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COPYRIGHT 2003 University of Washington
XENAKIS WAS A MAN of keen intellect, with a sardonic, bird-of-prey character. He was by turns imperious or vulnerable, impish or implacably unforgiving, which is to say that--as is true of any complex being--he both represented himself and was represented by others in disconcertingly varied ways. From the early sixties until his death, I had the privilege of knowing him; we spent informal, personal time together, and also shared encounters in public, professional settings. And it was this contact which led me to undertake the present project.
The components of Xenakis's education were as uncommon as they were formatively decisive: a grounding in Greek philosophy and in the fixities and portentous conflicts of their ancient tragedies (modulated by the more humanely intricate worlds of Shakespeare in English); thorough training in engineering at the Athens Polytech (and a passionate apprenticeship with its application as architecture in the studio of Le Corbusier); and an autodidact's possession of the phenomenon of music. Music in his life (architecture also) served as an arena in which spiritual, aesthetic, and scientific currents intermingled in less categorically abridged form, in ways that suited the restless inclusivity of his mind.
During the 1950s, he manifested jointly in architecture (the Philips Pavilion) and music (Metastasis) an inextricably interwoven world of resource and inference. This conjunction was a signal illustration of the rare composite of forces which intersected in him: objective and mathematically principled knowledge conjoined with a raw emotional directness that could be at times alarming.
In the early stages of his compositional career, he was still living through the transmutation of engineering into music. This realignment was articulated, in part, through the writing of articles which argued the application of certain mathematical principles to musical opportunities. In these applications, elevated aesthetic goals were served through startlingly novel manifestations. Although the intent of his articles was to illuminate, even elicit art of ambitious and demanding character, they proved impenetrably daunting to all but the smallest minority of the artistic community. Their existence, first as occasional contributions to Hermann Scherchen's Gravesaner Blatter, later in collected and augmented form as Musiques Formelles, sent a message to the musical world as bewildering as it was unprecedented.
In the absence of the yet-to-be-assembled (and then incontestable) evidence of his life's work, Xenakis's early decades as a composer were shadowed by almost universal incomprehension, whether on the part of admirers or detractors. He assumed in his audience (readers or listeners) a breadth, depth, seriousness, and peregrination of mind of which very few beyond himself were capable. As a result, his written statements (articles, program notes and the like) often deflected more than enlightened their readers. And matters did not improve greatly as published interviews and monographs began to accumulate. At first, perhaps a bit unrealistic in his expectation that references to Greek antiquity, logic and stochastic principles would serve to enhance his listeners' experience, he little by little eschewed comment, in program notes, of more than the most rudimentary sort (the identification of a text, an indication of a rifle's intended resonances). He quite understandably preferred an auditor's direct grappling with sound patterns and the mental and emotional responses they aroused. All the more so given the often irrelevant and frequently ungenerous reactions that were elicited when he revealed the ideas that had in fact propelled his musical offerings.
Over the last decade of his life, Xenakis's output became, from a technical perspective, increasingly, and by the end (one thinks of the 1996 string sextet, Ittidra) almost ultimately reductive: howling, fortissimo blocks, immobilized screams. This to the consternation of many who had been his staunch supporters. Was the seeming essentialization--an increasingly literal primitivism--which overtakes the later works a deliberate adjustment in creative course on his part? Or was it a result of the progressive neurophysiological circumstances that eventually claimed his life? A definitive response to such queries is beyond reach, but their existence further complicates the picture which the musical world held (and holds yet) of this unprecedented figure.
