Basileus

Description

“Basileus” (for Concert Band)

ABOUT THIS PIECE

Grade: 1.5
Length: 4 minutes

“Basileus” (pronounced in antiquity as ‘Ba-si-LAY-oos’ or as the modern ‘vah-si-LEFS’) was originally used as a title for people of authority in ancient Greece. In the years since, it’s come to mean “king”. Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the Eastern Roman Empire rebranded itself as the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines later adopted “Basileus” (alongside Caesar and Augustus) to refer to their emperors until the Byzantine Empire’s own fall in 1453. This piece seeks to evoke the reign of Justinian I (also known as Justinian the Great), who ruled the Byzantine Empire from 527 until his death in 565. The last of the Byzantine emperors to speak Latin, Justinian came the closest to recovering the territories lost by the Western Roman Empire; those campaigns formed the inspiration for this piece. Through his trusty general Belisarius, Justinian managed to recapture and hold the city of Rome and most of the Italian peninsula for a time. However, when war broke out on the Byzantine’s eastern border, Justinian called Belisarius home, prematurely ending what could have been the complete reunification of the Roman Empire.