Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001)

"By 1975, Iannis Xenakis had created four Polytopes: in Montreal (1967), Persepolis (1971), and two at the Cluny abbey in Paris (1972-1973). In this book, the author presents some working documents on these Polytopes. A Polytope is a multimedia performance with sounds (electroacoustic music for Cluny, four recorded orchestras for Montreal, natural sounds for Persepolis) and visual effects (lights for Montreal, lights and lasers for Cluny, the illumination of fire in the night for Persepolis). The author also presents some documents on the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair."… (meer)

A DI(diot's)Y's Guide to Iannis Xenakis' Formalized Music
dedicated to the memory of my friend James "Sarmad" Brody,
whose writings on Xenakis reached me by age 20,
to my friend Brainpang who gave me MANY Xenakis recordings
& to my friend Unfinished Symphonies who gave me this bk
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 7 - 10, 2013

I broke this review into 6 chapters & added it to the "My Writing" section of my profile. The full review can be accessed here:
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/329492-a-di-diot-s-y-s-guide-to-iannis-xenak...

The following is a just a small portion of the complete review. As usual, I recommend reading the full thing. BUT WHO WILL?!

REVIEW: March 7, 2013 (16th day of juice fast):

From Xenakis' "Preface to the Second Edition":

"The formalization that I attempted in trying to reconstruct part of the musical edifice ex nihilio [reviewer's note: Latin for "out of nothing"] has not used, for want of time or capacity, the most advanced aspects of philosophical and scientific thought. But the escalade is started and others will certainly enlarge and extend the new thesis. This book is addressed to a hybrid public, but interdisciplinary hybridization frequently produces superb specimens." - p vii

Really?! This bk may not use "the most advanced aspects of philosophical and scientific thought" but it goes much further than ANYTHING that his hypothetical "hybrid public" (w/ myself as an exemplary instance here) is ever likely to aspire to. IMO, Xenakis has upped the ante for human intelligence so high that humanity shd be proud that he even existed. If 10 stars were an available rating, I'd give this an 11.

From Xenakis' "Preface to Musiques Formelles":

"For this purpose the qualification "beautiful" or "ugly" makes no sense for sound, not for the music that derives from it; the quantity of intelligence carried by the sounds must be the true criterion of the validity of a particular music." - p ix

Bravo!

From Chapter 1: "Free Stochastic Music":

"Art, and above all, music has a fundamental function, which is to catalyze the sublimation that it can bring about through all means of expression. It must aim through fixations which are landmarks to draw towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect. If a work of art succeeds in this undertaking even for a single moment, it attains its goal. This tremendous truth is not made of objects, emotions, or sensations; it is beyond these, as Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is beyond music. This is why art can lead to realms that religion still occupies for some people." - p 1

I don't agree w/ this, I don't think art/music has a "fundamental function", etc, etc.. & I don't think that "Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is beyond music." But this gives you an idea of what Xenakis strives for & I think he more than succeeds in providing the (v)audience for his music w/ a profoundly moving experience. If this bk had gone downhill in intensity from here I might've been disappointed. But, no, it only escalates.. & escalates..

Xenakis even provides us w/ "an analysis of a fragment of Sonata, Op. 57 (Appassionata), by Beethoven". (p 164)

As I write this, I'm going to listen to most or all of the Xenakis recordings I have. During the last few paragraphs I've already listened to "Diamorphoses" (1956-57), "Concret P-H" (1958), & "Analogiques A B" (1958). Now I'm listening to "Orient-Occident" (1959-60). Coming up is "Orient-Occident III" (1959-60) followed by "Bohor I" (1962). All electro-acoustic music.

In the case of those many of us for whom the Philips Pavilion that Xenakis designed (who's an architect on top of his other talents) at the 1958 World's Fair is a landmark event in the history of the world, the drawings on pp 7-8 are worth the price of admission alone (In my case the "cost of admission" was free insofar as my friend Unfinished Symphonies gave me this bk after he got it at a library sale). Take the 1st paragraph of this caption for illustration B: "A ruled surface consisting of two conoids, a and d, is laid through the curve bounding the right half of the "stomach." The straight directrix of d passes through the first peak, and the outermost generatrix at this side forms a triangular exit with the generatrix of e. The straight directrix of a passes through a second peak and is joined by an arc to the directrix of d." (p 7)

