Music 307 Iannis Xenakis: Matt Pierce

Music 307 Iannis Xenakis: Matt Pierce

Polytope de Cluny V00126204

Iannix Xenakis (1922-2001), a Rumanian born composer of Greek heritage, was a main precursor and practitioner of both electro-acoustic and computer music. A turbulent childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, that included the death of his mother, numerous incarcerations due to political allegiances, the loss of his left eye during the war, and the stripping of his Greek nationality (complete with a death sentence in absentia) [3] led the composer down a path of most resistance with regards to his musical techniques. Not one to follow the Serial conventions of his musical heyday (the mid- to late-1900’s), Xenakis was a strong advocate of incorporating mathematical, architectural, and perhaps most significantly, technological ideas into contemporary compositions. He was one of the very first electro-acoustic composers, and also the first in France to use synthesized sound within a piece [1, pg 70].

In addition to being a composer, Xenakis studied and majored in civil engineering in Greece, before he was exiled, and had a great affinity for architectural and spatial design. This led him to the idea of compositional ‘installations’; that is to say, he began organizing, not merely musical structures, but spatial structures and arrangements to serve as a backdrop for his music. These ideas eventually culminated in the creation of Xenakis’ Polytopes (From the Greek ‘polys’, meaning ‘many’ and ‘topos’, meaning ‘place’ or ‘location’) [1, pg 50]. The first of these, Polytope de Montreal (1967), was premiered at Expo ’67, and featured twelve hundred strobe lights of various colours filling the space inside Montreal’s French Pavilion [2, pg 215]. The strobes, in addition to pre-recorded orchestrations, played through a number of loudspeakers, were given specific rhythmic cues based on mathematical patterns worked out by Xenakis. This six-minute audio-visual spectacle paved the way for the composer’s next big work, the fifty-minute polytope, Persepolis (1971), which was premiered at Xenakis’ Open-Air Light and Sound Show, in the ruins of Persepolis, in Iran [2, pg 217]. Critically acclaimed, the work introduced an important element to the composer’s polytope repertoire: Lasers [1, pg 68]. Two of them were used, in addition to a large number of loudspeakers (being outside, many more were required) in order to fill the desert hillside with Xenakis’ evolving, textural orchestral music. Following this success, Xenakis returned to his adopted home of France, where he would create his most successful, and most technologically stunning work to date: Polytope de Cluny (1972-74).

Originally commissioned by France to write an opera for the Festival d’Automne, Xenakis responded by saying, “I’m not interested, but I can create an automated abstract spectacle with lights, lasers, and electronic flashes” [3]. Thus, housed in the Cluny Museum, which was built atop ancient Roman baths, in the small eastern town of Cluny, installations began on the Polytope de Cluny. This work featured six hundred xenon flashbulbs, three lasers (one red, one green, and one blue), and four hundred rotating mirrors to project the lasers in various patterns throughout the building [4]. The bulbs were hung from the ceiling with cables (a good deal of scaffolding was brought in during preparation), and, as in the Montreal polytope, were arranged in various patterns based on mathematical and geometrical structures. For this work, Xenakis placed twelve loudspeakers [1, pg 70] around the T-shaped hall in order to disperse the audio to various points in space, so that, when one moved around the spectacle, one would hear a moving audio ‘image’ to compliment the ever-evolving visuals. The audio itself was prerecorded onto seven digital tracks of magnetic tape, which was fed through a computer and into the loudspeakers. In an effort to fully utilize the technology of the time, Xenakis also prerecorded some forty-three million [4] binary computer instructions onto an eighth magnetic track, which were used to dynamically control the light flashes, laser lengths, and mirror positions [4]. Not only did this procedure allow for a fully automated “performance,” it also provided an intuitive way for the composer to coordinate the lights with the sound [1, pg 70].

In terms of the actual ‘music’ of Polytope de Cluny, Xenakis composed in a similar style to many of his previous works (especially his other polytopes), creating unique sonorities, which are constantly evolving over the course of the work. Quite opposed to the established Serialistic style (he wrote articles on the subject) due to his feeling that they were hindered by their own compositional complexities [3], Xenakis tried to simplify his works by focusing on singular timbres, which, over the course of time, change their shape and are layered amongst other timbres. The music can thus be thought of in two ways: 1) As a product of the instrumental timbres that are used to achieve the various sonorities, and 2) as a product of the mathematical methods by which the sonorities are shaped. In terms of his instrumentation, Xenakis emphasized both strong percussive elements, such as ceramic wind chimes and an African thumb piano, and extreme modern orchestral timbres, like the grating string glissandi [4]. He also introduced, for the first time in his musical career, computer-generated sounds that were meant to evoke an out-of-this-world feel. In terms of his method, Xenakis used a number of previously explored mathematical ideas. The computer-generated sounds, for instance, were created using probability functions [5]. With the geometric light patterns, Xenakis was trying to loosely recreate natural phenomena, such as storms and constellations via his calculations [4], so one can surmise that the music received a similar treatment in order to celebrate the splendor of nature through sound (and, indeed, many passages evoke imagery of waterfalls, electricity, wind-storms, and the like). For Xenakis, math and architecture were used as filters through which nature could be broken down, analyzed, and rebuilt in order to be shared and displayed in a more intimate and personal setting.

The work was received well beyond the expectations of even Xenakis himself. Associated with a new, rebellious style of Avante-Garde, largely by students in France (a popular slogan at the time was “Xenakis, not Gounod”), the work was hailed as a triumph and thousands flocked to the Museum daily, for the sixteen months the piece ran [1, pg 68]. Spectators would sit inside the cavernous hall and be entranced by an awe-inspiring display that one can easily imagine would rival light shows of today. Xenakis was right on the cutting edge of development, always looking for a new source of musical inspiration. This was a major influence in the expansion of music into the computer domain, much earlier, probably, than would have been seen otherwise. Following Xenakis’ breakthroughs with his polytopes, electro-acoustic music, as well as computer music, started to break free of the research labs to which they were previously confined, and became much more commonplace within the contemporary music scene.