“Jani Christou: Enantiodromia” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Costis Zouliatis who oversees the Jani Christou Archive at the Centre for Research and Documentation of the Athens Conservatoire, introduces the work of this seminal Greek composer to the wider public for the first time. Designed by architect Thalia Melissa, the exhibition is an expressive and complete audial and visual experience, with iconography, graphic scores and a host of original documents introducing the composer’s work with clarity and depth. 

The Young Composer: From Alexandria to London

Christou was born in Heliopolis, Cairo, in 1926. He grew up in Alexandria, where he studied piano with the Greek classical pianist Gina Bachauer and began to compose his own music. He later moved to England to study philosophy at King’s College, Cambridge, alongside his older brother Evangelos (“Evey”). From the outset, music and philosophy were entwined: “I engage in philosophical thought and the outcome is music.” 

Along with his studies in philosophy, Christou trained in harmony and counterpoint, before continuing his studies in composition and orchestration in Italy. In March 1950, when he was just 24, his first orchestral work, Phoenix Music (1949-50), debuted at the Royal Opera House in London. The title Phoenix also reflects the structure of many of Christou’s early compositions, which mirror the mythical bird’s cycle of death and rebirth: emergence, development, climax and renewal through a return to the opening motif. 

Creative Conversations and Collaborations

Among the exhibits is an original typed letter from Christou to the poet T.S. Elliot, requesting his permission to publish the texts of six poems from Collected Poems, 1909-1935, which he had set to music. Six T.S. Elliot Songs, initially a work for piano and mezzo-soprano (1955), with a later version for orchestra and mezzo-soprano (1957), is a series of short pieces of around two to four minutes each, conceived as a whole. Listeners familiar with Eliot’s poetry will recognize the verses, making the work one of the most accessible introductions to Christou’s music.

The element of ritual as a gateway to the supernatural was fundamental to Christo’s work. As his compositions became increasingly experimental, particularly with the introduction of his concept of “metapraxis,” they came to elicit an increasingly primordial response. The resulting emotional intensity made his music especially compelling in productions of Ancient Greek tragedy. In the 1960s, he collaborated with the National Theatre of Greece (Prometheus Bound in 1963 and Agamemnon in 1965) as well as the Art Theater of Karolos Koun (Persians in 1965, Frogs in 1966, and Oedipus Rex in 1968). He also composed a haunting score for the 1967 Universal Pictures film Oedipus the King, engaging with a still broader cultural sphere. 

A Language of Emotion and Sound

“Metapraxis is concerned with breaking through the barrier of meaning of a single medium, whatever that medium may be. Whenever that happens, that is music. Τhat can be in any medium, providing metapraxis can occur. Music can be silent.”  Jani Christou (December 1969)

A visual glossary introducing the conceptual language behind his later works opens the exhibition. As his work transcended the boundaries of traditional musical practice, so did his conceptual practice. 

This was the period of Christou’s most radical and psychologically charged works, which combined music with theatre, ritual and performance. Central to this evolution was his concept of “metapraxis,” in which a performer transcends the conventional limits of their expressive medium: for example, a pianist may engage with the piano in unconventional ways, striking it, screaming in anguish, or crawling beneath it (as in Anaparastasis III). 

The glossary introduces visitors to the key concepts that shaped Christou’s artistic vocabulary. “Meta-music” describes the interdisciplinary expansion of music into realms of expression beyond sound. “Continuum” refers to a sustained sound, like the anchoring ison of Byzantine music, but is also understood by Christou as an unbroken continuum from pre-history to meta-history. “Anaparastasis” referred to ritual practices of ancient pre-history, reenacting cycles of renewal. “Enantiodromia” (movement in opposite directions), the tile of the exhibition, refers to the interplay of opposites as discussed by Heraclitus. Carl Jung used the term to refer to the “emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time.”

Enantiodromia and Anaparastasis were also the titles of two of Christou’s most important works. Enantiodromia has recently reached fresh audiences through its inclusion in the score for Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of the Sacred Deer (2017):

Anaparastasis is a cycle of poly-artistic rituals, of which I (“The Baritone”) and II “The Pianist” were completed:

Graphic Scores

The traditional five-line stave, which Christou once dismissed as capable of conveying only “little musical notes,” could no longer contain the full scope of his artistic vision. To conceive and record his later compositions, Christou employed his own evocative visual notation system: a language of symbols that express both sonic and experiential phenomena. 

