"In barely three generations,the population of the globe will have passed four thousand million. Eighty thousand will be aged under twenty-five.The result will be fantastic transformations in every domain.a biological strugle between generations unfurling all over the planet,destrouying existing political,social,urban,scientific,artistic and ideological frameworks..."
(Iannis Xenakis,to "Kraanerg")
Sound Shamanism of Xenakis


"Time may change the technique of music,but
may never alters its mission"
Rachmaninoff

Iannis Xenakis."Kraanerg" (Asphodel)

"I try to write music that did not exist.I am not
sure that i was successful in that.
But this is what I mean to do,i try to do."
Xenakis


Complexity in the reviewing of this european modernism genius composer creative actvity consists, probably,not even of music itself,-Xenakis expressed always not only own idea of music,but also reflections of musical culture as creation of new spaces for art,- but of glance to presented by him creative variety.Xenakis,one of the most original composers of XX century,more known as born in Rumania in greek family french composer,architect and mathematician,student of russian composer Aristotle Kundurov,wrote a big amount of brilliant orchestra works and solo music,continued his search in analoque noise landscapes,manipulation of electro/electromagnetic structures and electro acoustics.
As many electro-acoustic composers,he never gave any annotations to the works.Noise,rhythmical, time and dinamic,architecturally-structured,ritualistic-consistent of his music,similar only to elecrto shamanism as it exists.
"The crowd is then rapidly dispressed,and after sonic and visual hell follows a detonating calm, full of despair,dust, and dearth...Here we touch on one of the great problem that have haunted human intellegence since antiquity:continuous or discontinuous transformation...transformation..." Try to understand Xenakis is to try to crack atom,where every next attempt releases new, unexpected phemonena.he is often being tried to define in the range of "stochastic music"-created according to the principle of indeterminism in 1958 and based on massive musical strategy calculus of probability of with the usage of mathematical constructions of structured sound.-"to calculate the musical events,which consist of dense sonorities with much sliding,from note to note and individual parts for every player in the # or",he used different mathematical ideas of Phythagor,including stochastic processes contrary to neo-serialism,dominating in the works of those time composers and extraordinary algorithmic modalities.But it is only one among big variety of elements,presenting conseptual world of Xenakis.Here can be added architecture,greek antiquity,different cosmologies and physical aspects. As ancient greek mathematician and musician Piphagor ,he saw music as microcosm,existing according to similar mathematical rules of organixation and rhythmical energy, created unique personal outlook and creative language of this century. "Everyone habserved the sonic phemomena of a poiltical crowd of dozens or hundreds of thousandes of people.The huamn river shouts a slogan in a uniform rhythm",-he wrote in 1955 in famous "Formalized Music","probably one of the most inmportant theoretical work of our time" (John Myhill)
His percistent search of himself made him unique,intergrated his influences in the world in correlation with charactyrizing him intellect and mysterious inner spirit of uncompromisive aethetics. War as a question of human condition,dissonance between presence and absense,expression of metha-language, internal biological turbulence. His war years experience,included episodes of violence,giant strikes and riots,became an engine of his creative mind.
"The esplanation of the world and consequently of the sound phenomenon that surrounds us,or that may be created,required on enlargement of the causal principle,the basis of which is formed by the law of the great numbers".
after the war he lived in Paris,where worked with architector La Corbusier.Education with Olivier Messiaen inspired him for reflecting geometry in certain form and sound,compising ingenering and composition.
in 1954 was created his first work "Metastasis",focused on connection between physiology and metaphor, war as technology,organization of noise sounding and noise itself. "He invents his own scales.He doesnt repeat himself.He doesnt follow formulas.He doesnt recognize a geneology in Classical music.He doesnt follow trends or listen to anyone else's music,nor to his own..."
In 1957 Edgard Varese wrote "Poeme Electronique" for the world fair,especially created for "Phillips" pavilion,built by La Corbusier with Xenakis help.Composer himself created "Concret PH",where used one sound sourse-amplified burning charcoal.
