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Iannis Xenakis, Roberta Brown, John Rahn Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol Xenakis on Xenakis Author(s): Iannis Xenakis, Roberta Brown, John Rahn Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 25, No. 1/2, 25th Anniversary Issue (Winter - Summer, 1987), pp. 16-63 Published by: Perspectives of New Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833091 Accessed: 29/04/2009 05:06 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pnm. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Perspectives of New Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Perspectives of New Music. http://www.jstor.org XENAKIS ON XENAKIS 47W/ IANNIS XENAKIS INTRODUCTION ITSTBECAUSE he wasborn in Greece?That he wentthrough the doorsof the Poly- technicUniversity before those of the Conservatory?That he thoughtas an architect beforehe heardas a musician?Iannis Xenakis occupies an extraodinaryplace in the musicof our time. He is comparedto thesages of GreekAntiquity, to thepainters of theRenaissance, to theEncyclopedists of the Centuryof Enlghtenment.Occasionally one is temptedto scoff at his theoreticalpositionson the mergingof music,architecture, and science. lannis Xenakisresponds as an artist:through his philosophic questioning and the directionsof his research,hegives expression to the toment that dwellswithin him: his violentpoetry of thegalaxies, his mortalwars of atom-soundsecho the primitive chaos and immortalizeit in a ceaselessstorm. *Translatedfrom the French by RobertaBrown and John Rahn. Xenakison Xenakis 17 IANNIS XENAKIS 18 Perspectivesof New Music Who,really, is thecreator annis Xenakis?He reeals himselfto us in theinteriew whichopens this artcle. Why hasIannis Xenakis emerged as oneof the mostimportant composers in instru- mentalmusic of ourtime? How do thepreoccupations of the composer,developed for examplein Metastasis (1955),meet the approach of thearchitect? lannis Xenakisis revolutionizingthe relationbetween music and the computer. Hisfirst workswith computer(ST/4, ST/10, ST/48, conceivedat IBM) go backto theyears 1955-60. Sincethen, he has beeninventing a new way to think music- from a drawing:he createdthe UPIC system(Unite PolyagogiqueInformatique de CEMAMu) in 1977 at the CEMAMu (the researchcenter that he directsin Paris). What needled him to the confrontationbetween science and music? Toeach of thesequestions, the interiew herewith Iannis Xenakis and the excerpts from hisown writings willprovide us withan initialrespose: a partialapprch to the composer'shghly complex,constantly evolving universe. -L.B. I. PORTRAITOF IANNISXENAKIS Why music?It thrilledme. It carriedme away. When I was twelve or thirteen yearsold, I was practicingthe piano, I was readingAstronomy by Flammarion for hours on end. I was doing mathematicsand archaeology:I didn't like life. I had all kinds of failures. The power of musicis such that it transportsyou from one state to another. Like alcohol. Like love. If I wanted to learnhow to compose music, maybe it was to acquirethis power. The power of Dionysus. And at a certainpoint, you chose togo intoscience? No. I wanted to do everythingat the same time. Earnmy living, learnmath and physics: the only really serious place was the Polytechnic University in Athens. The entranceexams were difficultand I worked hard to pass them. I made it. But at the same time, I was doing music, archaeology,and law. Did youconsider music as a disciplineamong others? Absolutely.Things were scattered.Each subject was a domain. I wasn't try- ing to make any connection. If my professorshad reallytaught me, in the true sense of the word, they would have made the connection: they would have shown me music combinatoricswhich would have opened up for me a more abstractvision of harmony, of contrapuntalpolyphony, of form. They didn't do it. They were speakingas musicians. At that time, I was workingwith privateteachers. I didn't think about the Conservatory.I thought music should be learnedlike that. Likehow? Without going to school. It's strange.I had the impressionthat music, like Xenakison Xenakis 19 painting,escaped academics. My desireto study musicwas intense. But, at the same time, I was ashamedthat I wanted to, as if it were a weakness. Obviously, the milieu in which I lived was not very favorablefor music:few milieus are! I was very young when my mother died. I was five. She was a musician.She playedthe piano. She wanted me to play the violoncello;maybe it was for that reason that I eventually wrote for the cello. As for myself, I didn't want to learnthe cello. So I playedthe piano. When I was