Rebonds: Structural Affordances, Negotiation, and Creation

This paper presents a comparative recording analysis of the seminal work for solo percussion Rebonds (Iannis Xenakis, 1989), in order to demonstrate how performances of a musical work can reveal—or even create—aspects of musical structure that score-centered analysis cannot illuminate. In doing so I engage with the following questions. What does a pluralistic, dynamic conception of structure look like for Rebonds? How do interpretive decisions recast performers as agents of musical structure? When performances diverge from the score in the omission of notes, the softening of accents, the insertion of dramatic tempo changes, or the altering of entire passages, do conventions that arise out of those performance practices become part of the structural fabric of the work? Are these conventions thus part of the Rebonds “text”?

Vergangenheit in der Zukunftsmusik der Gegenwart

Iannis Xenakis schrieb seinen Beitrag "Epiphanien" im Jahr 1968 im Rahmen von Wolfgang Wagners Umfrage anlässlich des 100jährigen Jubiläums der "Meistersinger von Nürnberg". Er formuliert in diesem Text Gedanken zur Position von Kunst und von Musiktheater im Besonderen - zwischen Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Im ersten Teil drückt sich eine Wertschätzung aus, die Xenakis dem "normgebenden Werk" ganz offensichtlich entgegenbrachte. Im zweiten Teil wird jedoch auch die Zwiespältigkeit deutlich, mit der er das Schaffen des Älteren betrachtete. bms online (Cornelia Schöntube)

Repertório para Sixxen

O presente trabalho cataloga e discute o repertório composto entre 1978 e 2017 para Sixxen, instrumento criado por Iannis Xenakis. Para alcance dos resultados foi realizada ampla pesquisa bibliográfica e documental. Os resultados demonstram um repertório constituído por no mínimo 46 obras, de 43 compositores de 11 países. As décadas de 2000-2009 e 2010-2017 apresentam o maior quantitativo de obras (82% do total). A criação entre os anos de 2010-2015 em particular, com cerca de 70% do total de composições, supera o número total das décadas anteriores somadas e apresenta um incremento cinco vezes maior do que o quantitativo entre 2000-2009. A maior quantidade de composições é originária dos EUA, França e Brasil. O artigo também analisa informações sobre a notação para Sixxen, a relação de grupos com compositores para elaboração de novas obras e o redimensionamento conceitual e prático gerado pela aplicação do instrumento em diferentes contextos.

The Laws of Xenakis's Music Not Formulated by Xenakis Himself

Вокруг творчества Янниса Ксенакиса (1922-2001) сложилась богатая литература, тон которой задал сам композитор своим трактатом «Формализованная музыка», изобилующим математическими формулами и схемами, непонятными для большинства гуманитариев. Между тем чрезмерная опора на то, что писал о своей музыке сам Ксенакис, не всегда помогает в должной мере оценить некоторые немаловажные атрибуты его стиля. Принимая близкую Ксенакису точку зрения на композиторское «изделие» как на эмпирически наблюдаемый феномен с особым набором дифференциальных признаков, уникальным образом распределенных во времени и пространстве, мы приходим к следующему выводу: какие бы научные идеи и представления ни привлекались композитором для разъяснения своих концепций, глубинная структура его музыки, как правило, восходит к триаде универсальных законов, описывающих соотношения между параметрами массовых явлений. Эта триада изоморфна трем физическим законам, описывающим поведение фиксированной массы идеального газа, и музыкальный язык Ксенакиса приспособлен для того, чтобы следовать им достаточно строго. The oeuvre of Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) gave rise to a wealth of scholarly literature, the tone of which was set by Xenakis himself in his treatise Formalized Music, abounding in mathematical formulas and schemes that are incomprehensible for the absolute majority of scholars in the humanities. However, over-reliance on Xenakis's own comments on his music is not necessarily conductive to a better understanding of some important attributes of his style. Adopting Xenakis's perspective on a piece of musical composition as an empirically observable phenomenon with a special set of differentiae uniquely distributed in time and space, we come to the following conclusion: irrespective of which scientific ideas and notions were involved by Xenakis to explicate his concepts, the deep structure of his music, as a rule, is based on the triad of universal rules describing the relations between the parameters of mass events. The triad in question is isomorphous with the three physical laws describing the behaviour of a fixed mass of ideal gas, and Xenakis's musical idiom is adapted to follow these laws quite strictly.