Although the body of musical work that Xenakis bequeathed this world is as unparalleled and inimitable as that of any musical creator we have known, it is not the whole of his legacy. The music was accompanied by (and also attracted) a detailed and wide-ranging body of written explanation. Some of this textual record is didactic, explicit, and objective while some is interactive, inferential, and subjective. My purpose in this document is to posit the existence of a number of categories which his writing addresses, often in penetrating and persuasive fashion. I have selected passages which could fairly be called "non-technical." No formulas, charts, tables, or graphs are included. My categories begin with PHILOSOPHY / DEATH AND REBIRTH, move through COMPOSITION / COMPOSERS, ARCHITECTURE, and REPETITION / RENEWAL, among others, and end with CULTURE / EDUCATION. Their ordering is not primarily chronological, but aims at evolving revelation. The categories are almost all composites, because his capacious mentality seems to have been so inevitably, even obsessively integrative. The categories are numerous without pretending to be exhaustive. They identify and portray some of what I knew in him, what I hear in his work.
Ideally, anyone interested in Xenakis's music, after spending time with this assemblage in which he articulates his own views, will find the music yet more rewarding: not demystified, surely, but freshly, if sometimes obliquely, lit. I read and then re-read what I felt to be important English language sources. The list is not complete and is shaped to a significant degree by my interactions with him. That is to say, I have used sources to which I heard him refer, some in which I took part myself. This personal, idiosyncratic survey was undertaken very shortly after he died, in association with an obituary I wrote for Leonardo magazine, and--always--within the landscape of memories of interactions with him over four decades.
As I read, I marked passages in which his voice could be heard, sought passages which contained self-sufficient points, epigrammatic insights. Extracting, then, the totality of these passages, I set about placing them first into plausible groups, later arranging these groups of quotations (categories) themselves. The excerpts out of which the whole is fashioned are deliberately at or near the 200-word level. Within each of the 15 categories, the selected extracts are ordered so as to make a kind of argument. The Xenakis excerpts form the body of the text. I have added linking commentary, as necessary, in an indented column to the right. One can ignore this, or consult it when one's sense of continuity is unproductively disturbed. The eight sources are identified at the end. This document is a composition of sorts, in tribute. My hope is that, as a result of contact with these materials, his work may come yet closer to those who already care about it, and, more importantly, that some who have not yet found their way into his incomparable world will be drawn towards it.
CATEGORIES:
1. PHILOSOPHY / DEATH AND REBIRTH
2. ART / MUSIC
3. PROBABILITY / DISORDER
4. RULES / RESTRICTION
5. INTUITION / REVELATION / LOVE
6. COMPOSER / COMPOSITION
7. ARCHITECTURE
8. SOURCES / MATERIALS
9. TIME / REFERENCES
10. MASS / SILENCE
11. REPETITION / RENEWAL
12. CODES / NOTATION
13. EXCLUSIONS / CRITIQUES
14. COMPUTERS / AUTOMATION
15. CULTURE / EDUCATION
1. PHILOSOPHY / DEATH AND REBIRTH
Without, I think, feeling a distracting filiality to history, Xenakis was, nevertheless, habitually aware of and nourished by the authority of early and original thought. Large, comprehensive ideas often underlay and lent authority to what he did. His citations in this regard are radical (as in "of or proceeding from the root") and audacious. Here is an electrifying charge from the introduction to Formalized Music.
Philosophy (in the etymological sense)
Thrust towards truth, revelation. Quest in everything, interrogation, harsh criticism, active knowledge through creativity. [FM viii]
Yet, while driven, he was inveterately fatalistic.
Change--for there is no rest--the couple death and birth lead the Universe, by duplication, the copy more or less conforming. The "more or less" makes the difference between a pendular, cyclic Universe, strictly determined, and a nondeterministic Universe, absolutely unpredictable. Unpredictability in thought obviously has no limits. On a first approach it would correspond to birth from nothingness, but also disappearance, death into nothingness. At the moment, the Universe seems to be midway between these two chasms, something which could have been the subject of another study.
Honing his point in a more pertinent way, he sets the bar high for composers. One registers, in passing, the energy and intellectual resource required not simply to say or write such things, but to live them out for almost half a century.
