IannisXenakis
Stockholm, May 1999
The 8th Polar Music Prize Ceremony was held at Berwaldhallen, Stockholm in the month of May. The evening continued with a banquet in Vinterträdgården at Stockholm’s Grand Hôtel.
HM King Carl XVI Gustaf presented the Prize to the two Laureates Iannis Xenakis and Stevie Wonder.
The citation for Iannis Xenakis was read by Kerstin Meyer, and the citation for Stevie Wonder was read by Putte Wickman.
Unfortunately, due to health conditions Iannis Xenakis could not attend the ceremony in Stockholm. The Prize was received by his daughter Mâkhi Xenakis in his place.
Special arrangements of the Laureates’ music was performed by Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester and a sparkling array of artists honored the Laureates by performing their music both at the ceremony and banquet.
Speech of Daniel Börtz at the ceremony, president of the Royal Academy of Music
"Polla ta dina", Radiosymfonikerna and Adolf Fredrik's girl choir
Speech by Mâkhi Xenakis at the banquet
Musical awakening
Iannis Xenakis was born on May 29th in 1922 in Braïla, Romania. In 1932 he moved to Greece with his Greek born father after his mother's death and started school at the Greek-English high school of de Spetsai island, where he discovered maths, greek literature and, most important, he developed his interest in music more and more.
Xenakis' initial exposure to music came in the first ten years of his life, first via his mother who was a good pianist, and also when he was surrounded by the folk music of the Romanian countryside and the liturgy of the Byzantine Orthodox Church. He then discovered Beethoven and Brahms.
Polytechnio, Athens, by Av Mätes II (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Political background
Xenakis' life grew turbulent when he entered Athens Polytechnic with the intent of becoming an engineer. When Greece was invaded during the World War II he was forced to quit school as it shut down and became passionately involved with resistance and liberation groups like ELAS. He first protested against Nazi rule and later against the British, who, although they drove out the Germans, sided with right-wing politicians against the Greek National Liberation Front.
Xenakis was seriously wounded in 1945, when he was hit by a British shell and he lost vision in one eye. In 1946 he finally managed to pass his exams but as a member of the resistance, he was eventually arrested and escaped in 1947, hoping to reach the United States.
National Liberation Front memorial statue in Athens, Greece (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Six chansons grecques
Architecture and music
He ended up settling in Paris, taking French nationality. In Paris Xenakis made numerous important contacts, befriending Messiaen, Honegger, Mihaud, and the celebrated architect Le Corbusier, who were all impressed by his innovative and brilliantly intellectual approach to music.
Working with Le Corbusier, Xenakis was highly involved with civil planning and architecture, designing some landmark sites throughout the world. For him, architecture was musical, and music was architectural.
The "Unité d'habitation" is a modernist residential form of habitation including apartments, shops, kindergartens and other facilities for the habitants. For the inauguration of the Unité d'habitation of Marseilles, Le Corbusier asked Xenakis to create a "spatialized concert " on the roof of the building, based on three different points of the terrace: musique concrète, traditional music and jazz. The same year he composed Metastasis. Iannis Xenakis worked with Le Corbusier until 1959.
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier, and Iannis Xenakis circa 1955. (Source: With the authorization from Les amis de Xenakis)
Messian : Cinq Rechants& Xenakis : Nuits
Maison Radieuse in Nantes, one of the four "unités d'habitations" in France. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Groupe de recherches musicales
Musical research and electronic music were developing in the '50s, a movement that was also inspiring for Xenakis who was constantly working on the structural approach of music. Since the mid-twentieth-century electronic music began to emerge through two different trends: that of Cologne, called Elektronische Musik (involving Karlheinz Stockhausen), and that of Pierre Schaeffer, called Musique Concrète, who identifies with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales.
The use of computers has had, and continues to have, a very important role among the composers of musique concrete. In 1942 Schaeffer convinced the Direction of French broadcasting of radio & TV to undertake research on acoustics, In this first experimental and pioneering phase, the working group took the name of Club d'Essai then became GRM in the '50s when the increased availability of funds also allowed the purchase of new equipment such as Morphophone (a five-track recorder) and Phonogène (used to listen at different speeds sounds recorded). In the same year Schaeffer and Pierre Henry carried out the first opera realized with concrete materials: Orphèe 51 (source: http://www.musicainformatica.org).
Schaeffer presenting the "Acousmonium," the sound diffusion system designed in 1974 by Francois Bayle. It consists of 80 loudspeakers of differing size and shape, and was designed for tape playback.
A chromatic phonogene, The phonogene was a machine capable of modifying sound structure significantly and it provided composers with a means to adapt sound to meet specific compositional contexts. The initial phonogenes were manufactured in 1953 by two subcontractors: the chromatic phonogene by a company called Tolana, and the sliding version by the SAREG Company (Poullin 1999). (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Polytope de Montréal
By 1960, Xenakis had gained sufficient acclaim to quit his engineering work and pursue composing full-time. However, architectural work and geometry combined with musical compositions would still be a characteristic feature throughout his career. The Polytope de Montréal was another of his spatialized instrumental scores, a piece he created for the 1967 World Expo in Montréal, Québec for the French Pavilion. Together with the music, Xenakis created a sculpture-like configuration of cables for the interior central space. Attached to this configuration were hundreds of flashbulbs, each of which could be lit separately. The music was performed by four equivalent orchestral ensembles.
Polytope de Montréal
70s and 80s: music and structure
Being awarded many prizes, honors and achievement awards, Xenakis did essentially commission works all over the world; USA, Japan, Greece, France.
He also started teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris and in San Diego. In Strasbourg 1978, the work Pléïades was performed by Les Percussions de Strasbourg for the dance recital Le Concile Musical by the Ballet de l’Opéra du Rhin, choreographed by Germinal Casado.
Xenakis and the percussionists of Strasbourg, around 1979 (Source: Jean Louis Hess/Les Amis de Xenakis)
Content of biography is presented here as it was published in 2012.
All pictures from the ceremony and the banquet by © Polar Music Prize.
In memoriam Iannis Xenakis, 1922–2001.
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Marie Ledin
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marie.ledin@polarmusicprize.org
Alfons Karabuda
Chairman of the Polar Music
Prize Award Committee
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