1. Music “excavations”

G. Pachtikos was born in Ortaköy of Bithynia in 1869. He concluded his basic studies in Constantinople and then studied philology at the University of Athens and music at the National Conservatoire, from which he graduated with honours. From a very early age he turned his attention towards folk music and especially towards the songs of Asia Minor. This interest of him renders Pachtikos a pioneer, considering that any occupation with the folk songs was until then of clearly philological type. Collectors were more interested in the lingual content of the songs than the output of their musical base and even less in their presentation to the music-loving public of the era.¹

His starting point is fully embedded in the climate of his era, since he also aimed in proving the continuity of the ancient Greek civilization through folk traditions. It is characteristic that his work is defined by him as “musical excavations”,² a term which relates to a genealogical and “archaeological” examination of folk culture. He wrote that “the profound study of the songs of folk music is called by me to open a new stage of noble research and occupation, that is of musical archaeology, through which I am pretty sure new musical horizons will be opened […]. This present collection, being a result of this initiative and thinking, aims in exactly proving through these things that the ancient music is not, as widely believed, dead, but still living in the songs of the Greek people […]”.³ Thus, in 1888, and while he was still a student at the National University, he started writing music for the choral parts of ancient tragedies “based on Greek music principles and bases”. This work of him was twice awarded in Athens, in 1901 for Euripides’ Iphigenia Taurica and in 1904 for Sophocles’ Ajax, by the “Society for the presentation of ancient dramas”. But he was also twice awarded by the Zografeion Games of the Greek Philological Association of Constantinople, in 1895 and in 1896 for his purely collective activity.

We must note here that as a collector he is characterized by the preciseness of his documentation. Contrary to many of his colleagues, he did not pursuit to “correct” songs but documented them exactly as they were, often contrary to the will of his informers.⁴ Pachtikos’ relative subjectivity resulted in a second novelty, the incorporation of non-Greek speaking (Turkish speaking) songs in his collection, in an era when the interest for the Turkish verbal monuments was rare, even in the framework of the caramanlidic book production.⁵ Pachtikos himself feels obliged to justify this stance of him on the one hand by appealing on the great diffusion of these songs in Asia Minor and on the other hand by facing them as “Greek songs sang in Turkish”.⁶ The fact that this part of his collection remained unpublished is indicative for the climate prevailing in that era considering the living monuments of Cappadocia, with the exception of certain figures of Cappadocian scholarly like A. Levidis, who “equally faced the Turkish and the Greek speaking tradition of Cappadocia, considering it a unified and undivided total”.⁷

2. Work and social activity

Apart from the 260 folk songs through the mouth of the Greek people…, which was published by the Marasles Library in 1905, Pachtikos published studies on the Ancient, Byzantine and Modern Greek music in various newspapers and in the magazine of the Ecclesiastic Musical Club, of which he was one of the first members. Also, from 1912 and until his death he publishes in Constantinople the monthly illustrated musical-philological magazine Musike (Music), with sheet music in Byzantine and European parasemantic.

In the wider circle of his interests as a musicologist apparently issues of general ethnographical content, related to his own homeland, also belong, as attested by his publications about the Armenian-speaking minority amongst the inhabitants of Ortaköy.⁸ With these publications the author, as a genuine patriotic scholar of his age, is aiming in making his homeland known to the urban audience of Greece and in convincing it for the Greek character of its Orthodox inhabitants, who spoke “out of need” the “alternated Armenian […] which our community is trying to Hellenize with every way via its schools”.

Finally Pachtikos had a rich social activity, being a member of the team which founded the Club of Anatolian Greeks “Anatoli”, in the first administrative board of which he was elected as the special secretary. Inside this club he once again offered his musical services, writing the music of the club’s anthem, conducting the chore of the club during the festivals and finally founding, along with the doctor of Philosophy Leonidas Papapaulos a school of ecclesiastic music, “which operated brilliantly as long as these two music teachers lived in Athens, but was dissolved after their departure and with the absence of anyone to substitute them”.⁹ Pachtikos died in 1916 in Constantinople, where he had permanently settled since 1895.