Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) was a Greek mathematician, architect, composer, music theorist, inventor and multimedia artist, who is highly regarded for his work across disciplines, especially abstract musical compositions that set an early precedent for electronic music. Xenakis gained admiration both in his homeland of Greece and in Paris, where he spent 27 years of his life in self-exile from 1947 onwards, under threat of execution following his political actions against the British-backed Greek political forces in 1944.
Xenakis is considered a true innovator of the 20th century; he developed the Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu (UPIC), an instrument resembling a digital tablet, that allowed music to be composed graphically by drawing out waveforms, which would then be processed by a computer system that the UPIC was connected to. Xenakis created the instrument along with his team at the Center for Studies in Mathematical and Automated Music, Paris, and the UPIC’s potential to chart out unprecedented soundscapes would be presented to the world through Mycenae-Alpha (1978), which was the polymath’s first piece of music composed entirely on the system.
Mycenae-Alpha was crafted to be played at Xenakis’s Polytope de Mycènes, an installation created in the ruins of the Mycenae in Athens, which is an important archaeological site that once constituted the heart of the Mycenaean civilisation (around 1700 BC-1100 BC), considered to represent history’s first example of distinctly Greek culture. The Polytope de Mycènes combined sound art, installation art and lighting design to connect the culture of ancient Greece to our modern, technological era. This was Xenakis’s first artistic presentation after receiving amnesty and returning to his homeland in 1974, and it is one of the many examples of his seamlessly combining the many bodies of knowledge he engaged with.
Now, for the first time, audiences will be able to explore his expansive oeuvre along with his personal effects, in two parallel exhibitions presented by the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens, Iannis Xenakis: Sonic Odysseys and Xenakis and Greece(until January 7, 2024). The former is co-produced by the Musée de la Musique of the Philharmonie de Paris, and contextualises Xenakis’s practice with his life and political motivations, while the latter is presented in collaboration with the Contemporary Music Research Center (CMRC), Athens, which was co-founded by him and explores his complicated relationship with his homeland. Sonic Odyssey is co-curated by the EMST’s director Katerina Gregos, Xenakis’s daughter Mâkhi Xenakis, and Thierry Maniguet, a conservationist at the Musée de la Musique. Meanwhile, Xenakis and Greece is co-curated by art historian Stamatis Schizakis, a curator of photography and new media at EMST, and Stella Kourbana, a curator of the historical archive at the CMRC. Gregos and Schizakis join STIR to discuss the importance of these exhibitions.
Gregos begins by admitting that Xenakis’s work is difficult to engage with and that, as is the case with other creatives of the Greek diaspora of his time, his long-term absence from Greece has prevented many of his country folk from grappling with his craft prior to his return home. This has compounded the issue of engagement, leading to a conspicuous lack of critical discourse on his practice. The exhibition curator tells STIR, “There were small groups of people who promoted his work in Greece from the 1960s onwards, but the Greek state has never properly honoured him for his prolific oeuvre, his radical vision of music and his significance in contemporary musical history. I have always been fascinated by Xenakis, since he is not only a composer but a truly universal artist who grappled with the multiplicity of art forms. In that sense, a tribute to him is befitting in a museum of contemporary art that champions experimental art forms. So, when I became director of EMST, one of the first things I wanted to do was to finally pay tribute to Xenakis through a major exhibition.”
Schizakis adds to this, pointing out that Xenakis worked extensively to improve the infrastructure for musical performance and education in Greece after his return, and that this garnered him a great deal of acclaim. Furthermore, installations such as the aforementioned Mycenae Polytope became a major point of reference for future multimedia artists. His mathematically-driven, electroacoustic music has been studied at great length, and many musicians were enlightened to the potential of electronics in music-making by the activities of the CMRC. Schizakis maintains that “the most influential aspect of Xenakis’ practice in his homeland was that it exemplified ways in which Greek history, culture and civilisation could be relevant, both artistically and scientifically, in a contemporary world.”
To harken back to Gregos’ mention of a certain difficulty in engaging with Xenakis’s craft, nowhere is this more apparent than in the sonic dissonance that permeates his compositional work. His music is filled with complex passages of jarring sounds that would feel out of place in even the most experimental of jazz works. Dissonance in music is hardly a Xenakian invention but, as a composer, Xenakis uses it masterfully to create an overhanging emotional weight and a conspicuous sense of unease that typify large swathes of his work.
Xenakis’ music has left a major impression on generations of avant-garde and electronic composers, both for and despite its subversive nature. While sonic dissonance is certainly a hallmark of his sound, it is not simply one single aspect of his musical work that has made it as important and influential as it is. One must step away from granularity in order to regard Xenakis’ music in its entirety: he crafted more than 150 compositions of shockingly original music; a massive body of sound that one imagines possesses different meaning to each of those who have engaged with it seriously, but great meaning nonetheless to all of them.
Returning to EMST’s offering, the parallel exhibitions present a large body of Xenakis’s art and personal effects that have never before been seen, much of which comes from his family estate, courtesy of Mâkhi Xenakis. Both Iannis Xenakis: Sonic Odysseys and Xenakis and Greece will go a long way towards introducing audiences to a creatively pioneering life and practice that certainly deserves far more engagement. As Gregos puts it: “In our culture of presentism and amnesia, when many things are presented as ‘new’ due to ignorance of what has preceded them, it is important to be reminded of the contributions of those who truly invented the new. And one of these individuals was Xenakis. His genius cannot be confined to the 20th century, the period in which he lived and worked. And one can understand his lasting significance because his music still sounds radically contemporary, even today.”