Iannis Xenakis
Electronic Music

Greek-born composer but transplanted to Paris, Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) made estrangement his destiny (xenos, in Greek: stranger). Unfamiliar with trends, styles, and movements, he creates music with a strong personality, drawing heavily from disciplines such as mathematics and architecture, using theories and rules derived from them which he pours into his compositional technique. This applies to his electronic music, well represented in this anthology CD, as well as to the rest of his extensive catalog.

The anthology, published by EMF - Electronic Music Foundation, contains six tracks, a precious testimony to Xenakis's early experiences in the field of electroacoustic music, such as "Diamorphoses" (1957) and "Concret PH" (1958). The first track is a study based on white noise, while in the second Xenakis records the crackling of embers, extracts fragments of short duration, and assembles them into complex structures by varying their density: it is his typical "clouds of sounds" technique, already used in his instrumental music.

"Orient-Occident" (1960) is a classic of electronic music, a more shadowy and meditative piece onto which "concrete" and noisy fragments are grafted: it was commissioned by UNESCO as music for a short film by director Enrico Fulchignoni. The 21 minutes and 40 seconds of the following "Bohor" (1962) are a brilliant assemblage of metallic sound sources that produce an obsessive and pleasantly monotonous clanging, until only towards the end a sort of electronic wind enters with the relative banging of shutters, bringing the piece to a conclusion.

"Hibiki Hana Ma" (1969-70) incorporates recordings of an orchestra (in particular, the glissandi of string instruments), a military drum, and a biwa, a Japanese lute: composed for the Osaka World Fair, the title means "reverb - flower - interval."

The CD concludes with "S. 709", a track from 1994, thus created almost 25 years after the previous one: created with self-produced software, rigorously theoretical in its premises, the piece sounds like an assault of a swarm of electronic mosquitoes that for 7 minutes whirl around the inviting skin of the listener. Yet another example of the appeal this music exerts, which I find fascinating not because it is electronic, but because it is by Xenakis.