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]

Sarraute, Vous les entendez ? [Do You Hear Them?, ¿Los oye usted?]

The title… Do You Hear Them? The question comes from the children's father, who sits a floor below with an old friend… “De pronto se interrumpe, alza la mano con el índice en alto, agudiza los oídos… –¿los oye usted?... Un enternecimiento melancólico dulcifica los rasgos de su rostro… Parecen contentos, ¿eh? Se divierten…. !Qué quiere usted, es propio de su edad!”

“Silencio. Contemplación. Miradas atentas. Admirad. ¿Cuánto tiempo deberemos aún permanecer inmóviles? ¿Cuánto nos será dado para poder escapar? ¿Acaso no hemos respetado lo suficiente las reglas de la cortesía?...”

The plot of the novel… a dinner talk between a father and his old friend about a newly purchased statue… describing the vacillations and urges of mental states...

“Seres mediocres. Sí, eso es… se siente muy débil… un ligro vértigo… como antes de perder el conocimiento…”

Structure… Scenes? One single (and simple) scene… the owner of the house and a friend, that has come after the dinner, are sitting one in front of the other one… in the kitchen of a country house (a sculpture in stone -a boring animal of rugged stone caught by the friend of the ledge of the chimney- presides, is interposed in the conversation among them)… young people that lives there gone up to be laid down (their voices, laughter goes through the walls, the doors... cease, respring up...) [el dueño de la casa y un amigo, que ha venido después de la cena, están sentados uno frente al otro en la cocina de una casa de campo (una escultura en piedra –un pesado animal de piedra rugosa cogida por el amigo de la repisa de la chimenea– preside, se interpone en la conversación entre ambos)… La gente joven que habita la casa han subido a acostarse (sus voces, risas traspasan los muros, las puertas… cesan, rebrotan…)…]

a single scene… again and again… different angles… colours… voices… are seen, heard…

“Nada más de lo que ahora en él, a través de él, entre ellos y él, se propulsa, circula, forman un solo cuerpo, son como las anillas de una serpiente que se yergue, se balancea, repta, se encarama a los muebles, a la escalera, se enrosca, se deja caer, se desenrosca, se estira, se dirige tan pronto hacia un lado como a otro…”

conflicts between…

generations…
the past and the present…

“Las risas… sin dirección, sin blanco, se expanden libremente en el vacío, en torno a ellos… chorreteadas inocentes, estallidos infantiles… aún, y aún más… Y luego, silencio…”

continual shifting between…

anger…
understanding… among the characters.

“Y de repente… da un respingo, se pone rígido, alza la cabeza… ¿oye usted?... por fin algo intacto… es suave, cimbreante, vigoroso, vivo… es propio de ellos…”

(To be completed...)

Nathalie Sarraute, Vous les entendez ? [Do You Hear Them?, ¿Los oye usted?]

Sarraute, Les Fruits d’or [The golden fruits, Las frutas de oro]

The title… Les Fruits d'Or… it is an imaginary novel.

"La tierra se abre. Enorme grieta."

A novel of a novel…

The plot of the novel… (argumento sustentado por la reacciones que suscita un libro en medios pseudointelectuales) the rise and fall of an imaginary novel ("Les Fruits d'Or")...

...acclamation,
...critic and
...oblivion
(a presage for her own work?)

also, the novel deploys a criticism of a pseudo-intellectual minority in which the couple of protagonists moves…

“Yo, lo primero que me agarré fue a esto, esto fue lo que sirvió de guía: ese aire suyo de quererse mantener a distancia…”

Structure… from the objective setting to the subconversation and to the monologue… no chapters… only different pauses.

“Su resistencia ha sido quebrantada, hasta en sus más recónditos rincones, y el agresor avanza…”

Scenes and the invented novel… a mere pretext for the description of actions of… attraction and repulsion between characters.

“Haciendo acopio de sus fuerzas, trata de desviar las maléficas ondas emitidas por ellos..”


(To be completed...)

Nathalie Sarraute, Les Fruits d’or [The golden fruits, Las frutas de oro]