Dimitrios Levidis was a Greek composer, later naturalized French (1929).

He descends from an aristocratic family with Byzantine roots in Constantinople.
Levidis studied in Athens, Lausanne

Lausanne

Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...

 and Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

. His teachers included Friedrich Klose

Friedrich Klose

Friedrich Klose was a German composer. His opera Ilsebill is inspired by the music of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, and the plot is based on the Brothers Grimm tale of a fisherman who catches a huge fish which grants wishes....

, Felix Mottl

Felix Mottl

Felix Josef von Mottl was an Austrian conductor and composer. He was regarded as one of the most brilliant conductors of his day. He composed three operas, of which Agnes Bernauer was the most successful, as well as a string quartet and numerous songs and other music...

 and Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

, the latter being his composition teacher from 1907 to 1908. Levidis won the Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

 Prize for his Piano Sonata op.16. After a short period in Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 he settled in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 (1910-1932), served in the French Army

French Army

The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...

 during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and took French nationality in 1929.

He wrote abundantly, in many genres, with a refined technique combining Straussian harmony and Ravel

Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

ian impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

, also exploiting Greek modes, in an appealing style of greater homogeneity than that of many of his Greek contemporaries. Levidis was more impressed by Debussy's harmonic brevity as shown in his last works. He was a notable experimenter with novel combinations and new instruments: His interest in new sounds led him to be among the first to write for the Ondes Martenot

Ondes Martenot

The ondes Martenot , also known as the ondium Martenot, Martenot and ondes musicales, is an early electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot. The original design was similar in sound to the theremin...

 (his Poème symphonique, a modernistic Symphonic Poem for Electrical Instrument and Orchestra, (op.43-B) was given on the occasion of the first public appearance of the instrument, premiered on 20 April 1928, at the Paris Opéra

Palais Garnier

The Palais Garnier, , is an elegant 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. It was originally called the Salle des Capucines because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier...

) and conducted by Rhene-Baton. The soloist was Maurice Martenot, performing for the first time in public on an electronic device of his own invention. Following its impressive debut, the conductor Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...

 brought Martenot to the United States to perform the Levidis work with the Philadelphia Orchestra

Philadelphia Orchestra

The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...

. This led to a tremendous flurry of composition for the device.

After his return to Greece in about 1932, Levidis was appointed to the Ministry of Education to teach at the Hellenic Conservatory

Hellenic Conservatory

The Hellenic Conservatory was founded in Athens in 1919 by the composer Manolis Kalomiris. Kalomoiris was the conservatoire's director until 1926, when he left to found the National Conservatoire. The conservatoire early on opened a number of branches throughout Athens, in a number of cities in...

and at the Music Lyceum. In 1934, he founded the Phaleron Conservatory, later subsumed into the Hellenic Conservatory, and he was president of the Union of Greek Composers (1946–1947). He was in Paris again from 1947 to 1948.

Work List

(List not Complete)

• Menuet (1898)
• Tristesse (1899)
• Piano Impromptus (1902)
• Erste Griechische Romantische Piano Sonate op.16 (1908)
• Preludes In d. minor (1910)
• Divertissent Orch. (1911)
• 4 Persian Rubajats (1912-1914)
• Chant payen for oboe and strings
• Divertissement op.25 (1911)
• Patre et Nymphe (1924) Ballet
• Poeme Symphonique, pour solo d'Ondes Musicales et Orchestre, op.43-B (1928)
• De Profundis (1929)
• 4 tableaux en un acte op.45(?)
• L' illiade, Orch. Oratorio. (1942-1943)
• La Terre dans l'Espace. Symphonic Poem for Orchestra
• The Talisman of The Gods op.41 ballet. (incomplete) (1925-1945)