User:Jashiin/Temp1

draft for Iannis Xenakis

Early works

The earliest preserved works by Xenakis are short piano pieces influenced by Béla Bartók and Darius Milhaud, but most importantly borrowing much from Greek folk music. He would set folk melodies and/or texts, sometimes attempting to transfer the characteristic texture of some Greek folk instruments to the piano. The composer's fascination with Greek culture remained an important influence on his work for the rest of his life: the vast majority of his compositions bear Greek titles, and some pieces make exclicit references to some aspects of Greek folk music. As early as in 1955 Xenakis wrote an article discussing his intentions: "to find expressive and structural means in the folk and sacred music [of Greece] on the one hand and in the avant-garde discoveries of European music on the other." To this end, Xenakis carried out extensive studies of Greek music, being particularly drawn to its melodic traditions, Epirian polyphony, asymmetrical rhythms, and structures derived from sacred music genres.

The year 1952 marked a decisive shift to contemporary European avant-garde in Xenakis' work. First, the composer completed Tripli Zyia, a piece for flute, soprano soloist, and piano. It was the first of many works by Xenakis that relied in one way or another on mathematical processes: the rhythms are built from the Fibonacci series, while the melodies were created using synthetic modes, reflecting the influence of Messiaen. These avant-garde techniques were, however, juxtaposed with Greek influences, and the text of the work, written by Xenakis himself, was nationalistic. The same mixture of influences informed Xenakis' next project, an ambitious orchestral tryptich called Anastenaria. Xenakis planned to create three large works for choir and orchestra, inspired by the Dionysian ritual. However, only the first piece, Procession aux eaux claires (1953) employed a choir and relied heavily on Greek folk elements. The second piece, Le sacrifice (1953), is for orchestra alone, and composed using a series of pitches with associated durations, governed by the Fibonacci series again, and a mathematical algorithm.

The third piece of Anastenaria, Metastaseis (1953–54), is now commonly regarded as Xenakis' first masterpiece, and the composition that laid the foundation of his entire career. In an essay describing the piece, Xenakis translated the Greek word "metastaseis" as "transformations", referring to the continuous change of large glissando structures that make up the outer sections of the work. Xenakis plotted the glissandi on millimeter graph paper, pitch on the y axis and time on the x axis, a process he would later employ for more advanced compositional techniques. The middle section is composed using a heavily modified version of Schoenberg's dodecaphonic technique, governed yet again by the Fibonacci series. Metastaseis also introduced what Xenakis' characteristic scoring: the 61 musicians that make up the required orchestra play 61 different parts.

• Xenakis, Iannis. 1955. Problems of Greek Music. Art Review 9, 185–189.