Note from the Chairman of the School of Music

I am welcoming, our old and new students. This year, as we all can easily imagine, is a difficult year. We operate in stifling conditions as the crisis – unsurprisingly – has hurt public education. Nevertheless, when the situation is so bad and there seems to be no exit, I think that it is liberating the fact that the only option we have is to move forward, to “get up a little higher,” as the poet says. We have no choice. We will have to balance the poverty of material conditions with the “boundless, unconditional’ desire for education, the creative need for essential knowledge and smart radicalization of the modes of its transmission. What is the position of the School of Music in the current reality ?

In the Greek music educational reality – in which the conservatory system still dominates – the School of Music of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki provides a coherent but, at the same time, flexible program of musical studies which, on the one hand, aims at the functional deepening of the offered musical knowledge and, on the other hand, relates music knowledge with the broader intellectual and artistic trends by holistically approaching it.

For those who follow music educational career – whether in the public or the private sector – the study of music education combines philosophical and research approach to music learning and teaching with real musical expression, creativity and education as, for example, is the case with the Music Education Research Project CALM (Community Action in Learning Music). This program gives last-year students the opportunity to teach, and learn music from, students of primary and secondary schools in socio-economically disadvantaged areas and communities. Meanwhile, our Music Department is the only Greek department that includes music therapy courses in its curriculum.

For those interested in music technology, our department offers courses in acoustics / music information in which the students, come into direct contact with the practice of sound engineering and music production in general, while at the same time our department participates in an Interdisciplinary Graduate Program “Advanced Computer Systems and Communications.”

In our department, students have the opportunity to experience both the Byzantine and the traditional Greek music, in a really experiential way by participating, for example, in the unique music ensemble “Music Polytropo.”

The musicology – either historic or systematic – approaches the entire range of western music in a systematic and “experiential” way (it is not irrelevant that most musicology professors are themselves musicians specializing in different musical genres). Our students come into contact with the latest trends of musicological research of both the music of the past and the most contemporary musical trends.

Finally, composition that is the only artistic direction of the faculty is represented by composers whose compositional work encompasses the whole spectrum of contemporary music, from its neoromantic to the most experimental manifestations. Meanwhile, the composition students have the unique opportunity to have their compositions played by professional musicians and specialized ensembles throughout the duration of their studies.

The Department of Music Studies is a living organism that operates only when all its components, that is, students, teaching/research and administrative staff, operate in direct tandem with one another. It is an organization that is in constant contact with the general (spiritual/cultural, social/economic, scientific/technological) reality and is creatively adapted to meet the challenges of our time

• because the only real aim of the educational process is the continuous and uninterrupted flow of blood; that is of knowledge, and in our case, of MUSIC KNOWLEDGE,
• because only then is and can remain alive the organization of the educational process,
• because only then can we be alive as spiritual persons, to give creative meaning to our lives.

Evi Nika-Sampson
Associate Professor
Chairman, School of Music Studies