For those readers not familiar w/ the famous Philips Pavilion, I quote from James Brody's liner notes to Xenakis' Electro-Acoustic Music record:

[Xenakis'] "Concret P-H along with Edgar Varèse's Poème électronique, one of the works composed for the Philips Pavilion of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair; the work's aim was psychologically to prepare the public for the spectacle designed by Le Corbusier in the interior of the Pavilion and accompanied by Varese's music. Four hundred loudspeakers, lining the interior of the shell, were required to fill up the space with the sonic scintillations of Concret P-H and to effect a common emanation from architecture and music, conceived as an entity: the roughness of the concrete and its coefficient of internal friction was echoed in the timbre of the scintillations. The architecture of the pavillion, conceived and executed for Le Corbusier by Xenakis, was based entirely on non-developable ruled surfaces, or "hyperbolic paraboloids" (paraboloïdes ou hyperboliques - P.H.)" [reviewer's note: I suspect that the "ou" in the preceding shd be "du" or "de" but I'm quoting verbatim.]

& Xenakis has this to say in Formalized Music: "If glissandi are long and sufficiently interlaced, we obtain sonic spaces of continuous evolution. It is possible to produce ruled surfaces by drawing the glissandi as straight lines. I performed this experiment with Metastasis (this work had its premier in 1955 at Donaueschingen). Several years later, when the architect Le Corbusier, whose collaborator I was, asked me to suggest a design for the architecture of the Philips Pavilion in Brussels, my inspiration was pin-pointed by the experiment w/ Metastasis. Thus I believe that on this occasion music and architecture found an intimate connection. Figs. I-1-5 indicate the causal chain of ideas which led me to formulate the architecture of the Philips Pavilion from the score of Metastasis" (p 10)

Next up in the accompanying music to writing this review is "Kraanerg" (1969), "S.709" (1992), "Concret P-H" (1958), & "Diamorphoses" (1956-57) (can't get enuf of those latter 2 babies!).

It never even occurred to me, until reading this bk, that I've never seen or heard the great conductor & Serialist composer, Pierre Boulez, conducting Xenakis' music. That seems odd given that they're both major figures in 20th century avant-garde music & both France-based. This will explain: "As a result of the impasse in serial music, as well as other causes, I originated in 1954 a music constructed from the principle of indeterminism; two years later I named it "Stochastic Music." The laws of the calculus of probabilities entered composition through musical necessity." (p 8) In other words, Xenakis is critical of musical theories he doesn't personally espouse (surprise, surprise! NOT). The music I love is all produced by strong personalities, driven by their own personal philosophy. Xenakis is a critic of much of it, taking particular aim at Serialism, improvisation, aleatoric music, & graphic notation:

"Before generalizing further on the essence of musical composition, we must speak of the principle of improvisation which causes a furore among the neo-serialists, and which gives them the right, or so they think, to speak of chance, of the aleatory, which they thus introduce into music. They write scores in which certain combinations of sounds may be freely chosen by the interpreter. Two logical infirmities are apparent which deny them the right to speak of chance on the one hand and "composition" on the other (composition in the broad sense, that is):

"1. The interpreter is a highly conditioned being, so that it is not possible to accept the thesis of unconditioned choice, of an interpreter acting like a roulette game. The martingale betting at Monte Carlo and the procession of suicides should convince anyone of this. We shall return to this.

"2. The composer commits an act of resignation when he admits several possible and equivalent circuits. In the name of a "scheme" the problem of choice is betrayed, and it is the interpreter who is promoted to the rank of composer by the composer himself. There is thus a substitution of authors.

"The extremist extension of this attitude is one which uses graphical signs on a piece of paper which the interpreter reads while improvising the whole. The two infirmities mentioned above are terribly aggravated here. I would like to pose a question: If this sheet of paper is put before an interpreter who is an incomparable expert on Chopin, will the result not be modulated in the style and writing of Chopin in the same way that a performer who is immersed in this style might improvise a Chopin-like cadenza to another composer's concerto? From the point of view of the composer there is no interest.

