IANNIS XENAKIS

Iannis Xenakis was born in 1922 into a Greek family residing in Braila, Rumania. In 1947 Xenakis went to France and studied architecture with Le Corubusier. He also studied composition at the Ecole Normale in Paris with Arthur Honeggerand Darius Milhaud, and at the conservatory with Olivier Messiaen. In 1958, he assisted Le Corbusier in the construction of the Phillips Pavilion at the Brussels World Fair, where he met Edgard Varese, Le Corbusier's collaborator and the creator of one of the great masterpieces of electro-acoustic music-Poeme Electronique, which was created especially for the Phillips Pavillion. Xenakis was inspired by Varese's interest in composition with sound masses and the application of scientific principles to music composition. Xenakis continued his collaboration with Le Corbusier from 1947 to 1958 and later founded the School of Mathematical and Automated Music in Paris in 1966. He has taught there and at Indian University. Xenakis has worked with computers and mathematics including probability, set theory, calculus, and game theory and has produced a large and significant body of works for solo instruments, ensembles, orchestra, chorus, and works for tape, as well as several polytopes: sonic and light installations. His ideas on mathematics and music are published in his book: Musique Formelles as well as numerous scholarly articles. His works include Metastasis for orchestra, Pithoprakta for orchestra, Strategie, Game for two orchestras, Akrata for sixteen winds, Terretektorh, and other works for orchestra scattered among the audience (including Polytope, and Nomos Gamma), Eonta for piano and brass, and ST/4 for string quartet. Xenakis died on February 4, 2001, at age 78. (1)

Mycenae-Alpha is a work for mono tape, to be projected onto either two or four sound sources around the audience. It was composed in 1978 on the UPIC graphic/computer system at the CEMAMu (Centre d'Etudes de Mathematique et Automatique Musicales) in Paris, France. (1)

Xenakis' music depends on giving aural life to shapes and patterns of movement, whether invisible, as in a cloud, or invisible, as in the movement of molecules in a gas. Converting these images to sound requires a facility with complex mathematics. In 1976, Xenakis began a way to side-step those complex calculations and developed a drawing board which is attached to a computer which converts images into sound. This computer music system developed at CEMAMu is called UPIC—L'Unite Polyagogique Informatique de CEMAMu. The UPIC score for Mycenae-Alpha is presented at the bottom of the page. Mycenae-Alpha received its world premiere in 1978 at the “Polytope of Mycenae” of Xenakis, festival of lights, movement, and music in the surrounding area of the Mycenae Acropolis in Greece. (1)

The UPIC System

One of the first digital graphics-to-sound schemes, Iannis Xenakis’ UPIC system, allows the composers to draw lines and curves that represent control information for a bank of oscillators (in this case, digital oscillators). In addition, it allowed the user to perform graphical manipulations (cut and paste, copy, rearrange, etc.) on what had previously been drawn. Another benefit of the digital nature of the UPIC system was that any waveform (including sampled ones) could be used in the synthesis of the sound. By the early 1990's UPIC was able to do all of its synthesis and processing live, enabling it to be used as a real-time performance instrument. Newer versions of the UPIC system are still being developed, and are currently in use at CEMAMu in Paris, an important center for research in computer music. (2)

The Form of the Piece

Mycenae-Alpha is a single movement work comprised of 13 sections from five seconds to one minute in length, with a total duration of 9:36. Each section explores a different timbre. There are some references to previous timbres eg. the ninth (5:16-6:15) to the twelfth (8:15-8:35). The last (8:35-9:36) section is a repeat of the seventh (3:53-4:17).

The ninth section (5:16-6:15) has a very fluid contour. The lines rise and fall with no sharp cuts or reductions to different timbres, as in other sections of the piece. The initial sound has a very reedy sonority, that ebbs and flows through the rest of the section creating a kind of structural glue. The sound expands into many voices of the same or similar sounding timbres. The section continues with entrances of complimentary timbres to the reedy sound. The end is a blend into a whining gliss. opening the next section.

The final section begins with a sharp cut into to a recap of the seventh section. The timbres are crunchy and noisy throughout most of this section with a few places where a pitch is solidly discernible at 9:23 and 9:31. There is little that is reminiscent of any real would timbre such as an instrument. The sounds are mechanical but they are presented in such a way as to let them "breathe".

1. Directly from liner notes.
2. from: http://music.dartmouth.edu/~book/MATCpages/chap.5/5.7.graph_man.html