Iannis Xenakis - Works

Works

Specific examples of mathematics, statistics, and physics applied to music composition are the use of the statistical mechanics of gases in Pithoprakta, statistical distribution of points on a plane in Diamorphoses, minimal constraints in Achorripsis, the normal distribution in ST/10 and Atrées, Markov chains in Analogique, game theory in Duel and Stratégie, group theory in Nomos Alpha (for Siegfried Palm), set theory in Herma and Eonta, and Brownian motion in N'Shima. At the Shiraz Arts Festival in Persepolis in 1969, he premiered Persephassa, a Polytope composed specific to the historic site. In 1971 he was commissioned by the Shiraz - Persepolis Festival of Arts once more. This time he premiered Persepolis at the Festival.

Although electroacoustic compositions represent only a small fraction of Xenakis's output, they are highly relevant to musical thinking in the late 20th century. Important works in this medium include Concret PH (1958), Analogique A–B (1958–59), Bohor (1962), La légende d'Eer (1977), Mycenae-Alpha (1978), Voyage absolu des Unari vers Andromède (1989), Gendy301 (1991), and S709 (1994).

By 1979, he had devised a computer system called UPIC, which could translate graphical images into musical results, wrote Andrew Hugill in 2008. "Xenakis had originally trained as an architect, so some of his drawings, which he called 'arborescences', resembled both organic forms and architectural structures." These drawings' various curves and lines that could be interpreted by UPIC as real time instructions for the sound synthesis process. The drawing is, thus, rendered into a composition. Mycenae-Alpha was the first of these pieces he created using UPIC as it was being perfected.