Iannis Xenakis

VIDEO:    https://youtu.be/t4csn5rjSQ0

Xenakis was born in Romania in 1922 and was originally an architect before he decided to pursue composing music. 

He is well known for his unique way of composing music, using mathematical formulas, time and even quantum physics to create a complicated composition that some describe as unsettling while others describe it as cathartic. 

Built in 1958, designed by Xenakis for the Le Corbusier exhibition and was featured as the signature model during the exhibition. 

Was eventually demolished due to concerns on whether it would be able to survive harsh winter weathers. 

This architecture is iconic because of how Xenakis would use similar mathematical formulas applied to architecture to compose music and formulate his notations in a way that resembled this building. 

Xenakis' musical notations were unconventional and a visual representation of how complicated his formulations for his music were. It often incorporated lines and connections, which sometimes formed an overall wave-like pattern throughout the notation, while other notations seems like a incomprehensible, complicated mess.

The left notation is for "Metastasis", one of Xenakis' earlier works, which was made to resemble the sounds of war. Xenakis was previously involved in the "National Liberation Front" group during WW2 where he joined protests and demonstrations (Wikepedia, 2021). 

The right notation is for "Pithoprakta" which was composed based on the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law and the properties of gas, incorporating mathematical formulas used to calculate different elements of the gases.

Taking note of Xenakis' approach to music, I based my composition off of the density of materials and objects around me. 

I used the formula to calculate density, p=m/v, where p is the density, m is the mass and v is the volume. I allocated different sounds that I believed was appropriate to resemble the properties of the word, where sliding noises was for the density, dropping noises was for the mass and tapping noises for the volume. 

I chose 7 different objects from least dense to most dense: air, blankets, water, plastic, glass and crystal respectively. 

I also incorporated an underlying bass sound in order to create the a feeling of tension and in order to highlight the "increase of density" of the sounds, the bass noise grows louder and faster before coming to an abrupt halt where the sound ends, leaving the listener in complete silence. 

My aim with this piece was to emulate how chaotic and overwhelming the world may feel around us, yet without anything, it would be so empty. 

The sound "increasing in density" simulates the feeling of gradual overwhelmingness of simple things around us, where sometimes even the smallest sounds feel so loud.

In contrast, seconds after the final buildup where there is complete silence, it feels so empty and daunting to sit in absolute emptiness. 

This is how my piece ended up looking on Adobe Audition, the software I used to create this project. 

The placement of each sound follows the formula of p=m/v.

Using water that had been mixed with blue intentionally to represent negative emotions of mostly overwhelm, I poured it into the wine glass until the end when I intentionally spilled it. 

Iannis Xenakis was a world renowned composer known for his striking use of dissonance and mathematical approach to music. Born in Romania in 1922, Xenakis was originally an architect that wanted to compose music using his architectural and mathematical knowledge. The article, “Concerning Time” explores the idea of time and how it affects music “outside time and in the temporal flux” (Xenakis & Brown, 1989, p. 89), giving me insight into Xenakis’ method of composing music. His music teaches us how “contradictions and disruptions form the basis of our understanding” (Delio, 2001, p. 242) and allows us to experience a different form of music that focuses on changing  our perspective rather than conforming to the ideals of what music is. Xenakis also incorporates both mechanical sounds and sounds of objects around him, such as musical instruments, to compose his music. 

Personally, Xenakis’  composition of “Pithoprakta” had the most impact on me. It was composed using fourty six individual solo parts of an orchestra and formulated using the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law (Wikepedia, 2021). During the entire duration of the music, it made me feel uneasy and felt chaotic because of how there was no harmony to the notes. The notation of this composition followed a similar approach to all his other compositions which are that  “pitch relationships are relationships in vertical space” and “time flows from left to right” (Besada, 2020). 

I looked at the way Xenakis composes music and took a similar approach to my project. Using a physics formula that calculates density, where the density of a material is mass over volume, I formulated my composition based on sounds that explore the density of seven different materials and mediums; Air, blankets, water, plastic, glass and crystal. I assigned a motion that represents different elements of the formula, where density was represented by sliding noises, mass by dropping sounds and volume by tapping sounds. These were representative of what I felt like were actions that could capture the essence of the word, such as for volume, which the hollow or empty sounds of each material could be recorded by tapping the object, therefore giving us a gauge of the overall volume of the object or material. I recorded all these noises for each material and formulated my composition by constructing a pattern that followed the visual of the formula, in respective order from the least dense to most dense material. In order to create the same kind of tension that Xenakis created in his compositions, I incorporated a sound clip of thumping bass noises that eventually grow faster and louder as the materials or medium gets heavier. 

For my visual notation, I incorporated the use of a wine glass and blue-coloured water. The colour of the water was an intentional choice to represent overwhelm and negative emotions, which is usually associated  with the colour blue. I wanted to represent the idea of endless chaos and overwhelm until complete silence, which represents the "breaking point". Therefore, the wine glass representing me and the blue water representing sounds around me that add to chaos. The end scene depicts the blue water being spilled out of the wine glass and causing a mess, while being completely silent.Through the few seconds at the end scene, I wanted to convey the feeling of basking in the aftermath of chaos by combining silence together with the scene. 

Besada, J. L. (2020). Visualizing Sound, Hearing Diagrams: On the Creative Process of Syrmos by Iannis Xenakis. In Diagrammatic Representation and Inference (pp. 162–166). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54249-8_13

Delio, T. (2001). Xenakis. Perspectives of New Music, 39(1), 231–243.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, April 29). Pithoprakta. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pithoprakta. 

Xenakis, I., & Brown, R. (1989). Concerning Time. Perspectives of New Music, 27(1), 84–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/833256