This study would deal with the profound necessity for musical composition to be perpetually original--philosophically, technically, aesthetically. [CT 92]
Living metaphorically under the sword of such a compact with oneself, he yet maintained a personal certainty about what he did, and could not countenance the possibility of error. Here is what he wrote to the eminent philanthropist Paul Fromm (in 1963) upon learning that an article he had submitted to Perspectives of New Music would be reviewed by external referees.
It is out of the question that I shall submit my writing to the censorship of professional referees, this sort of censorship was not understood at the start. I was to have complete freedom to develop my ideas. I would never have accepted, being a professional referee myself. Your argument wrongs the full principle of responsibility for creative work and thought. I would not know how to give way on this point. My life up to now has been a bitter struggle against compromise and untruth and I was quite conscious of my actions and their consequences. [X 166]
But he was, of course, not without perspective on the impact that speaking out--or not--could have. The question was, rather, which aspects of one's ways are suited to sharing?
Years ago, I was explaining the theoretical aspect of what I was doing, and people thought, "Well, he is very bright; he is all technical and no feelings." Music is not only rules or mathematics. Forget it. I thought you cannot prove anything by saying, "That's high," "That's beautiful," or whatever, the aesthetic things. But when you speak about theories, that's much easier. During all the years that I taught at the University, at Indiana, it was about principles, not about music itself. Because I thought that it was more important for the young people, and for myself also, to understand the mechanisms of composition. So, I think that was the problem; it was my fault. I never write anymore [sic] program notes about techniques, finished. So, the critics sometimes don't know what to write, you see, because they have to hear and write. [Neu (Smith)]
Beyond whatever a given individual composer has to say in regard to his or her own work, what are the broader consequences of an inherited, very gradually accreting set of assumptions, many unexamined, some, to all intents and purposes, out of conscious reach?
The actual state of knowledge [now] seems to be the manifestation of the evolution of the universe since, let us say, some fifteen billion years. By that, I mean that knowledge is a secretion of the history of humanity, produced by this great lapse of time. Assuming that hypothesis, all that which our individual or collective brain hatches as ideas, theories or know-how, is but the output of its mental structures, formed by the history of the innumerable movements of its cultures, in its anthropomorphic transformations, in the evolution of the earth, in that of the solar system, in that of the universe. If this is so, then we face a frightening, fundamental doubt as to the "true objectivity" of our knowledge and know-how. For if, with bio-technologies already developing, one were to transform these mental structures (our own) and their heredity, therefore the rules for the functioning of the brain based on certain premises today, on logic or systems of logic, and so on ..., if one were to succeed in modifying them, one would gain, as if by a sort of miracle, another vision of our universe, a vision which would be built upon theories and knowledge that are beyond the realm of our present thought. [FMR 261]
So, it is not simply "perpetual originality" from philosophical, technical, and aesthetic perspectives that is desirable (these are all culturally conventional), but moving beyond the channeling influence of evolution by means of the discontinuities (and hence the potential for leaps) of mutation.
Let us pursue this thought. Humanity is, I believe, already on this path. Today, humanity, it seems to me, has already taken the first step in a new phase of its evolution, in which not only the mutations of the brain, but also the creation of a universe very different from that which presently surrounds us, has begun. Humanity, or generalizing, the species which may follow it, will accomplish this process. Music is but a path among others for man, for his species, first to imagine and then, after many, many generations, to entail [sic] this existing universe into another one, one created fully by man. Indeed, if man, his species, is the image of his universe, then man, by virtue of the principle of creation from nothingness and disappearance into nothingness (which we are forced to set), could redefine his universe in harmony with his creative essence, such as an environment he could bestow on himself.
... if it is incumbent on music to serve as a medium for the confrontation of philosophic or scientific ideas on the being, its evolution, and their appearances, it is essential that the composer at least give some serious thought to these types of inquiry. [FMR 261]
While speculation, even spectacularly more ambitious than that in which one might routinely engage, is expected of the musician, there are nevertheless limits. Some restraint on clarity and exhaustiveness is, in fact, desirable.
