Three components of Xenakis’ universe

Makis Solomos (1)

1 MUSIDANSE - Esthétique, musicologie, danse et création musicale

This article offers a general view of Xenakis’s musical world, focusing on three of its main characteristics: 1. Global approach. Starting from the notion of “mass”, thanks to which Xenakis distanced himself radically from serialism in the early 1950s, it analyzes several aspects of this approach: composition with the help of graphs, idea of sound “clouds”, notion of space, technique of gradual transformation (process). Then, it defines the global approach as composition-of-sound. 2. The theory-practice relationship. The article analyzes the polysemy of the notion of “formalization”, which Xenakis used thoroughly in his theoretical writings. Indeed, for him, formalization means “art/science alloys”, but also axiomatization or even the simple use of mathematics to compose music. Then, the article examines the relationship between theory and practice, explaining that, in fact, only a few of Xenakis’s works were actually composed with the help of theories, that there are always gaps between theory and practice, and that Xenakis very often reused as raw sound material musical extracts that were once composed with the help of a theory. 3. With the last component, the article analyzes a strong characteristic of Xenakis’s music for the listener: its immediate effect. This is a result of Xenakis aesthetics, i.e. its Dionysian and gestural character.

Mots clés: Xenakis

Domaines: Musique, musicologie et arts de la scène

Makis Solomos. Three components of Xenakis’ universe . 2016. ⟨hal-01789673⟩