Chaim Soutine, self-portrait

Music? Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)

“My problem is not to challenge the listener, no, no. To challenge myself, yes.”

“I think that they [composers] are too much oriented to the past. And they have a pain in the neck, they don't look forward, they are like this [demonstrates]. I had the first such discussion with Messiaen - that was about forty or two-hundred years ago when I went to him - because I was told (when I was in Paris the first time), I was told: "You know, there is a man [who] might understand you, why don't you go and see him?" He was not known at that time, Messiaen. So, I went to the conservatory and he saw some of the things that I had written for piano. My question was, "After you have read those, do you think that I have to start all over again, counterpoint and harmony and things like that that I had to stop because of the resistance movement in Athens?" He said, "Well, I think that you are gifted, but you don't need to start all over again these studies. You have to listen to music as much as you can and to write music." You see? Because that is the best - he didn't say so, I gathered that - the best way of learning music, by yourself.”

“I think that this part of music composition is something that is above understanding. My strategy is the following: Consciousness is like somebody that is above a hole in the ground. Under the hole, underground, there are all your kinds of ideas, intuitions, habits, and so on. It's your self. You are watching your hole and you expect some interesting ideas or things to come up: forms, shapes. Now, you have to be there very attentive, and when something comes out, you decide if it's worthwhile or not. If it's worthwhile, you try to be nice with that form. If not, you take your stick [demonstrates] [and beat it] back into the hole. This strategy is very difficult because you have to foresee what that form that you like - if it's not narcistic because it's yourself - you have to foresee if it is bearing things that could explode later on if you cultivate it. And there, nobody can help you. You are by yourself alone in a dark sky which has no galaxies, nothing.”

“Forget that, forget the evaluation of the universe, of yourself, or whatever. There are forces in man that are able to distinguish and to decide if something is worthwhile. Well, he can make a mistake, as I said before, and take it because it appears to him that it's worthwhile. But it's not worthwhile because it's what he has done already. Or, as you say, it's so general, universal, that it's necessary. No. It has to be different from the universe, otherwise it's useless. Everybody can do that, more or less.”

“About forty years ago, I did Metastaseis, which caused a scandal in Donaueschingen, in Germany, conducted by Hans Rosbaud, who was one of the greatest conductors after the war. And I went with a recording, which was a plastic record, very cheap, to the director of the French Radio and I said, "Look, you have the score," which was a large one," and the record. Would you like to listen to it?" He said, "Well, yes." And I played the recording for him. And he said, "But is that electronic sound?" I said, "No, it's orchestra." "How can it be?" You see? That was the first time and the last that I went with something I have done to a contractor. Publishers should do the same thing for you, you have an agent. But if your stuff is not interesting for people, they don't care. It's like a capitalistic system. You don't care; nothing happens. You cannot impose yourself, whatever you want, except if you have power, social power, if you are head of something. Then you can impose it on an orchestra, for instance, or if you have a friend, a conductor, or some government minister, then you might influence that, but not for a long time.”

Music? Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)

L'Oeuvre de Iannis Xenakis

Selected works

Pour orchestre…

1. Metastasis: 1953-54; orchestre (60); 7’; éd. Boosey & Hawkes.
2. Pithoprakta: 1955-56; orchestre à cordes (46), 2 tb et perc.; 10’; éd. Boosey & Hawkes.
3. Eonta: 1963-64; pf et quintette de cuivres; 18’; éd. Boosey & Hawkes.
4. Akrata: 1964-65; ensemble à vents (16); 11’; éd. Boosey & Hawkes.
5. Antikhthon: 1971; orchestre (60 ou 86); 23’.
6. Eridanos: 1972; orchestre (68); 11’.
7. Erikhthon: 1974; pf et orchestre (88); 15’.
8. Empreintes: 1975; orchestre (85); 12’.
9. Shaar: 1982; orchestre à cordes (60); 14’.
10. Ata: 1987; orchestre (89); 16’.
11. Dämmerschein: 1993-94; orchestre (89); 14’.

