Ulysses' Gaze is a score for solo viola and an orchestra mostly of strings, expanded by Eleni Karaindrou from her music for the film of the same name by Theo Angelopoulos.

Karaindrou comes from the small mountain village of Teichio in central Greece and retains strong memories of the folk music and ancient church music she heard there. After the family moved to Athens, she found she could watch movies every night from a rooftop seat. Thus film, piano, and folk music shaped her musical style.

In the early 1990s Angelopoulos, her frequent collaborator, outlined for her the story for his next project, Ulysses' Gaze. It was to deal with the Manakis Brothers, real photographers who made the first films shot in the Balkans. Many of their films showed the wars and revolutions that were wracking that unstable region at the time. They were persecuted by various governments, who believed their aims were subversive. In addition to telling their story, Ulysses' Gaze also follows a present-day filmmaker, played by Harvey Keitel, who has returned to Greece from exile. To rekindle his artistic imagination, he becomes obsessed with finding three lost reels of film shot by the Manakis Brothers, the first cinematic "gaze" upon the Balkans. His quest takes him to war-torn Sarajevo.

After talking with Angelopoulos, Karaindrou began to work on ideas the story suggested to her. She worked through the night and found that she had composed, during that time, the whole basic score for the film.

The film went on to win the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for 1995. At the request of Manfred Eicher, Karaindrou had already arranged the music into a long suite for an ECM release. In that form the music comprises 16 numbers. Almost all the music uses the same basic texture: a static chord from a string orchestra over which a melody suggesting ancient modes (with a minor orientation) is played on a solo instrument. This is most often the viola, whose husky, lonely voice seems in itself to be gazing over an open sea or landscape, or into time. Sometimes the solo is given to another instrument, such as cello, horn, accordion, or oboe.

The major part of the score consists of variations on a main melody called "Ulysses' Theme." A second theme, called "Litany," appears from time to time, and there is also a vocal statement of an ancient Byzantine church psalm and an atmospheric cut suggesting a river.

Somehow Karaindrou manages to make this music interesting despite the seeming thinness of the material. One of the major portions of the recorded score is a 17-minute elaboration on the music which itself has the subtitle "Ulysses' Gaze." Here the string orchestra takes on a little more rhythm (once even suggesting a folk dance) and there is a sense of development and momentum. One reason the music succeeds is that the melodies are so outstanding, giving this deceptively simple score a unique, visionary quality.

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