Department of Music Studies

Petros Moustakas was born in Athens in 1977. He comes from the island of Kimolos, Cyclades. He holds a degree in Harmony, Accordion and a diploma in Byzantine Music, while he has also studied tambouras with Pericles Papapetropoulos. In 2000 he graduated from the Department of Music Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and in 2011 he completed his doctoral thesis in the same department, on the topic: "The professional musical instrument making in Athens, from the middle of the 19th century to the interwar era", under the supervision of professor Lambros Liavas. He has studied the techniques of making and repairing musical instruments, alongside Theodoros Pagalos and Nikos Fronimopoulos. His research interest focuses on the historical background, social phenomena and technical means related to the processes of making and using musical instruments. He has been involved in computer programming since 1987.

In 2011 he completed the first version of the Byzantine music text editor "Pandouris", in Microsoft Visual Basic language, which today is widely used among amateur and professional chanters and students of Byzantine music. He has worked on digitization and documentation projects of music archives, but also as a music teacher, conductor of a traditional music orchestras, radio producer and from 2015 to the present as a professional instrument maker. He has published a series of scientific articles on the morphological evolution of the bouzouki. He teaches the course "Greek Folk Musical Instruments" at the Department of Music Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.