In 2010, fifty years have passed since the death of Dimitris Mitropoulos (1960), and the interest of a wider public of music lovers, performing musicians, musicologists, and publishers in his work, both as an interpreter and as a composer, is growing impressively day by day. This is an unprecedented phenomenon for both Greek—perhaps even international—standards, especially since the great Greek creator and re-creator left behind neither family nor close ones nor institutions to keep his memory alive and support engagement with his life and work.

The music publishing house PANASmusic and the scientific supervisor of the series "Greek Musicological Publications" believe that they contribute to enhancing this movement with the present publication of Mitropoulos's "Autobiographicals," a result of selection, adaptation, and interweaving of his own texts, featuring valuable biographical details, and extremely interesting positions on issues related to the art of conducting orchestras, the aesthetics of music, the social role of the artist, and even politics, and above all, Greek cultural policy, a "timeless condition" and therefore revealing of his "flight" abroad and "unfortunately" always a relevant condition!

At the same time, through the pages of the "Autobiographicals," the painful journey of this zealot of "modern" music is highlighted, where circumstances and developments led him from visionary hope to disappointment—resulting from the progressive realization of the utopia—and ultimately to the outlet of the "fateful exit." However, it is a historical paradox that the almost universal acceptance he experienced—especially as a conductor—while he was alive is now transforming into a posthumous vindication of his contributions both as an interpreter and as a composer, because both his unconventional interpretations for his time and his compositions demonstrate not only endurance but also relevance, as if they come from an artist who continues to be present and shows the way to the future!