COMPOSER : Nick Elwood

No. 3

Kerameikos

Leading down from the Athenian Acropolis was an important road known as the Sacred Way (Hiera Hodos). This road passed through the city wall at the Dipylon Gate which itself stood in the area known as the Kerameikos.

The Kerameikos was the potters’ quarter of the city.

As the Sacred Way left the Dipylon Gate, on its way to nearby Eleusis, it was bordered by funerary monuments.

After the first year of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC, Pericles delivered his famous funerary oration in the Kerameikos. When he died in 429 BC, from the great plague that devastated Athens, he was buried beside the Hiera Hodos.

It was this path that initiates and celebrants took on their journey to

Eleusis for the Cult of the Mysteries.

5m approx.

The Hellenic began in 1980 while I was a student at the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall. I went back to the original score in 2018 and developed the work into a large scale composition. My inspiration derived from my interest in classical history and having completed a classics degree in 2015, my enthusiasm was fired.

The Hellenic comprises four movements each depicting an aspect or event crucial to the Athenian polis in the 4th century  BC.