Pour ensemble…

1. N’Shima: 1975; 2 mezzo et quintette (2 cors, 2 tb, vc); 17’.
2. Phlegra: 1975; ensemble (11); 14’.
3. Epeï: 1976; sextuor (hb, cl, tp, 2 tb, cb); 13’.
4. Akanthos: 1977; soprano et octuor (fl, cl, pf, 2 vl, va, vc, cb); 11’.
5. Palimpsest: 1979; ensemble (11); 11’.
6. Khal Perr: 1983; quintette de cuivres et 2 perc.; 10’30.
7. Thalleïn: 1984; ensemble (14); 17’.
8. Jalons: 1986; ensemble (15); 15’.

Pour voix…

1. Nuits: 1967-68; chœur mixte (12); 12’.
2. Knephas: 1990; chœur mixte (32 minimum); 10’.
   

Pour stage…

1. Oresteïa : 1965-66; chœur d’enfants, chœur mixte (36) et ensemble (12); 46’; éd. Boosey & Hawkes.

Pour quatuor à cordes…

1. ST/4, 1-080262: 1956-62; quatuor à cordes; 11’; éd. Boosey & Hawkes.
2. Tetras: 1983; quatuor à cordes; 16’.
3. Tetora: 1990; quatuor à cordes; 17’.

Pour solo instruments…

1. Nomos alpha: 1965-66; vc; 17’; éd. Boosey & Hawkes.
2. Rebonds : 1987-88; perc.; 8’

Pour électronique…

1. Bohor: 1962; sons enregistrés; 21’30.
2. Persépolis: 1971; sons enregistrés; 56’.
3. Polytope de Cluny: 1972; sons enregistrés; 24’.
4. La légende d’Eer: 1977; sons enregistrés; 55’.
5. Mycènes alpha: 1978; sons enregistrés; 10’.

Catalogue raisonné from iannis-xenakis.org

Catalogue raisonné from Éditions Durand-Salabert-Eschig

Starting from scratch…

• Orchestral works & chamber music: Ata (1987), N‘Shima (1975), Metastaseis (1953–1954), Ioolkos (1996), Charisma (1971), Jonchaies (1977). Col legno.
• Oeuvres pour grand orchestre, Volumes I-IV. Timpani records.

Further reading…

• Musiques formelles = Revue Musicale n°253-254, 1963, 232 p. Available on-line at http://www.iannis-xenakis.org/MF.htm
  

L'Oeuvre de Iannis Xenakis

Xenakis dixit

“Music is not a language. Any musical piece is akin to a boulder with complex forms, with striations and engraved designs atop and within, which men can decipher in a thousand different ways without ever finding the right answer or the best one. By virtue of this multiple exegesis, music evokes all manners of phantasmagoria, as would a catalyzing crystal. Personally, I wanted to deal with the voids that surround us, and within which we live. The most formidable ones being those linked to our destiny, to life or death, and visible or invisible universes…”

Iannis Xenakis (From “La Légende d’Er (1st version)”, circa 1978)

Novel? Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999)

“I had to look for something, a substance, a form that belonged to me personally… the old novel could no longer meet modern needs, and I thought that it would be interesting… to show interior movements existing all alone, without characters, without a plot… tropisms… instinctive movements taking place on the subconscious level that are provoked like plant tropisms, which are provoked by external stimuli, by exterior objects. “

“The character, in my point of view, exists only as a deception, a facade; all that counts are the interior movements. In my later works even the facade of characters no longer exists: there are only consciousness where these tropisms are produced… The character is only a certain form… one may free oneself of the characters in order to show the movements into stinginess, in and of itself, produced in various characters. It's not always obligatory to have characters. In my work, the characters don't exist. They don't present any interest, because what we experience, we all experience, you as well as I.“

“Le réalisme se déplace. Ce que j’appelle réalisme, c’est toujours du réel qui n’est pas encore pris dans des formes convenues. Il est nécessaire que les formes se déplacent continuellement. On ne peut plus reprendre les formes anciennes sans retrouver une substance romanesque ancienne, elle aussi connue. " [“The realism moves. What I call realism, it is always reality that yet is not taken in suited forms. It is necessary that the forms move continuously. No more one can recover the old forms without finding an old fictional substance, it also well-known.”]

