "spite ong) competitions. The ''chiatistá'' is improvised antiphonal singing akin to the Cretan mantinada, to express a range of themes be it satire, love, mourning etc. Greek-Cypriot folk music is most closely related to the Nisiotika (the folk music of the Aegean Islands) and especially so to the music of the Dodecanese. The traditional music of Cyprus is also greatly influenced from the music of the Greeks of Asia Minor.

Attempts to either popularize or fuse traditional music with other genres have taken place since the 1970s. For example, the famous singer and composer, in Cyprus and Greece, of traditional Cypriot and popular music is Mihalis Violaris. Another example includes Monsieur Doumani, a Cypriot band from Nicosia which focuses on developing Cypriot traditional music and reworking traditional Cypriot folk songs.

Western classical music

The Republic of Cyprus has its own symphony orchestra, the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, a professional, full-time symphonic orchestra which was established in 1987 (as the Cyprus Chamber Orchestra) along with the Cyprus Youth Symphony Orchestra and its music school which provides education and musical training to young musicians of all levels. These institutions are under the umbrella of the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra Foundation which is fully subsidised and supervised by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Cypriot musicians and performers of classical music include the pianists Cyprien Katsaris and Martino Tirimo and the pianist and musicologist Solon Hadjisolomos.

Notable composers include:

* Nicolas Economou
* Marios Joannou Elia
* Yannis Kyriakides (born 1969), Cyprus-the Netherlands
* Solon Michaelides (1905–1979), Cyprus-Greece
* George Kallis Cyprus-USA
* Andreas G Orphanides
* Savvas Savva

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