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Conversations with Iannis Xenakis
The music of the Greek-born composer, Iannis Xenakis, has been called brutal and violent. He first studied as an architect, but then turned to composition and put to musical use his knowledge of higher mathematics. In these conversations he talks about his life and music.
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First published December 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 12, 2009
CONVERSATIONS WITH IANNIS XENAKIS records the interviews which Balint Andras Varga carried out with the composer in 1980 and 1989. The 1980 interview is the larger one, and delves heavily into Xenakis' biography. The composer recounts his upbringing in Romania and Greece, his student activism during World War II and his escape to France, and his life as both composer and architect. In discussing the music itself, Varga and Xenakis lead the reader to a deeper understanding of the theory and aesthetic behind such key early works as "Metastatis", "Pithoprakta", "Eonta" and "Herma". One also gets an idea of how Xenakis got along with major figures of new music such as Scherchen, Boulez, Messiaen, Milhaud, Honneger, and Yuji Takahashi. In the 1989 interview, Xenakis seems much less passionate. Comments are mainly limited to his general aesthetic. Varga notes that Xenakis' music had gotten much simpler over the proceeding decade, reduced to block-like sonorities slowly moving in pretty ordinary rhythms. Xenakis provides a defense of his latest music, but the question of whether his soundworld changed due to his increasing senility is still up in the air. There are a number of excerpts from the scores here, though not always in legible reproduction.
While James Harley's XENAKIS: His Life in Music is the best all-around description of Xenakis' works, CONVERSATIONS WITH IANNIS XENAKIS does give quite a lot of detail about his life and music that I have never seen elsewhere. Fans of the composer should seek it out, though it seems to be rather out of print.
While James Harley's XENAKIS: His Life in Music is the best all-around description of Xenakis' works, CONVERSATIONS WITH IANNIS XENAKIS does give quite a lot of detail about his life and music that I have never seen elsewhere. Fans of the composer should seek it out, though it seems to be rather out of print.
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December 9, 2023In lieu of a review, a couple of good passages:
"What is a straight line in two-dimensional space? The continuous change of one dimension compared to the other. The same happens in the pitch versus line domain - the straight line is the continuous change of pitch versus time. The difference between physical and musical space is that the former is homogeneous: both dimensions are lengths and distances. In music, however, the two dimensions, pitch and time, are alien in nature from one another and are connected only by their ordering structure." p.70
"The first abstract automaton had the structure of the fugue - not a strict one, but loosely speaking that is the model of an automaton. The minuet is similar too. As soon as we have a structure it is also, however tiny, an automaton at the same." p.81
"I suddenly realized that it is not true that music is only time, as Stravinsky claims in one of his books (Messiaen is also of a similar opinion: music is nothing without time). In fact music is basically outside time and time serves only for it to manifest itself. Whatever we think is by definition outside time because it is in our memory and doesn't disappear with the passage of time (unless we forget it). We have no power over the time-flow but we feel it passing: the notion of time is also outside time.
Notions - such as time interval, ordering structure - are all in our mind, they don't disappear. Consequently in music the question of form, structure, harmony, counterpoint and so on are all outside time. If we take a duration - let us say three seconds - where are those three seconds?" p.83
"What is perceived by the human ear is the result of changes in atmospheric pressure. Those changes occur in time. Any sound (or music) can be mapped as a line showing the changing pressure. Every pressure is a value in time which, while changing draws a curve. In the case of pure sound the image of pressure is given by the sine wave. Noise, on the other hand, is not periodical, and its image is also irregular. In order for us to perceive pitch we need a regular and periodic pattern. I have also mentioned that pressure exists in two-dimensional space: one is time, the other is atmospheric pressure. When this curve is transposed to instrumental music, instead of pressure we have pitch. The melodic line, however, can be drawn in both cases according to identical rules." p.92
"The question, then, is how to organize sets of the characteristics of sound, Let us take pitch, for example, which is outside time and a well-known characteristic. How to select certain values - in other words, how to produce a scale? After the disintegration of tonality Western music used the totality of the chromatic scale without making any difference between the individual notes. It led to a deterioration in the quality of music because the chromatic scale is neutral. In order to get a more interesting, nure complex scale, we have to choose between the notes." p.92
"In the past, when sailing ships were plying the oceans, they would put a message in a bottle and throw it in the water to signal they were in distress. Eventually it would be found by somebody who would, hopefully, call for help. It is this role that art is called upon to play. Many artists fight each other, for power, money, recognition - but in the final analysis that is what it comes down to: you throw a bottle in the water and somebody picks it up." p.211
"What is a straight line in two-dimensional space? The continuous change of one dimension compared to the other. The same happens in the pitch versus line domain - the straight line is the continuous change of pitch versus time. The difference between physical and musical space is that the former is homogeneous: both dimensions are lengths and distances. In music, however, the two dimensions, pitch and time, are alien in nature from one another and are connected only by their ordering structure." p.70
"The first abstract automaton had the structure of the fugue - not a strict one, but loosely speaking that is the model of an automaton. The minuet is similar too. As soon as we have a structure it is also, however tiny, an automaton at the same." p.81
"I suddenly realized that it is not true that music is only time, as Stravinsky claims in one of his books (Messiaen is also of a similar opinion: music is nothing without time). In fact music is basically outside time and time serves only for it to manifest itself. Whatever we think is by definition outside time because it is in our memory and doesn't disappear with the passage of time (unless we forget it). We have no power over the time-flow but we feel it passing: the notion of time is also outside time.
Notions - such as time interval, ordering structure - are all in our mind, they don't disappear. Consequently in music the question of form, structure, harmony, counterpoint and so on are all outside time. If we take a duration - let us say three seconds - where are those three seconds?" p.83
"What is perceived by the human ear is the result of changes in atmospheric pressure. Those changes occur in time. Any sound (or music) can be mapped as a line showing the changing pressure. Every pressure is a value in time which, while changing draws a curve. In the case of pure sound the image of pressure is given by the sine wave. Noise, on the other hand, is not periodical, and its image is also irregular. In order for us to perceive pitch we need a regular and periodic pattern. I have also mentioned that pressure exists in two-dimensional space: one is time, the other is atmospheric pressure. When this curve is transposed to instrumental music, instead of pressure we have pitch. The melodic line, however, can be drawn in both cases according to identical rules." p.92
"The question, then, is how to organize sets of the characteristics of sound, Let us take pitch, for example, which is outside time and a well-known characteristic. How to select certain values - in other words, how to produce a scale? After the disintegration of tonality Western music used the totality of the chromatic scale without making any difference between the individual notes. It led to a deterioration in the quality of music because the chromatic scale is neutral. In order to get a more interesting, nure complex scale, we have to choose between the notes." p.92
"In the past, when sailing ships were plying the oceans, they would put a message in a bottle and throw it in the water to signal they were in distress. Eventually it would be found by somebody who would, hopefully, call for help. It is this role that art is called upon to play. Many artists fight each other, for power, money, recognition - but in the final analysis that is what it comes down to: you throw a bottle in the water and somebody picks it up." p.211
December 16, 2024
Loved this
March 30, 2015
Awesome, inspiring and insightful.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews