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9. Iannis Xenakis’s Philosophy of Music, Stochastics, and the Postmodern Sublime
- Nathan Friedman (author)
Chapter of: Meta-Xenakis: New Perspectives on Iannis Xenakis’s Life, Work, and Legacies(pp. 157–166)
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| Title | 9. Iannis Xenakis’s Philosophy of Music, Stochastics, and the Postmodern Sublime |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Nathan Friedman (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0390.11 |
| Landing page | https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0390/chapters/10.11647/obp.0390.11 |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Nathan Friedman |
| Publisher | Open Book Publishers |
| Published on | 2024-10-09 |
| Long abstract | In his writings and compositions from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, Iannis Xenakis makes clear his intent to compose music that escapes the inherited structures of the Western tradition. As a way to achieve this goal, he uses stochastic techniques in order to uproot listeners’ expectations, but in a manner more attuned to the psychology of listening than his serialist contemporaries. One of his chief concerns is the hierarchy of temporalities as experienced by the listener and manipulated by the composer, a hierarchy whose levels range from the length of an entire piece down to microscopic sonic ‘grains’. His usage of stochastic techniques muddies the distinction between these temporal levels, disorienting the listener on multiple timescales. Such a state of disorientation, where one is unable to predict the course of a work, is a hallmark of what Jean-François Lyotard calls the ‘postmodern’ sublime, which is produced by avant-garde artistic works that, like those of Xenakis, eschew received models and notions of representation or allusion. Drawing on scholarship by Brian Kane, I argue that Lyotard’s postmodern sublime is precisely what Xenakis aims to produce in his stochastic works, and that it acts as a preliminary mode of both composition and reception, helping composer and listener to break free from traditional constraints. This process allows for the production of new compositional structures and modes of reception, radically expanding musical possibilities. |
| Page range | pp. 157–166 |
| Print length | 10 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
Contributors
Nathan Friedman
(author)currently pursuing an MA in Musicology at University of Toronto
associate composer at Canadian Music Centre
Nathan Friedman is a researcher, composer, and performer from Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, currently based in Chicago. He has degrees in composition from Wesleyan University and the University of Victoria, where he studied with Paula Matthusen, Anthony Braxton, John Celona, and Wolf Edwards, and a Master’s in musicology from the University of Toronto. He was a founding member of the Victoria Composers Collective, a long-time member of A Place to Listen Ensemble, and has been an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre since 2016. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Music History and Theory at the University of Chicago.