Dimitrios Levidis

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Dimitrios Levidis (8 April 1885/1886, Athens - 29 May 1951, Palaio Faliro) was a Greek composer, later naturalized French (1929).

He studied in Athens, Lausanne and Munich. His teachers included Friedrich Klose, Felix Mottl and Richard Strauss, the latter being his composition teacher from 1907 to 1908. Levidis won the Franz Liszt Prize for his Piano Sonata op.16. After a short period in Greece he settled in Paris (1910-1932), served in the French Army during World War I and took French nationality in 1929.

He wrote abundantly, in many genres, with a refined technique combining Straussian harmony and Ravelian impressionism, also exploiting Greek modes, in an appealing style of greater homogeneity than that of many of his Greek contemporaries. 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 (his Poème symphonique was given on the occasion of the first public appearance of the instrument, premiered on 20 April 1928, at the Paris Opéra).Following its impresive debut, the conductor Leopold Stokowski brought Martenot to the United States to perform the Levidis work with the Philadelphia Orchestra. This led to a tremendous flurry of composition for the device.[1]

He returned to Athens in about 1932 to teach at the Hellenic Conservatory and at the Music Lyceum.After his return to Greece Levidis was appointed to the Ministry of Education and 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.


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  • Phonoarchive.org
  • Everyman's dictionary of music p.321
  • The Oxford Companion to Music
  • P.K. Bouboulidis: Neohellines moussourgoi: I. Dimitrios Levidis: symvoli eis tin historian tis neohellenikis moussikis (Athens, 1949)
  • S.K. Spanoudi: ‘Levidis, Dimitrios’, Helios, xii (Athens, c1950), 168 only
  • G. Sklavos: ‘Dimitrios Levidis’, Helleniki dimiourgia, viii (1951), 67–8
  • A.S. Theodoropoulou: ‘Dimitrios Levidis’, Nea estia, xlix (1951), 819 only
  • F. Anoyanakis: ‘I moussiki stin neoteri Hellada’, in K. Nef: Eisagogi eis tin istorian tis moussikis (Athens, 1958), 590–92 [Gk. edn of Einführung in die *Musikgeschichte]
  • Nicolas Slonimsky: NEW MUSIC IN GREECE Musical Quarterly.1965; LI: 225-235
  • G. Leotsakos: ‘O Dimitrios Levidis ke to aenigma tis “Mikris fantasias”’ [Dimitrios Levidis and the riddle of the ‘Little Fantasia’], foreword to D. Levidis: *Little Fantasia (Athens, 1982) [in Gk. and Eng.]; repr. in Moussikologhia, no.1 (1986), 9–25
  • The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music