The architect’s task: the use of models as structural expressionism

In the above cited quote, Kevin Roche, a principal associate at Eero Saarinen’s architectural practice in 1957, recalls an early morning discussion about the design of the Trans World Airlines’ (TWA) Flight Center. Roche’s story about Saarinen reminds us that at the beginning of an architectural project, a solution may come from any variety of sources, not least of all from everyday objects. This was certainly the case for Saarinen, who found the seed for his design of the structural shells of the TWA Flight Center in the rind of a grapefruit. Despite its seeming novelty, Saarinen is not unique in his approach to the generation of architectural form with models; the Greek-French composer, architect and engineer Iannis Xenakis, who while working with Le Corbusier in 1957, used strings and thick wire to design the hyperbolic shell for their Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Expo. That a model will play a defining role in an architect’s approach to structural design is also demonstrated by the ‘spherical solution’ that Jørn Utzon discovered while stacking models of his Sydney Opera House’s shell roofs. These explorations with the expression of structure emerged at a time when a new generation of designers, including Eduardo Torroja, Pier Luigi Nervi and Felix Candela, had realised a handful of buildings using models to study and test structural form.

Afinação justa, crivos e (as)simetrias: estratégias composicionais com implementação em OpenMusic

Nesta pesquisa apresentaremos formas de organização de alturas da Afinação Justa através dos crivos de Iannis Xenakis. Nos concentraremos na Afinação Justa de Harry Partch com a Tonalidade-Diamante, no sistema de Afinação utilizado por Ben Johnston nos quartetos de cordas no. 2 e no. 3, no Moment of Symmetry de Erv Wilson, e por fim no Combination Product-Set também de Erv Wilson. Após a apresentação destes sistemas faremos considerações sobre o uso dos crivos para o controle da Afinação Justa dentro de nosso contexto composicional. Após essa parte teórica, apresentaremos as bibliotecas OM-JI e OM-Sieves, desenvolvidas como parte desta pesquisa para facilitar a incorporação da Afinação Justa e dos crivos no ambiente do OpenMusic/OM-Sharp, finalizando com processos composicionais criados a partir dos crivos e das Afinações Justas dentro da obra Arabesque | 19 11 97.

Gearing Time Toward Musical Creativity: Conceptual Integration and Material Anchoring in Xenakis’ Psappha

Understanding compositional practices is a major goal of musicology and music theory. Compositional practices have been traditionally viewed as disembodied and idiosyncratic. This view makes it hard to integrate musical creativity into our understanding of the general cognitive processes underlying meaning construction. To overcome this unnecessary isolation of musical composition from cognitive science, in this conceptual analysis, we approach compositional processes with the analytic tools of blending theory, material anchoring, and enaction. Our case study is Iannis Xenakis’ use of sieves for distributing rhythmic patterns in Psappha. Though disregarded in previous accounts, the timeline and the gearwheel provide crucial conceptual templates for anchoring Xenakis’ idea of time for this score. This case study of conceptual integration templates for temporal representation seeks to gain insight into musical creativity, embodiment, and blending, especially into how virtual interactions with material structures facilitate the construction of complex meanings.

"THE STARRY WIND OF CASSIOPEIA" BY VICTOR ULYANICH: EXPERIENCE IN ANALYSING COMPUTER AND AUDIOVISUAL COMPOSITIONS

The article regards two versions of the work "The Starry Wind of Cassiopeia" by composer Viktor Ulyanich. The first is an eponymous composition, written in 1990 on a UPIC musical computer in the Paris studio of Iannis Xenakis, the second is an audiovisual work "Cassiopeia", which was the result of creative collaboration between Viktor Ulyanich and the artist Olga Kumeger. Compositions are presented as fundamentally synesthetic phenomena, since in both cases the graphical and musical components are inextricably linked. In the first case, timbres are synthesized through the lines; in the second, they participate in the formation of a new artistic unit. The stage of pre-composition work is a very important phase in the creative process for Viktor Ulyanich. This is the period of ideas defining the formation of the artistic image and the organization of the musical fabric. Here, such an idea was the recognizable w-shaped arrangement of the five brightest stars in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It became the basis of the work's dramaturgy, its dynamic and register plan, and was reflected in the color-graphic matrix and graphic timbre-themed elements, thereby determining the fractal nature of the computer composition.

Elementy konstruktywistyczne w twórczości Iannisa Xenakisa (1922-2001)

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) był kompozytorem nietuzinkowym. Zamiast studiów w konserwatorium muzycznym wybrał Politechnikę Narodową w Atenach. Zamiast przepisywać fugi J.S. Bacha, kreślił na papierze milimetrowym innowacyjne szkice architektoniczne. Milan Kundera nazwał go prorokiem bezuczuciowości, zaś Artur Honegger odmówił jego próbom kompozytorskim miana muzyki. W środowisku drugiej awangardy Xenakis zyskał sobie jednak niekwestionowaną, wiodącą pozycję za sprawą innowacyjnych technik kompozytorskich, opartych zarówno na regułach matematycznych (probabilistyka, teoria zbiorów i in.), jak i na kształtującej się wówczas technologii informacyjnej. Prezentowany artykuł ukazuje twórczość artysty w odniesieniu do założeń rosyjskiego konstruktywizmu – nurtu, który, choć rozwinął się w innym środowisku, okazał się jednak zaskakująco zbieżny z stylem Xenakisa, ukazując pewne uniwersalne tendencje w XX-wiecznej sztuce awangardowej.