Iannis Xenakis

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Iannis Xenakis (Ιωάννης Ιάννης Ξενάκης) (May 29, 1922 – February 4, 2001) was a Greek composer, music theorist and architect. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers. Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models such as applications of set theory, varied use of stochastic processes, game theory, etc., in music, and was also an important influence on the development of electronic music.

Xenakis was born in Braila, Romania. In 1932 his family returned to Greece, and he was educated on Spetsai and at the Athens Polytechnic, where he studied engineering. In 1947 he arrived in Paris, where he became a member of Le Corbusier’s architectural team, producing his first musical work, Metastasis, only in 1954, based on the design for the surfaces of the Philips pavilion to be built for the Brussels Exposition of 1958.

This, with its divided strings and mass effects, had an enormous influence; but in ensuing works he moved on to find mathematical and computer means of handling large numbers of events, drawing on (for example) Gaussian distribution (ST/10, Atrées), Markovian chains (Analogiques) and game theory (Duel, Stratégie). Other interests were in electronic music (Bohor, 1962), ancient Greek drama (used in several settings) and instrumental virtuosity (Herma for piano, 1964; Nomos alpha for cello, 1966). His later output, chiefly of orchestral and instrumental pieces, is large, many works from the mid-1970s onwards striking back from modernist complexity to ostinatos and modes suggestive of folk music.
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  • RamosdaSilva

    need no terapist

    last month

  • Batabid

    AMAZING.

    last month

  • tim4tw

    oh fuck, this shit is so amazing!

    March 2012

  • starbearer-

    more brutal than just about any metal band I can think of. And I love metal, so don't take this the wrong way. When you talk about something that just f-cking pins you to the ground and f-cks you in the hears like some of this sonic brutality does.

    March 2012

  • megajosh2

    Oh great now I've got whiplash.

    February 2012

  • blackless

    Live recording of Sea-Nymphs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1IxqbjaRzc. Does anyone know whether this piece was recorded?

    December 2011

  • Orenji-kun

    Enough with the crap. Xenakis <3

    December 2011

  • blackless

    @Taxes Frankly speaking I do not know much about Einstein's scientific biography so I can not argue. I just think that they both did something groundbreaking in their lives and were both of the Jewish ethnicity.

    December 2011
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