Solon Michaelides (12 November 190510 September 1979) was a Cypriot composer, teacher and musicologist. He taught himself the

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

as a schoolkid. He was appointed guitar teacher in the Cypriot Conservatory, where he learned

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

. He studied in the UK and

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. After his studies he spend the next two decades in

Limassol Limassol (; el, Λεμεσός, Lemesós ; tr, Limasol or ) is a city on the southern coast of Cyprus and capital of the district with the same name. Limassol is the second largest urban area in Cyprus after Nicosia, with an urban population ...

. He created a

choir A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which sp ...

that survives today as Aris choir, with which he presented opera (Dido and Aeneas) and oratorio classics as well as choral works. He was a music teacher at Lanitio school. He moved to

Salonika Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of the geographic region of ...

in the 1950s, where he continued teaching and created a symphony orchestra that was nationalised in the 1960s and is still active today. He wrote extensively, including books on the harmony of modern music, Cypriot music, modern Greek music and his Encyclopaedia of Ancient Greek Music. He composed several works for

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

and solo such as the archaic suite, Eleftheria etc. His archive was left to the municipality of Limassol where he spent his most creative years. There is a dedicated museum-archive building housing the archive next to the municipal conservatoire. Works by Michaelides have been recorded by Greek symphony orchestras. There is also a dedicated cd which is a live recording his works in concert with a combined choir of members of Aris and Foni tis Kerynias choirs, and the Cyprus symphony orchestra

External links

*http://www.limassolmunicipal.com.cy/archives/index_en.html *http://www.kyreniachoir.com.cy/ 1905 births 1979 deaths 20th-century classical composers 20th-century Greek people 20th-century classical pianists Cypriot classical pianists Cypriot composers Male composers Greek classical composers Greek classical guitarists Greek classical pianists Male classical composers 20th-century guitarists Male classical pianists 20th-century male musicians {{classical-pianist-stub