Conversations With Iannis Xenakis [Paperback]

Balint Andras Varga (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1996

The music of the Greek-born composer, Iannis Xenakis, has been called brutal and violent. He first studied as an architect, but then turned to composition and put to musical use his knowledge of higher mathematics. In these conversations he talks about his life and music.

Product Details

• Paperback: 255 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber (December 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571179592
• ISBN-13: 978-0571179596
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,957,840 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Xenakis is quite extraordinary shaper of raw structures, May 13, 1999

By 

Rachel Abbinanti ([e-mail]) (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Conversations With Iannis Xenakis (Paperback)

It seems interviews is some type of postmodernist genre, we seem to have more of them. Well they are the most direct form of learning the complexity of someones thought,and today with multi-dimensional expressions travelling in many directions, interviews help focus all these extranneous fields of thought. Xenakis is quite an interesting composer because he really starts music again. He says things like this during these interviews, how each work begins again. Varga is also quite competent in conversational interrogatories. This book is well organized as well ,touching all the highpoints from the early formative bleak years living as an exile in Paris to the dazzling success as European architect and thinker of the modern world. Xenakis is fascinating precisely because he brings much more than music to his music. He hates Mozart but loves Schubert, and loves the shape of things, cones,trapezoids which all influence his end-of-the-world-like musical structures more than a chord progression. There is also nice excerpts from his work you will never find in a music store today.

5.0 out of 5 stars Filled with lots of great quotes and vignettes, December 17, 2010

By 

R. Hutchinson "autonomeus" (a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Conversations With Iannis Xenakis (Paperback)

These interviews, from 1980 and 1989, are a great read. If you, like me, consider Xenakis to be one of the great composers of the late 20th century, this out of print book is well worth tracking down.

I learned here for the first time the actual story of Xenakis's role in the Greek anti-fascist resistance (16-19). It was led by the Communist Party, which Xenakis joined because of its effectiveness and vision (17). Matossian's book has even more detail on this important chapter in his life. He became a local leader of the Resistance in Athens. Xenakis has this to say of his disfiguring injury, including the loss of his left eye, in January 1945: "Yes, I was hit by the shell of a Sherman tank. But by then I had also blown up a few of them" (18).

His personality shines through in many inspiring quotes and vignettes:

"For years I was tormented with guilt at having left the country for which I'd fought. I left my friends -- some were in prison, others were dead, some had managed to escape. I felt I was in debt to them and that I had to repay that debt. And I felt I had a mission. I had to do something important to regain the right to live ... I became convinced -- and I remain so even today -- that one can achieve universality, not through religion, not through emotions or tradition, but through the sciences." (47)

He recounts how Hermann Scherchen, the German conductor and journal editor, championed his music (33-38). I particularly enjoyed his skewering of the "aleatoric" music (55), a reponse of Boulez and others to John Cage and to Xenakis, which was basically just improvisation, but given a new term to make it seem like something innovative.

My admiration for Iannis Xenakis, the composer and the man, was confirmed and deepened by this book.

(verified library loan)

4.0 out of 5 stars Two interviews which are sure to prove informative and entertaining to fans of the composer, May 12, 2009

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Conversations With Iannis Xenakis (Paperback)

CONVERSATIONS WITH IANNIS XENAKIS records the interviews which Balint Andras Varga carried out with the composer in 1980 and 1989. The 1980 interview is the larger one, and delves heavily into Xenakis' biography. The composer recounts his upbringing in Romania and Greece, his student activism during World War II and his escape to France, and his life as both composer and architect. In discussing the music itself, Varga and Xenakis lead the reader to a deeper understanding of the theory and aesthetic behind such key early works as "Metastatis", "Pithoprakta", "Eonta" and "Herma". One also gets an idea of how Xenakis got along with major figures of new music such as Scherchen, Boulez, Messiaen, Milhaud, Honneger, and Yuji Takahashi. In the 1989 interview, Xenakis seems much less passionate. Comments are mainly limited to his general aesthetic. Varga notes that Xenakis' music had gotten much simpler over the proceeding decade, reduced to block-like sonorities slowly moving in pretty ordinary rhythms. Xenakis provides a defense of his latest music, but the question of whether his soundworld changed due to his increasing senility is still up in the air. There are a number of excerpts from the scores here, though not always in legible reproduction.

While James Harley's XENAKIS: His Life in Music is the best all-around description of Xenakis' works, CONVERSATIONS WITH IANNIS XENAKIS does give quite a lot of detail about his life and music that I have never seen elsewhere. Fans of the composer should seek it out, though it seems to be rather out of print.