Iannis Xenakis: Chamber Music, 1955-1990

Of Greek ancestry, born in Romania, a resistance fighter in Greece who suffered a terrible injury to his face including the loss of an eye and an exile in France for over a half-century from the late 1940s until his death in 2001, Iannis Xenakis first became an architect working under the renowned Le Corbusier.  It was not until he was in his Thirties that Xenakis became a composer and, when he did, he shook the so-called classical (serious) music world with his emphasis on mathematical modeling (not unlike Harry Partch and his monophony, Xenakis hearkened back to ancient Greek mathematical musical concepts from the likes of Pythagoras) and computer programming to create some of the most challenging and startling pieces one will ever hear.  His "stochastic" approach involves, perhaps not unlike John Cage's use of the I-Ching, choosing notes randomly through the programming by computer.

For a listener, that challenge includes letting go of the idea that melody is essential to hearing music and for this untutored fan, the key is to take the advice of jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler and his trumpeter brother Donald and try to follow the sound not the notes, while also observing the absolute foundation of music conveyed by Edgard Varése, who suggested that it is simply "organized sound."

This double-disc set issued in 1991 by the German public broadcasting entity, WDR, provides almost all of the composer's smaller ensemble work, and it is beautifully played by the Arditti String Quartet, formed by violinist Irvine Arditti and devoted to modern music as it approaches its 50th anniversary next year, and the late pianist Claude Helffer, also a resistance fighter in his native France during the war.  Notes by Harry Halbreich explain Xenakis' approaches to music and math, the stochastic method of composition and explanations of the fifteen pieces.

Intense and complex as Xenakis' music can be, one of the great virtues of this set is that it provides a good deal of variety as there are the string quartet, including with piano, and string trio pieces, but also solo works for piano, violoncello, viola, and violin.  Even if there are complicated processes like "arborescenses," dealing with melody in a new way; the "sieve," or a mathematical way to select notes from a random selection through computer programming; as well as using "non-octave scales," where scales repeat beyond an octave, letting the sound take you into a world of incredible dynamic range and deep exploration of pitch can be very rewarding and a true ear-opening experience.

Iannis Xenakis: Persepolis + Remixes Edition 1

The context for Persepolis is, by any standard, strange, but fascinating.  The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, decided, in 1971, to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of Persia by Cyrus the Great by holding an event that also was intended to justify the Shah's place in Persian history, though eight years later he was deposed by a conservative religious revolution.

As part of the festivities, the Shah commissioned composer Iannis Xenakis to create a piece of music and the result is the astounding Persepolis, named for the city built by Cyrus and the ruins of which are in the deserts of the south part of the country.  As a symbol of the ancient power and might of the Persian Empire, Persepolis became the basis for an extraordinary piece of music as extreme sound that seems totally alien to that society and for that matter most modern ears!

This listener finds the nearly hour-long work on eight-channel tape, with this 2002 version on Asphodel Records based on the original tapes with consultation of Xenakis, to be compelling as a gradual build-up of sound that may not conjure up anything specific about ancient Persia or Persepolis.  There is a haunting and desolate feel that does not remotely sound celebratory.

Xenakis, however, latched on to a crucial concept in Zoroastrianism, the religion of the ancient Persians, involving the binary conflict of darkness and light.  The piece, blared through nearly 60 loudspeakers, also emphasized light, through torches and bonfires (ancient light) and lasers and bright electrical light (modern forms).  It is hard to imagine that attendees were anything but stunned and confused by the spectacle.

The composer said that Persepolis was reflective of "history's noises" and the mechanical sounds, high-pitched percussion sounding like dragged objects, echoed hisses and howls seem to indicate a primeval passage through the turmoil of history.  It is disconcerting, but also hypnotic when concentrated attention is placed, especially in the last ten minutes, which is incredibly intense.

A second disc of remixes by electronic artists from Japan, Spain, Poland, Germany and the United States are varied and often bear little over resemblance to Xenakis' piece, but, as is often the case, take basic inspiration as a means to express general affinity and kinship about the nature of extreme sound.

To this listener, hearing Persepolis is somewhat akin to hearing Lou Reed's confounding, but remarkable, Metal Machine Music, including its stunning notated reproduction by Zeitkratzer.  What could seem like a joke or complete self-indulgence takes on an aura of inspired explorations of the outer limits of music, espcially considering the strange relationship of Xenakis, a modernist, avant- garde musical revolutionary and the autocratic Shah not long removed from an ignominious end.

Iannis Xenakis: Phlegra/Jalons/Keren/Nomos Alpha/Thalleïn

This selection is not only because Iannis Xenakis, a Greek born in Romania and long based in France, was such a compelling and fascinating composer exploring the boundaries of music, but becaise one of these compositions, "Jalons," was dedicated in part to the conductor of the piece, performed by the Ensemble InterContemporain--this being Pierre Boulez, the great composer and conductor, who died last week at 90.