seventeenyears old, all of a sudden I realizedthat I wanted to makemusic, that is, that I wantedto writeit myself.I looked for professorscapa- ble of teachingme the rudimentsof composition. But the decision to do only that, to be a musicianexclusively, came later. I was twenty-fiveyears old, and I was in a hopelesssituation. There had been the war. I had fought in the Resistance.All the marvelousuniverse that I had imagined,first by myself, then in readingThe Republic of Plato (anotherway of life in which artwould have a fundamentalplace in behavior,dress, language)- everything that had pushed me to join the Communist Party suddenly col- lapsed.I decidedto withdrawinto myself.In this innermostrecess, there was no science.But there was music. EitherI committed suicide.Or I startedout on a new foot. I had the choice of continuingon the same coursethat I had followed for yearswith all the force and strengththat youth has and that distressgives-to be a politicalactivist (but this was no longer possiblein Greece becausethe authoritieswere looking for me)-or to withdrawinto music.This was the decisionthat I made in coming to France.Actually, I had left to go to the United States:France had been defeated. I thought it would be chaos there. I wasn't mistaken.But I had friendsthere. I stopped there. The strangething is that I neverthought about going to the USSR!I have to say that I climbed on the bandwagonwhen the Allies becameso friendlywith the Russiansin orderto win the war. Rooseveltand even Stalinwere sayinghow much differentlife would be on the planet afterthe war. This went rightalong with my militantbeliefs and with readingPlato and Marx.This was the instant solution for a richerlife. But all this had been shattered. ByStalin? Not only by Stalin.Stalin betrayed the Greekresistance, which was essentially a communist movement. But the Englishalso betrayedthe resistantfervour of that reallyruined country. And even the Americans,with Truman.If Roosevelt had remained in government, there would not have been the Cold War. Trumanwas a simplelittle man from the rightwing who broughtto the presi- dency all the paltrinessand the racismof his clan. 1947, in France,marked the beginning of a period of moving about from placeto placethat lasteduntil 1952. I had heardof NadiaBoulanger, and I went to see her-I was stilllooking for someone who could guide me. She told me that I had talentbut that she was too old to takea beginnerlike me. For that matter, she was only sixtyyears old then. But she still could choose her students. 20 Perspectivesof New Music By chance, I found work with the architect, Le Corbusier, whose team includeda numberof Greeks,and who took me with him as engineer.For me, architecturehad stopped at Antiquity. All architecture-Byzantine, Roman, Gothic and modem-was nonexistent. ThatofLe Corbusieras well? No. I realizedhis importanceas soon as I saw him working.When an artistis not a fool, he createsaround him a fieldof verysensitive forces. This was his case. One day, I told him that I wanted to work at architecture.He responded, "Why not?" He, himself, had not come out of a school. He had not been admittedto the School of Fine Arts, and in the end, he did his architectureas he understoodit. It was a good example. He detestedall music except that ofVarese,whom he had known personally. It should be said that his mother was a greatpianist (by dint of hearingMen- delssohnall the time, he must havegotten fed up!) and that one of his brothers, the darlingof the family, was a composer. As for himself, he made his way all alone, startingby engravingwatch-backs at La-Chaux-de-Fonds. I wanted to work in those days in the electronicstudio of PierreSchaeffer. This musicinterested me a lot. I was going to the concertsat the "Petit Conser- vatoire"where therewere nevermore than three people in the audience. I wrote to Schaeffer.He neveranswered me. Finally,I broughthim a score, Saifice for eight instruments.Since he couldn't readmusic, he gave it to Pierre Henry, who, verykindly, showed it to Scherchen,who wasrehearsing Dsets by Varese.They were interested. What counted above all was the row I had with Honegger. I was enrolled in his compositionclass at the Ecole Normale. The studentswould bringtheir works, and he would critiquethem in front of everyone. I went there. I showed him a score. He playedit and said, "There, you have got parallelfifths." "Yes, but I like them." "And there, paralleloctaves." "Yes, but I like them." "But all this, it's not music, except for the first three measures,and even those..." And the madder he got, the madder I got.
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