Harilaos Perpessas

Harilaos Perpessas (Greek: Χαρίλαος Περπέσσας) (10 May 1907 — 19 October 1995) was a Greek-German composer of the Postmodern period. Life and career Born to Greek parents in Leipzig, he moved to Berlin to study with Schönberg but opposed the latter’s compositional methods. More influential, as it turned out, was Berlin-based Nikos Skalkottas who urged Perpessas to emigrate to his parents’ homeland, which he did at the age of twenty-seven. He was to remain in Greece for fourteen years, through World War II, and gradually achieved success there as a composer, partly helped by conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos who championed his works. But in 1948 he moved decisively to the United States, settling in New York, where he enjoyed moderate success over a period of four decades and pursued a lifestyle of much seclusion. In 1992 he was transferred by friends to a residential home in Sharon, Massachusetts; there he died. Music Perpessas is seen as one of the first Greek composers to have moved away from the school of Musical Nationalism, often being grouped with Mitropoulos and Skalkottas. His orchestral works display chromatic polyphony and wide-leaping melodic lines with dramatic climaxes whic