Xenakis began his work, in the early 1950s, as Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and other composers were working to change so-called "classical music" from its orthodoxy in harmony, melody, time and other aspects to what has often been referred to as "avant-garde music."  His training as an engineer and architect led him to develop a mechanism for adopting mathematics into his composition, including some of the earliest uses of computer programming for scores.

As a trained engineer and architect, however, Xenakis did not utilize the formal training of even some of the most modern of composers, such as Boulez, who was critical of Xenakis' lack of technical knowledge and expertise, and it was about a decade before the latter conducted a work of the former that he commissioned.

Xenakis once said that his musical outlook was directly related to the horrible experiences of his days in Greece during World War II and the revolutionary aftermath in that country, during which he lost an eye fighting during the civil war.  Much of his output, to this untrained listener, is atonal, dissonant, dark and riven with tension, though it was assumed this was more about the intellectual and aesthetic aspects of the boundary-pushing efforts the composer pursued.

This 1992 release of material recorded by the Ensemble Intercontemporain and soloists from two years prior has a fine sound, complementing challenging and rewarding material from Xenakis and tremendous performances from the group and its soloists.

"Phlegra", written in 1976, is fascinating with its shifting harmonies among eleven instuments in a chamber orchestral setting, reflecting a sort of abrasive order among chaos.  There is a fascinating, undulating beauty, though, in the crests and descents of the score and energetic use of polyphony and the musicians of the Ensemble Intercontemporain do a fantastic job with this complex, layered and mesmerizing work, which has to do with fighting between the Titans and the gods of Olympus from Greek mythology.

"Jalons" was commissioned in 1986 and whatever conflicts had existed between Boulez and Xenakis seemed to have dissipated somewhat by then.  The complexity of "Phlegra" is very much present, but there is a richer, broader sound to this untutored ear, due probably to the larger ensemble size of fifteen musicians.  Shifting masses of sound distributed throughout the instruments of this "mini orchestra" are always interesting and, like in "Phlegra" there is no soloing--this is all about the wonders of ensemble interplay.

By contrast, "Keren" (Hebew for "horn") is dedicated to a solo for one of the instrumnets that so rarely is spotlighted in that format: the trombone.  Last June's post on Luciano Berio's Sequenza series brings to mind that one of the fourteen works in that set was also for trombone.  Benny Sluchin does a superlative job of demonstrating the range of what the instrument can do as conceived by Xenakis, including guttural  sounds, glissando and all kinds of expressive dynamics, as well as melodic lines.  After the intensity of the first two pieces, "Keren" is a nice break, even though it is characteristically experimental and searching in its development.

1965's "Nomos Alpha" moves into another solo spotlight, this being for Pierre Strauch's wonderful cello, as worked out in mathematical formulas that take the cello beyond its typical use into stunning displays of dynamics, including a "doubling" effect that is really something to behold.  Like the trombone, the cello is not usually thought of as having a wide range of application in sound, though it is a foundation of string quartets.  In the hands of Xenakis and Strauch's enormous efforts, the cello becomes as expressive an instrument as any.

In 1984, Xenakis wrote "Thalleïn" ("to burgeon" in Greek) and here is another exercise in employing masses of sound, complex displays of polyphony, but with the difference from other pieces in this set in using some percussion, such as a gong early on and then maracas later along with more standard percussive elements.  There is also piano throughout, though the work really is about the dense intreplay of woodwind and brass instruments.  The variety of tonal, rhythmic, harmonic and melodic resources do, in fact, give a sense of "burgeoning" as the title notes.  The Ensemble Intercontemporain again is extraordinary in this piece, as in the others.

Pierre Boulez's reputation now is mainly as a conductor, but his earliest work especially is part of the important development of music in the post-World War II era.  While he was critical of Xenakis' lack of formal training in music, the latter became more renowned in the composing side.  Boulez eventually worked with Xenakis' compositions on occasion as part of his rich legacy of conducting and "Jalons" is a great example of this.

Iannis Xenakis: Works for Piano

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), who fought in the resistance against the Axis powers during World War II, during which he lost an eye, and then moved to France, where he remained for the duration of his life was a trained architect and engineer, an enthusiast of mathematics and computers, and a composer.  This remarkable combination of skills and interests marked him as one of the most formidale and controversial of postwar music.

Born to Greek parents in Romania, Xenakis entered a boarding school in Greece at ten and was just preparing his college work in architecture and engineering, while also expressing an interest in music, when the war broke out and Greece was occupied by German forces until 1944.  Xenakis actually lost his left eye from a shell when the British occupation of Greece took place and he was protesting against their presence, despite England's role in ousting the Axis powers, because the British favored restoring the Greek monarchy while Xenakis and others preferred another path (he was then a Communist.)