"On the contrary, two conclusions may be drawn: first, that serial composition has become so banal that it can be improvised like Chopin's, which confirms the general impression; and second, that the composer resigns his function altogether, that he has nothing to say, and that his function can be taken over by paintings or by cuneiform glyphs." - p 38

Xenakis has quite the chip on his shoulder!! & I, more or less, completely disagree w/ what he has to say here. Putting aside the concept of "chance", wch brings up a boatload of philosophical baggage regarding 'free-will' vs 'fate', aleatoric music, interpreted here as meaning music based on a game structure, has the composer providing the game & the interpreters providing the game playing. These are 2 different things & many composers & players prefer this approach b/c they find through-notation (such as what Xenakis uses) to be too stultifying - leaving the interpreter too little rm for the manifestation of their personality as anything other than in a subservient position vis-à-vis the composer.

As for the idea of "an interpreter who is an incomparable expert on Chopin" improvising "a Chopin-like cadenza to another composer's concerto"? Why not? I like the idea of having a Chopin expert perform a graphic score & a Xenakis expert performing the same graphic score independently of hearing the Chopin expert's realization. Imagine playing the 2 interpretations back-to-back &/or simultaneously: what wd the differences be? What wd the similarities be? I'm reminded of when Neely Bruce performed what he announced as a Chopin piece at a friend's wedding party in 2006 or thereabouts. He played the piano, it didn't exactly sound like Chopin to me but I don't know Chopin's music very well at all & I enjoyed it nonetheless, the attendees applauded & Neely announced that Chopin never really wrote anything like that - Neely improvised it. Was this less of a musical experience b/c of that?

As for serial composition becoming banal? Perhaps. These days when I read the liner notes to a 1970s academic classical record & read about the composer's choice of tone rows & what-not I usually expect not much imagination b/c by then serialism had become de rigueur for unoriginal academic composers to be taken seriously as 'modern'. But that doesn't rule out the greatness of such proto-Serialists such as Schönberg & Messiaen or hard-core serialists like Boulez or composers who experimented w/ Serialism in one or more pieces like Hiller.

A major factor in Xenakis' criticism of other composers' approaches to games is that his approach specifically references Game Theory in its mathematical purity:

"Before passing to the problem of the mechanization of stochastic music by the use of computers, we shall take a stroll in a more enjoyable realm, that of games, their theory, and application in musical composition." - p 110

"Let us imagine a competitive situation between two orchestras, each having one conductor. Each of the conductors directs sonic operations against the operations of the other. Each operation represents a move or a tactic and the encounter between two moves has a numerical and/or a qualitative value which benefits one and harms the other. This value is written in a grid or matrix at the intersection of the row corresponding to move i of conductor A and the column corresponding to move j of conductor B. This is the partial score ij, representing the payment one conductor gives the other. This game, a duel, is defined as a two-person zero-sum game." - p112

A "zero-sum game" being one in wch the winnings match the losses in quantity. I stress the word "competitive" regarding the above - but not all games are competitive. Some are explorations of possibilities playfully approached in wch there aren't necessarily any losses & in wch the gains might just be whatever the player gets out of the experience. This is much more my approach. Xenakis's music is highly influenced by the intense experiences he had as a Communist student resistance fighter during WWII against the Nazi occupation of Greece. During this time, his face was hit by a tank shell, blowing out one eye & much of his cheek. Now, cf Mauricio Kagel's telling of the composition of his game piece "Match für 3 Spieler" (1964) as told in Kagel's (translated) liner notes for a realization of it on the avant garde label:

"When I woke up on the morning of the 1st August 1964 I suddenly became aware of the fact that I had dreamed the complete course of a piece of music, and to an incredibly detailed degree. I was still able to remember all the particulars, above all - naturally - the fact that the two cellists were placed near the front of the platform on either side, with the percussion player between them as "umpire". The details of performance, with the types of sound, methods of articulation and gesticulation, and above all the markedly "sporting" character of the piece, remained in my mind with the utmost clarity. At that time I was working on a composition for entirely different forces and with a totally different disposition of the material; I could see no relationship, as regards either content or form, between the sound world of the two concepts. I did not want to give up work on the piece on which I was already engaged in order to bring a dream to realization. Nine nights later, however, the dream performance was repeated, with the same clarity of detail as before. I was perturbed, this time I made notes, and tried to define the elusive time element of the imaginary music in terms of concrete tempi. On the following morning I realized that the dream had been repeated yet again. This time I laid everything aside, in the belief that fate had knocked three times, and that it was high time to do what was required of me. - I wrote this Match in sound within seven days. The dream has never again been repeated, which is a pity, because I should like to compare it to the finished score."… (meer)