Chanting Education and the Cretan Syrtos: The Case of Thanasis Skordalos (1920–1998) and the Limits of the “Byzantine” Interpretation

This article examines the claim that the chanting education of the Cretan lyra player and composer Thanasis Skordalos (1920–1998) shaped his idiom in the Cretan syrtos. Drawing on autobiographical testimony, local biographical sources, discographic evidence and the ethnomusicological literature on the lyra, the violin and Byzantine chant, it distinguishes four levels of evidence: (a) childhood exposure to church music; (b) an expert’s recognition of “Byzantine placements” in his playing; (c) possible structural analogies between chant and syrtos; and (d) derivation of specific syrtos from specific ecclesiastical melodies. The first two rest on sources with clear limitations; the third remains an untested hypothesis; the fourth is not documented in any source located. The claim is set against three rival accounts: the violin origin of much of the syrtos repertory, the shared modal heritage of chant and Eastern Mediterranean traditions, and the ideological history of linking folk and Byzantine music in twentieth-century Greece. A comparative analytical protocol is proposed. The article concludes that “syrtos inspired by church melodies” is at present a working hypothesis rather than an established finding, whereas the formative role of chant in Skordalos’s musical hearing is plausible and partly documented.