Xenakis was able to continue his university studies, completing his engineering degree in 1947, but the Greek government's program to round up former members of the resistance, led him to flee the country and settle in France.  In the militaristic Greek postwar period, Xenakis was sentenced to death, then to a long prison term (of course, in absentia) before being pardoned when civilian government returned in the 1970s.

In Paris, Xenakis found work with the famed architect Le Courbusier and worked on some major architectural projects, while simultaneously studying harmony, counterpoint and composition.  After such major figures as Nadia Boulanger, Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud rejected his unusual approaches to music, a sympathetic soul was found in Olivier Messiaen, who encouraged his student to apply his architectural and mathematical skills to the serialism that was embraced by Xenakis.

By the mid-1950s, Xenakis was becoming recognized for his work, including Metastaseis (1953-54.)  He also began working with electronic sound, in what was generally called musique concrete.  He also became a noted teacher as well as a composer and was deeply interested in the use of computer programming and complicated mathematical formulas to develop scores.  Even though this mechanical approach might appear to have the makings of producing music absent of human feeling, Xenakis' ability to program mathematical formulas did not leave that impression, unless modern music leaves the listener cold, regardless of how the composition is created.

Although most of his work was done in France, Xenakis did have a several-years stint teaching at Indiana University in the late 1960s and early 1970s and for three years in the later 70s in England.  He also wrote several treatises on musical concepts.

Xenakis referred to his complex, densely rhythmic, heavily timbral music as "stochastic," meaning that there was a major element of indeterminacy, perhaps in open scoring or alternate systems of notation as well as the complex mathematical equations used, often fed into computers, within an overall structure.  So, unlike John Cage's sense of indeterminacy, where randomness completely rules the roost, Xenakis has a logical ordering of a piece based on mathematical and other scientific models but with a measure of chance operations. 

At the same time, Xenakis considered himself an ancient Greek soul in a modern body and was heavily influenced by Greek and Byzantine music, the latter coming from his youthful exposure to the Greek Orthodox Church, as well as ancient Greek mathematical concepts from the great Pythagoras, who related music and numbers in his work.

Later in his career, Xenakis, who used logical concepts involving game theory, algebraic ideas, vector analysis, and other methods previously, began to use visual imagery, called "arborescences" in his compositions and the images of sound were shown as roots, branches and other tree-like components that found a way to tie in his unusual ideas in a form distinct from traditional scores and also paved the way for a composition technique called UPIC, in which an electromagnetic pen was used on a specialized table for creating shapes that were computer manipulated into sounds immediately.  He also composed using light and lasers in some works.

For this rank amateur, the finer points of Xenakis' many techniques is almost always elusive, but the reaction to the music is still one of wonder, surprise, awe and, occasionally, exasperation in trying to read about the technical aspects while trying to listen and appreciate the powerful mind of the composer.

One way, perhaps, to best fuse the challenging music of Xenakis with an emotional reach is through his works for piano, an instrument that seems to best connect intellectually and emotionallly for the listener.  Part of a fine series of the composer's work from the Mode label is the Works for Piano compilation, rleased in 1999.  Featuring the work of a longtime student and friend, Aki Takahashi, this recording presents six pieces, most from the 1970s and 1980s, excepting the solo "Herma" from the early 1960s.  Four of the works are solos for Takahashi, while one pairs her with violinist Jane Peters and the other, "Palimpsest," finds her with percussion, strings and wind instruments.

For this listener, the first three pieces are the best with "Herma" and "Evryali" allowing Takahashi to use her formidable talents bringing these complicated works to life in a way that taps into the emotional expressiveness of the piano, even with highly complex, modern compositions.  Similarly, the duet of piano and the emotive violin of Peters on "Dikhthas" is notable and the nearly 15-minute piece moves so well that it seems far shorter, at least to these ears, than that.  Truthfully, the other works are also fine, with the combination of varied instruments on "Palimpsest" providing a needed break and contrast to the solo and duet work found elsewhere.  And, the closer, the short "A.R. (Hommage a Ravel)," gives Takahashi the environment for virtuoso work in chains of extremely rapid notes with breaks of long extended chords and then finishing with more fast runs ending with a jarring low cluster of notes at the end.

Iannis Xenakis was a prolific composer with a varied portfolio employing a wide range of techniques and applications--his work will be featured here again several times.  If there is a way to get "introduced" to his music to new listeners, this piano-centric release might be the best avenue, although, truthfully, its very modern approach might be forbidding regardless.  If a listener is up for the challenge, though, the music can be very rewarding and enlightening.