"I likened it to the onset of madness,when a person suddenly realizes that an environment that had seemed familiar to him has how become altered in a profound,threatening sense"(Xenakis) Creating music human conscience was basing for Xenakis.Echo of ancient systems,as main elements of his composition technique,sygnal in music,concrete form in correlation with the space itself-is only one of vast variety of ideas,embodied art form of musical sound by new imanges of compositional thought.Contrary to academic sound types,computer programs,major stylistic complexes,he mixed all information in new fomrs of individualism and musiciality.
"I write the music that i trust when I am writing it.But i dont think i am continuing some tradition of european music[...].The environment changes all the time,but man is not changing all the time.Sometimes he is caught by the changes and he thinks he's crazy or that other people are crazy."
1978, Париж, Центр Помпиду "Бобур". 11 громкоговорителей, система из 1600 световых стробоскопов и лазеров, премьера "Diatope" Ксенакиса, еще одной из наиболее захватывающих жемчужин в короне его музыки. Музыка, написанная им после 70-х, была сконцентрирована на абстрактном пути с примитивным человеческим опытом - до языка, цивилизации и табу, парадоксальности, будучи аккомпаниментом утопическому желанию быть свободным от экстернальных конструкций, но продолжающая оставаться атмосферичной, высоко абстрактно-конгломератной, в диссонирующих облаках звучания.
"Kraanerg", написанная в период 1968, является одной из поздних оркестровых работ Ксенакиса для пленки и оркестра - "пленочная часть" ее была оригинально записана в конце 60-х, когда лента проигрывается в контраст "живой" музыке. По словам Пола Гриффитса, композиция "leaves the listener with things either totally meaningless or reduced to the base level of code, like the load repeated notes that serve as alarm signals in everything from thrushes to automobile horns". Ее звучание - как нервная система, она как война и деструкция. Музыка, лишенная красот, развлечения и легкого наслаждения тишиной. Напротив, музыка как конфронтация с окружающими элементами, как звук катастрофы - индивидуального бунта против всего окружающего вокруг. "I used mathematics in early music with probably theories; now I don't use that - because it's in my blood".
Музыка Ксенакиса на "Kraanerg" экстремальна; если он пишет о чем-то, то говорит силами природы и о силах природы, как мы их понимаем, через математический феномен. От брутального до жестокости мира насилия к геометрии чарующего природного естества жизни, он приоткрывает нам весь спeктр существования. "Xenakis is using abstract patterns, and abstraction leaves much more responsibility to the looker or listener or experiencer. That's inherent to the art and to its development. The music deals with struggle. Le Corbusier translated war into his visual designs in architecture. A side of one of le Corbusier's buildings looks like the iron sections of a side of a battleship riveted together. These ideas of modern life incorporated into art were very important to La Corbusier, and that influenced Xenakis. He used the aural sensations of war, and translated this sensation into music. These are very important concepts. And it's not all that difficult to understand this aspect in Xenakis. It all deals with bright colors and incredible sounds. He doesn't want to repeat and do in a second-hand fashion what somebody else has already done," - сказал о Ксенакисе Charles Bornstein, дирижер и основатель ST-X Ensemble, долгое время работавший с композитором и не раз представлявший его произведения в США. - "This was his process through the late Fifties and early Sixties. In the Seventies his music took off from a whole different vantage point. "Kraanerg" is Xenakis' last modern work. After "Kraanerg" he went ancient - the same way Stravinsky went Neoclassic after the Diaghilev period. So from going ancient and having all of these hyper-modern techniques from the computer, he developed a new brand of primitivism - pre-religion, towards pre-ritualism. Xenakis' is pre-language-era music. His music is very Romantic. I'm speaking about unique sonorities invented by Mozart, Ravel, Xenakis, maybe even Schonberg, too. Tremendous, exceptional. And Xenakis is difinitely part of this grouping"...
...В 1997 нью-йоркский лэйбл Sombient/Asphodel выпустил в свет запись "Kraanerg", исполненную в Большом зале нью-йоркского "Cooper Union" в ноябре 1996 в присутствии автора ST-X Ensemble под управлением Charles Zacharie Bornstein; выход в свет данной работы сегодня стал возможен благодаря специальному гранту "The Foundation for Hellenic Culture" 92nd St.Y (Нью-Йорк), их серии "Today's Composers" и французскому аташе по культуре посольства Франции в Нью-Йорке. Квадро-звучание.
"Here we touch on one of the great problems that have haunted human intelligence since antiquity: continuous or discontinuous transformation... transformation" (Xenakis, "Formalized Music", 1955)

Igor Vaganov

С использованием инфо "Seconds" # 42, 1997, "Modern Music Page", а также буклета "Kraanerg"