Composers Forum

Thought and Mathematics in Composition

Iannis Xenakis

(29 May, 1922 - 4 February, 2001)

November 15, 2022

Early life

• born in Brăila, Romania, in a well off family, father a businessman
• mother died in 1927
• 1932 boarding school on the island of Spetses; Palestrina, Mozart, Beethoven, Homer and ancient Greek philosophy
• 1940 National Technical Institute in Athens - October Italian invasion of Greece
• April 1941 German invasion; EAM Natinal Liberation Front and ELAS
• December 1944 street fighting the British (seen as occupiers), a tank blast hit his left face and eye.
• graduates in 1946; Greek civil war continues until 1948
• condemned to death by hanging in absentia (sentence commuted 1951, lifted in 1974)
• leaves Greece on a false passport through Italy arrives in France in late 1947
• works for La Corbusier; marries Françoise Garguil (novelist and journalist) in 1953
• advised to learn counterpoint, voice leading, etc. by Nadia Boulanger (doesn't know to develope his themes), Arthur Honegger (parallel 5ths), Darius Milhaud; Olivier Messiaen (architect, Greek, math - use thesse)
• works for Pierre Scheffer at GRM(C)
• 1955 "The crisis of serial music" (polyphony too complex to be perceived as such)
  
  Introduces completely new ways of composing music beginning with:
  • Metastaesis (1953) atomic picture
  • Pithoprakta (1956)
    Hermann Scherchen

Innovation

Probability

• stochastic distributions - called later sound mass texture and adopted by
  • Ligeti Atmosphères (1961)
  • Penderecki Trenody (1960) and the "Polish School")
• Fibonacci series and Corbusier's Modulor; images

  Polla ta dhina (1962) recording; text ("light music")

• Computer-assisted composition: Stochastic Music Program; ST family of pieces

  	Side bar: rigor and practicality
          	Pithoprakta mss. 53 - 60 precisely calculated
  		JW in ST/4 "going to Denver" (1978)
  		Jalons at UIUC (1978)
          	non dogmatic
  

• Markov chains (Analogique A + B)
• granular technique

  Concrete PH (1958) recording; (2000 ICMC, Berlin) - what is a "sound" ?

Symbolic music

• algebra sets (Venn diagrams) Herma (1960/61) diagram
• sieves: logical "filters" using modulo and Boolean operations; select specific elements out of a continuum

  Psappha (1975) Steven Schick recording.

• Group Theory - symmetries, Nomos α (1966), diagram Nomos γ (1967/68)

  	Side bar: lesson understood only later
  		1968, my G*6, "why did you use Group Theory ?"
  
  	    also: "Xenakis, pas Gounod !"
  

• Game Theory, Xenakis' answer to aleatorism; Duel (1959), Stratégie (1962), Linaia Agon (1972)

Random Walks and Arborescences

• related to Markov chains
• Brownian motion-like; Mikka (1971)
• Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) - tree structures

  Gmeeoorh (1974) Françoise Rieunier Notre Dame organ
  Eun Joo Ju thesis and performance in C-U (2015)

Later works

• large orchestral clusters by families of instruments
• counterpoint of textures; heterophony
• combining techniques; permanence of stocastic distributions and sieves
• very large orchestra; Jonchaies (1977) 109 musicians
• towards the endof his career uses slower and slower tempi (1/16 = MM 45)
• cellular automata Horos (1986)
• focus on death themes

  Aïs (1980); Spyros Sakkas and Sylvio Gualda; text Philip Larson and Schick at UCSD in 1990

Electro-acoustic music

• musique concrète; against additive synthesis; BOHOR (1962)
• UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu)
  • Mycenae α (1987)
• Génération Dynamique Stochastique (GENDYN)

  Gendy3 (1991)

Multimedia and film music

• film: Orient-Occident (1962); Vasarely (1960)
• spectacles: Oresteia (1966); Kraanerg (1969);Persepolis (1971)
• polytopes: (1967-1978); Cluny ("son et lumière")

Aesthetics and philosophy

• the outsider: "it is necessary to always be an immigrant" (François Delalande book)
• originality/creativity stages
  • combining, rearranging existing information into something new
  • critically observing, comparing with stored information, discerning rules and patterns
  • inventing something from nothing, something unlike anything observed before
• Radu Stan: "in every piece Xenakis solves a problem"
• determinism - destiny, probability - free will
• challenging performers; very difficult but playable (cello neck)
• unusual and new timbres for solo instruments or orchestra

  Charisma (1971); text

• "Music is not a language. A musical work is like a rock of complex formation with streaks and patterns engraved inside and out, which people can decipher a thousand different ways without one being the best or most true..."
• a music "in your face" (Erik Lund), never banal, always surprising, powerful and striking.

Encounters with Xenakis

UIUC

• visits with Hiller, Martirano and others while in residence at Indiana Univ. (late 1960s)
• Sal Martirano conducted one of the first performances of Eonta (during 1960s, pianist unknown to me)
• Zack Browning conducted in the 1980s Atrées (1962)
• Nuits (1967/68), William Brooks (?)
• Keynote Speaker and lectures at 1987 ICMC; performances of:
  • Khal Perr (1980); Sal Martirano
  • Mycènes Alpha (1978, UPIC)
  • Pour la paix (1981); William Brooks
  • Jalons (1986); Paul Zonn
  Linaia Agon performed twice during 1980s
• Theraps, Analogique A; Michael Cameron
• percussion students have performed Psappha, and Rebonds

Personal

• 1964/65 read Musiques formelles
• 1968, received in his Paris studio
• 1971/72, attended (C)EMAMu meetings
• 1987 ICMC, dinner table picture
• 1992, Bucharest, New Music Festival