There must remain always a small color of mystery, or not understanding, in every piece of art. So, the pure musicians, poor musicians--the pure ones also--try to do their best, that's all, mastering ideas and technology, the technique, let's say, of their own time. Also discovering new things, which is important. Something that remains in the past is dead, I think. A culture that doesn't invent is finished. It's a sign of vitality. So, this is why it's important today to have these branches of the sciences in the music schools, because they are part of music itself, of the thought. What is music? Who can tell me what is music? Please. Raise your hand. [Neu (Applebaum)]
2. ART / MUSIC
Xenakis believed in both the high status and the robustness of the impulse towards art making.
Art, and above all, music has a fundamental function, which is to catalyze the sublimation that it can bring about through all means of expression. It must aim through fixations which are landmarks to draw towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect. If a work of art succeeds in this undertaking for even a single moment, it attains its goal. This tremendous truth is not made of objects, emotions, or sensations; it is beyond these, as Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is beyond music. This is why art can lead to realms that religion still occupies for some people. [FM 1]
Although the artist's inescapable responsibility is to innovate and integrate, the acts undertaken by him or her from within an individual's now unexpectedly reverberate across other times as well.
Ideas move on, but artistic fact remains. It's one of history's lessons, as Marx himself noted with regard to antique art. Approximately, he said or asked how is it that, at the rim of civilization and western culture in spite of slave societies, etc., works were created which still affect us today? It's a miracle inherent to artistic fact ... [A 58]
And, if this is so, there must be consistencies, constancies across time and circumstance. Some of this can be articulated, some cannot be.
It's true that almost all my writings refer to questions which can be demonstrated and expressed in a language which everyone understands, be it here [in France], in Japan, in America, even by the Eskimos. On the other hand, the part which cannot be expressed, can be said only by art itself, by music itself or by the architecture or visual expressions themselves, and even then, I don't know if there are many things one can say, aside from "I like that" or "I don't like that" or "that's beautiful" or "that's ugly" or "that's revolting" or "that's fantastic," "interesting," etc. It's true that we fall back into aesthetic or psychological problems, but what can be said about construction or sonorities, etc., without using a technical or analogical or proportional or architectural language? What can be said?
There is no language which could encompass these questions aside from the questions themselves which deal with construction, structures, rules and laws. But ... there is something else in music, in any music, even in the "ugliest" music. But, this "something" is neither distinguishable nor discernable; it is "unspeakable." It's the traits which are not describable. It is the art-object which must express them.
The argument closes back upon itself, and one sees that however exalted one's view of art is, whatever success one might achieve in defining it, its most precious quality remains "unspeakable."
I can speak of structures.... But I can neither question nor speak of something's value when it is not immediately perceptible on a structural level.... I calculate either with computers or "by hand," but amidst all that, there is still a style which comes through, independent of these calculations ... [A 18-9]
How does "style," an evident aesthetic consistency, arise? What are its components? what is the way to the musical expression of intelligence?
I shall not say, like Aristotle, that the mean path is the best, for in music--as in politics--the middle means compromise. Rather lucidity and harshness of critical thought--in other words, action, reflection, and self-transformation by the sounds themselves--is the path to follow. Thus when scientific and mathematical thought serve music, or any human creative activity, it should amalgamate dialectally with intuition. Man is one, indivisible, and total. He thinks with his belly and feels with his mind. I would like to propose what, to my mind, covers the terms "music":
1. It is a sort of comportment necessary for whoever thinks it and makes it.
2. It is an individual pleroma, a realization.
3. It is a fixing in sound of imagined virtualities (cosmological, philosophical,..., arguments).
4. It is normative, that is, unconsciously it is a model for being or for doing by sympathetic drive.
5. It is catalytic: its mere presence permits internal psychic or mental transformations in the same way as the crystal ball of the hypnotist.
6. It is the gratuitous play of a child.
7. It is a mystical (but atheistic) asceticism. Consequently expressions of sadness, joy, love, and dramatic situations are...
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