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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
He clung to the few experiences he had shared with her: the gift of a flute whose sounds had astonished him, her wish that he should enjoy music and especially play the cello. He refused to let her go.
If the tenderness of Anton Webern's musical expression at the loss of his mother is difficult for some listeners to hear in his scores, how much more so for the iconoclastic music of Iannis Xenakis? Be that as it may, Matossian's revelation of this intimate memory from his childhood provides a clue to the composer's attraction to the cello, and, by extension, to the chamber string genre, particularly the string quartet. This perhaps surprising personal inspiration is reinforced in the recently published interviews with Bálint András Varga.
1 Matossian, Nouritza: Xenakis (London: Kahn & Averill, 1986), 13.Google Scholar
2 Conversations with Iannis Xenakis (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 10–11.Google Scholar
3 ibid, 66.
4 Among these early works is a short duo for violin and cello from 1951, evidently broadcast on Belgian Radio in 1953 (cf Matossian, 51). The various stylistic influences shown in this piece are discussed by Mâche, François-Bernard in ‘The Hellenism of Xenakis’, Contemporary Music Review 8, Part 1 (1993): 197–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 In the present era of digital ubiquity and compactness, it is perhaps worth recalling that in 1962, computers were cumbersome, expensive, and few-and-rar-between.
6 Achorripsis (1957) can be seen as the prototype, followed by ST/48, ST/10, ST/4, Amorsima-Morsima (withdrawn), Morsima-Amorsima, and Atrées. All of these pieces were completed in 1962. Parts of Eonta (1963) were also generated according to the same procedure.
7 Xenakis: Preface to the published score of Dikhthas, (Paris: Salabert Editions, 1982).Google Scholar
8 I discuss formal organization of this piece in more detail in ‘Sonic and Parametrical Entities in Tetras: An Analytical Approach to the Music of Iannis Xenakis’, Canadian University Music Review, Vol.16, No.2 (1996): 72–99.Google Scholar
9 It has only enhanced the reputation of the Arditti Quartet that few other groups have dared to tackle Tetras (the Kronos Quartet performed it a few times, for example), and none have recorded it.
10 Varga, , 66.Google Scholar
11 ibid, 145.
12 Xenakis: Preface to the score of Ergma (Paris: Salabert Editions, 1994).Google Scholar
13 ST/4, Tetras, and Tetora (along with Ikhoor, Dikhthas, Akea, and the various solo works) have been recorded by the Arditti Quartet (with pianist Claude Helfier) on Disques Montaigne (MO 782005, 1992). Ergma, Ittidra, and the other late works have not yet been released commercially.
14 Varga, , 47–48.Google Scholar
15 ibid, 204.
16 ibid, 203–04.