The approach is radical, but the symbols are by no means opaque; they intuitively relate to universal experience of both sound and states of emotion. “Diascorpismos” (scatter), for example, is a series of arrows radiating outward from a central point, to indicate that each performer follow their own improvisation within the defined parameter (birdsong, or the murmur of a crowd). A dagger indicates an abrupt, absolute silence, with no trace of residual sound. A die represents randomness, a call for the performer to act unpredictably. The Greek letter Ψ (psi) denotes the “psychoid factor,” an intensification of an already dramatic situation, or conversely a silence which becomes even more absolute. Time is measured with an area mark, something like a traffic sign, with specific durations noted in seconds.

These symbols come alive in the many scores displayed throughout the exhibition. Written and illustrated in Christou’s distinctive hand, they bear little resemblance to conventional musical notation. Combining text, drawings, diagrams, symbols and sequential imagery reminiscent of storyboards or graphic novels, the scores are expressive works of art in their own right, offering vivid insight into the experience of performance long before a single note is heard. 

Of Myths, Ritual, and Dreams 

“But ritual is a collective thing while Dream is an individual thing. But through that which is collective, the individual is reached and through that which is individual, the collective is reached. Dreams may be vitally fresh ways of achieving what ritual – worn out now – cannot achieve any longer.” Jani Christou (September 1968)

In addition to the music, some of the most moving exhibits are those written in his own hand. A concept, dream, or some other source outside of music itself was often the point of departure. Through his older brother Evey, a psychoanalyst respected within Jungian circles, Christou developed a deep engagement with analytical psychology, and regularly recorded his dreams as a means of connecting to the subconscious. Some of his hand-written thoughts and dreams are included in the exhibition, a glimpse at his inner world. “To connect mythic function with dream function,” in his words, was central to his creative process. 

Evey was killed in a car accident in Egypt in 1956, the same year that Christou married his childhood friend, the painter Sia Choremi of Chios. Evey had been a profoundly inspirational figure for Christou; he felt that his brother had opened to him the worlds of philosophy, psychology, and spiritual thought, which had become foundational for his work and his very being.

After Evey’s death, lunar imagery began to appear in Christou’s work. Eclipses became symbols of primal terror, rupture and sudden catastrophe. On June 30th, the day of his brother’s death, Christou’s personal diary came to an abrupt end too: “I stop here. Evey is dead.”

Christou later gathered and edited his brother’s writings, publishing The Logos of the Soul (Zurich-Vienna, 1963). Yet his dialogue with Evey continued long after his death.

One manuscript from 1964 begins with the words, “My Dream of DEATH.” In it, Christou describes Sia and his mother preparing him for a journey, packing “EVERYTHING I have… into AN IMMENSE LONG BLACK BOX – coffin-like. Then Evey somehow appears to say that when I get there (Rome presumably) I am to contact him… Sia is looking very worried at me having to leave alone – it is an important departure …”

Mysterion

Mysterion (1966 -1969), whose title means ‘sacred rite’ in Greek, draws not on Greek myth but the sacred funerary texts of ancient Egypt and the journey of the sun god Ra along the river of the Underworld. The work occupies in its own dedicated space within the exhibition, inviting visitors to experience its power and universal relevance.

Writing about Mysterion, Christou explained: “As for the music, it is religious and primitive, as before musical forms were discovered. It will not simply be an artistic event. I composed this work in accordance with my musical Credo. The point is not to make art, but to connect with the forces that surround you.”

His Final Works

Ιn the early hours of his 44th birthday, while driving home with his wife Sia after a dinner celebrating his name day, both were killed in a car accident in Athens. 

From 1967 until his death, he had been at work on an opera based on Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, commissioned by the Bach Festival and scheduled to debut in London in 1970, before embarking on a world tour. The ambitious project, conceived for soloists, choruses, instrumentalists, tapes, and visuals, would transcend the conventional understanding of both opera and theater. A wealth of material survives, but his final extraordinary vision remains unknown.

Mysterion would be among the last pieces he would compose. An initial version of the work was to be performed by the Athens Experimental Orchestra at the Athens Festival in 1966, but the performance was cancelled. He continued to work on a full stage version of the piece for presentation on Danish television in 1969, but this too never materialized. What we experience in the exhibition is the first complete auditory performance of the Mysterion, reconstructed by musicologist Ianos Eliades after careful study of Christou’s notes and score. Christou did not live to hear the piece in its complete version.