“Pour moi, le roman se rapproche, essaye de se rapprocher de la poésie; il tend, comme la poésie, à saisir au plus près de leur source, des sensations, quelque chose de ressenti. Les romans devraient devenir de grands poèmes. Et de même certaines oeuvres poétiques sont créées dans des formes qui jusqu’ici étaient considérées comme appartenant à la prose.” [“For me, the novel approaches, tries to approach the poetry; it tends, as the poetry, to be nearer to its source, to the sensations, to something that must be felt. The novels should become great poems. And similarly some poetic works are created in forms that so far were considered as belonging to the prose.”]

"Readers must be given what they have a right to expect of a novelist: enlargement of their experience, not in extent (which is better provided for them and more efficaciously by books of authoritative information and by reporting), but in depth."

Novel? Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999)

Nathalie Sarraute or the age of suspicion, paranoia, cruelty, violence... at the microscopic level

The substance [la sustancia de sus libros] of her books... tropisms... "movements in a state that can not be named yet and that neither have not accessed yet to the conscience" [“movimientos en un estado que todavía no pueden ser denominados y que tampoco han accedido aún a la conciencia”]... "invisible universe... of unknown elements, spread, confusing, amorphous, of potentiality and fleeting sensations and indefinable." [”universo invisible… de elementos desconocidos, esparcidos, confusos, amorfos, de virtualidades y sensaciones fugaces e indefinibles.”] (N.S. Tel Quel #9)

L’Ère du soupçon, the age of suspicion, la edad de la sospecha…


“la conversación no es para mí otra cosa que el resultado de una sub-conversación… la intriga no me sirve más que como un ligero armazón que retiene el conjunto de esos movimientos, impidiéndoles esparcirse en todas direcciones… el personaje, en tanto que tal (su carácter, su situación) no presenta para mí otro interés que el de soporte de los movimientos, el lugar donde, en un momento dado, esos movimientos se desarrollan…”

["the conversation is not for me another thing than the result of a sub-conversation... the intrigue does not serve me more that as a light frame that retains the set of those movements, preventing them to spread out in all directions... the character, (his/her psychology, his/her situation) does not present another interest for me than that of support of the movements, the place where, in a given moment, those movements are developed..."]



Anonymous characters... that apparently...
...think,
...talk
...about trivial things but that, in fact, dive in their privacy...
...in the (hidden) depths of the conscience to get to know themselves to know best each other...

...the relationship with the other one -established through a cruel paranoid and a sick game- is frequently tense, sometimes violent and always distrustful...

...their look is employed as an instrument of police research to sail wandering inside an universe dwelled for diffuse beings...
...in an atmosphere of a generalized mistrust...

...it is the age of the suspicion...

Personajes anónimos a los que aparentemente sólo se les ocurren cosas triviales pero que, en realidad, bucean en su intimidad… en las profundidades (ocultas) de la conciencia para conocerse o conocer al otro mejor… la relación con el otro –establecida a través de un juego paranoico y harto cruel– es con frecuencia tensa, a veces violenta y siempre desconfiada… se usa la mirada como instrumento de investigación policíaca para navegar errático en el interior de un universo morado por difusos seres… en un clima de una desconfianza generalizada.. es la era de la sospecha…

Nathalie Sarraute or the age of suspicion, paranoia, cruelty, violence... at the microscopic level

Sarraute, Tu ne t’aimes pas [You Don't Love Yourself, Tú no te quieres]

The title… “-Usted no se quiere. Pero y eso, ¿cómo? ¿Cómo es posible? ¿No se quiere usted?...”

The plot of the novel… (plot?) an anonymous dialogue on… self-hate –a theme highly relevant to the human condition... Many anonymous voices coexist

voices from the “others”…
voices which all belong to the same human being...
voices from the (separate) inquilines of her/his thought…

… echoing a message from those who are largely lacking in self-esteem.

Structure… "You Don't Love Yourself is very different from my other novels, because it was the first time I wrote in dialogue."

Scenes (No)

(To be completed...)

Nathalie Sarraute, Tu ne t’aimes pas [You Don't Love Yourself, Tú no te quieres]