7/28/2019 Xenakis Electronic Music

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XENAKIS ELECTRONIC MUSIC by Makis Solomis (translated by Sharon Kanach)The numbers of works of electronic music produced by Iannis Xenakis represents only a slight percentage of his overall output (roughly one-ninth,

including mixed-media works coupling live instruments with tape). Nevertheless, their historical importance in this relatively new realm of music remains

uncontested. They can be catalogued into four groups, each corresponding as well to as specific period: those composed in the Paris GRM (Groupe de

recherches Musicales) studio (1957-1962); works intended for multi-media productions, namely the famous Polytopes (1969-1977); pieces conceived

and composed with the help of UP IC1(1978-1989); and finally, compositions based on the computer program GENDYN (since 1991). This CD includes

the main works from the first period, one from the second period, and one from the last.

In 1954, when Xenakis first entered the GMR studio, it was run by Pierre Schaeffer, the inventor of the expression "musique concrte". There, he

composed Diamorphoses(1957), Concret Ph (1958), the tape of analogique (Analogique B,1959), Orient-Occident(1960), and Bohor(1962). These first

electronic works were in phase with his instrumental works from the same period- except for,perhaps, Orient-Occident- and this is why they can be

radically distinguished from the elctronic works composed during the same period by his contemporaries who also worked in the GMR studio (Schaeffer

himself, P ierre Henry, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen...). In the same manner, Xenakis first instrumental music immediately distinguished itself

from mthe ambient serialism of the then musical avant-garden.

Diamorphoses provided an opportunity for Olivier Messiaen to render tribute to his former student: "The preliminary calculations of these huge

spiderwebs are transformed into a musical delight of the utmost poetic nature." 2 Messiaen was certainly thinking of the passage of glissandi between

6:00 and 6:16, but in essence, his comment could be applied to the entire piece. Diamorphoses is, in fact, based on a specific formal preoccupation : a

sort study of white noise and its graduations through the process of densification. 3 However, the musical result is far from the genre of an "tude", due

perhaps to its temary form- not unlike many of Xenakis instrumental works- which gives a certain "dramatic" effect. In another connection, the listener

can easily distinguish the origins of certain sound sources used: earthquakes, plane taking off, or bells.

The world fair took place in Brussels in 1958. At the time, Xenakis was working as an engineer and architect for Le Corbusier, and conceived the

extremely original Philips Pavilion for the event. Concret Ph("PH" for the Hyperbolic Paraboloids which characteriza the Pavilion s architecture) was

played between two performances of Varses Pome Electronique. Both works were performed via 400 speakers inside of the structure. This very shorwork is a sound continuum without a single break. Xenakis pre-recorded crackling embers from which he extracted very brief (one second) sound

elements. Then he assembled them in hhuge quantities, varying their density each time. This work can be compared to his instrumental preoccupations

concerning "clouds of sound" during the same period.

One of the first histories electronic music ever written4 already refers to Orient-Occident as a masterpiece for tape. And it is worth pointing out that it

happens to be one of Xenakis "easier" works, probably due to the narrative project behinds its composition. Orient-Occident was conceived as a music

for a film by Enrico Fulchignoni, commissioned by UNESCO. It traces the film s development which relates the passage from one civilization to another,

from prehistoric times to Alexander the Great. Although it is certain that Xenakis did not compose an "illustrative" music, some of his chosen sonorities

are quite suggestive. For example, the highly reverberated atmosphere toward the end (beginning at 8:00) seems to evoke the later civilizations of

Antiquity, marked by a special sensuality.

Bohoris dedicated to Pierre Schaeffer who, however, didn t appreciate it at all. "Bohor was in the worst case (i do mean, best) the wood fires of his

begginings. No longer were we dealing with the crackling of small embers (Concret ph), but with a huge firecracker, an offensive accumulation of whaks

of a scalpel in your ears at the highest level on the potentiometer"5, he declared with his usual sense of humor...it is true that Xenakis "Fauvism" here

achieved new limits that only a few later instrumental works such as Persephassa dare to surpass: an extraordinary and deafening sound continuum

where the listener is invited, in a figurative sense, to hear bells chime while standing inside them! Will we ever know how Bohor, which follows no formal

principle ever elucidated by Xenakis himself nor his critics, was composed?

At the end of the 1960s, Xenakis attempted a synthesis of the arts; the result: his famous Polytopes. Since these impplied repleated performances, it

was only natural that the sound source be on tape. However,Hibiki-Hana-Ma is based solely on instrumental sound. Xenakis recorded and reworked

sequences played by asn orchestra, a Biwa, and a snare drum but never rendered them unrecognizable. Distributed over 12 tracks ( and later reduced

to 8), the works sonorities were elaborated in function of a highly pronounced spacialization. The title of this piece, which was written for the Osaka

World Fair in 1970, means "reverberation-flower-interval."

The GENDYN program, which Xenakis began working on in 1991 at CEMAMu, completes the project he began in his instrumental works of the 1950s:

how to create a "black box" which could realize en entire musical work on the bais of a few givens (of course, the composer is able to intervene and

eliminate any chosen sequence). Generally speaking, the computer generates both the sound synthesis and the composition process itself, without any

breach between the two levels. Xenakis here manages to unify micro- and macrocomposition. The program consist of an algorithm which explores

stochastic timbre more thoroughly than ever before, resulting in a waveform which then envolves constantly through the introduction of "Polygonalvariations" with the help of probability procedures. This is what Xenakis calls the process of "dynamic stochastic synthesis."6 To date, Xenakis has

realized two works with this program: Gendy 3(1991) and S.709 (1994). S.709 was premiered in Paris in December 1994 and is a marvelous illustration

of the GENDYN programs capacities. Both the sounds produced in the piece as well as the global evolution of the composition are literally unheard of:

despite the abstract nature of the processes involved and their mechanical nature, the Xenakis sound world is immediately recognizable!

1-The UPIC is the musical "drawing board" developed by Xenakis and his team at the CEMAMu research center in Paris, beginning in 1975.

2-Olivier Messiaen, "Preface", in Revue Musicale n244, 1959, p.5.

3-Cf. Nouritza Matossian, Iannis Xenakis, Paris, Fayard, 1981, p.141 and Blint A. Varga, Conversation with Iannis Xenakis, London, Faber and Faber

Limited, 1996, p.110.

4-Herbert Ruscol, The liberation of sound: an introduction to Electronic Music, USA., Prentice hall, 1972, p.235.

5-Pierre Schaeffer, "Chroniques xenakiennes", in Regards sur Iannis Xenakis,Paris, Stock, 1981,p.85.

6-For a further description of "dynamic stochastic synthesis," cf.Iannis Xenakis, Formalized Music, 1992 edition with new texts compiled and edited by