for those genuinely curious, Xenakis was very much a math man. He tried to make music which was representational of forces in nature. E.G. chaotic functions such as the math which tries to explain Brownian motion. Take those functions, zoom in, zoom out (making different densities but consistent in form) then make the form of the piece consistent with the micro structures within.
@@NovemberXXVII To paraphrase Schumann's critique of Berlioz' "Symphonie Fantastique': "If he wanted to represent chaos, he could not have succeeded more admirably."
@@ILoveMagic15 yeah.. my teacher gave us homework but instead of homework she said to listen to THIS OUT OF EVERYTHING and i really really wanna die rn.
8:27 - 9:20 is based on resonance in an oscillating system, an actual physical phenomenon a spectacular example of it in real life is when seismic waves in an earthquake hit buildings at their resonant frequency, and cause buildings to literally shake themselves apart
There is , of course, a difference between saying that the passage is reminiscent of the phenomenon of resonance, which it may be, and saying that the passage is "based on resonance", which is presumptuous in the absence of further evidence. Xenakis wrote using general stochastic processes -it seems likely that what you mention is at best an emergent feature of the music.
@@yp3424 Very funny comment! Thanks for the mental image. I used to play bass in a particular big band where the leader/drummer's solos were best described as taking the drum set to the top of a flight of stairs and then giving them a good kick! Here's me trying to get that big fat chord from the Rite of Spring under my fingers: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-V-6sDc7ojDM.html
so interesting to see the commentaries ... experimental music really seems to meet new people, not just its aficionados, in this way. Thank you RU-vid for broadening the public sphere...
@@Whatismusic123 Just saw you answer my comment, so you're really just going around this comment section trying to discredit people who like this piece? Fuck off, twat.
I don't feel this composition aesthetic or beautiful, but i'm just stuck with it. I wanted to exit the video during all time, but something had stopping me, i have listened whole thing with cursor on a button close tab to very end. Now i realize, this is interesting piece of art, what had holding me with some unexplained way. I think, this is one of most important thing about art- "penetrate" into people mind, no matter, comfortable and habitual ways or in any other ways.
Ivan Alekseev I found something very compelling about it, quite refreshing in fact, and it is difficult to explain why. But I think the combination of the music and the graphic score was essential to the unfolding drama. The music by itself would probably have left me cold after a few minutes.
Lots of people clowning on this in the comments but I genuinely have to wonder how musicians play music like this in a way that makes it seem random. Every note you hear is something deliberately played, but it _sounds_ like random noise. It's ordered chaos. Genuinely, truly sublime.
As a die-hard fan of Probability, this piece should be played at all maths tests..... after all this is what the candidates experience during the test 😁😁😂😂
Wow!! The graphic score is so cool, in a sense more tangible than monocrome notes on the 5 lines... This was written while Xenakis was working with Le Corbusier as an architect...
I heard this piece for the first time by radio from Chillan, Chile, in the 60s by the Symphonic Orchestra of Radio Nacional of Buenos Aires. It was my introduction to experimental music (stocastic in this case I think). I was astonished, jaw dropping and fascinated. Just like today.
Eventually one has to ask : What in the world is in this persons mind to crank out such...extraordinary music .. ? Always has been amazing and is pure cacaphony to a lot of ears .
Reading the notation really explains everything, at first I've liked his music but still was skeptical on how it was so closely related to architecture and math as it claimed to be. But it all makes sense when watching the notation, and I think this is how newcomers should be initially exposed to it, the music is so mathematical that the notation and the sound are one in the same in my opinion.
you're looking at pictures and pretending that what you're hearing has anything to do with it. this has no relationship with architecture and math, this is merely a correlation derived from it you pretentious idiot.
gotta be honest, this is the first time that I wasn't utterly bored with Xenakis, but that is solely because of this video. It seems that I can't really get Xenakis' music on it's own, i need this visual stimulation. With it, the whole experience is quite enjoyable.
Yep. The score is pretty conventional, but this gives us a clear global idea of what's going on and of the different structures at play. And it's really cool to find Xenakis' preparatory sketches actually figured in the final result. (as in 2:38 - compare to Musiques Formelles, ch.1 p.19: www.iannis-xenakis.org/MF/Chapitre-I.pdf)
La représentation graphique rend l'expérience encore meilleure ! De mon point de vue, cela confirme qu'il s'agit indéniablement d'une pièce troublante et marquante. Merci pour ce partage.
This is impressive. The graphical score gives us an idea of Xenakis as an extreme and frustrated architect, whose materials could only match his ambitions in sound.
This is such brilliant music and to see it with the score makes you realise how skilled and imaginative Xenakis was. Just amazing. And really fascinating.
I never saw a single horror movie in my life and I still love this. And it doesn’t sound like something horrible to me... I’m thinking that it’s much more interesting and fun not to think about wether or not we “get it” but rather what we “get from it” lol sorry for the cringy wordplay
horror soundtracks use screeching noises because it causes an instinctual reaction of anxiety, not because they are made to become great art, and explore the limits of music, this is completely insane, and is presented as something that is not music, but noise, where stupid people have the idea, that if you feel emotion like anxiety, the creator of it is a genious, not someone placing random noise all over the place and fooling stupid people and themselves into thinking that it is genious.
@@Whatismusic123 A lot of famous horror and SF movie soundtracks were written by respected composers and have entered the popular imagination as much as any pop song - or any Beethoven symphony. Take Bernard Herrmann, conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra and the composer of the famous "screeching strings" in Psycho. Think of the theme in Jaws, which no one can listen to without doing a shark impersonation. Also, some film directors have used famous classical works exactly *because* they sound weird and disturbing. Stanley Kubrick used Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta for The Shining, and Ligeti's Requiem in 2001: a Space Odyssey. There, it's as effective in suggesting the frighteningly alien as "The Blue Danube" is in suggesting the man-made grandeur of space stations. As for music intended to "cause an instinctual reaction of anxiety", try Berlioz's 'Symphony Fantasque' or Mussorgsky's 'Night on the Bare Mountain' - which frightened me silly when I was a kid. Just because music doesn't sound 'nice' doesn't mean it isn't music.
@@guscairns1 are you stupid or so you not understand a thing I said. When you make a bunch of indtruments create screeching noises meant to grate your ears and cause anxiety, it is not music, you're creating effects. Music has always had an abstract definition, where something is considered music, when built upon comparing it to what people do consider music. There are rules on what is considered music, and sorry to say, screeching sounds is not something anyone is gonna listen to. It is called a sound track, not a music track.
every scroll revealing another block of music brings on an ominous feeling, a new horrific and daunting visualization of such masterful complexity and unnerving sound.
Wow, this is a masterpiece. I'm a newcomer to experimental music, I searched about Xenakis beforehand and that makes this even more enjoyable to me. Blown away :D
@@athenavincent112 So this is the final score ? There is no interpret sheets where different sections get a version without other instrument's voices ?
This is not the final score, this is the graphic score that he created and likely used during composition. Everything on here has been translated into traditional musical notation, with individual musicians each reading a part.
pierre, I just discovered this channel of yours, it's amazing, and thanks a lot for sharing this with all of us. Just one question / suggestion: is it possible for you to upload the pdf of these graphical scores? would be a great thing, I think. Thanks again for your effort into doing this! hugs from Italy!
I knew this musician from Milan Kundera's book, Une rencontre. He mentioned Xenakis' music confering him in his and his country's darkest period of time. But he was a pure listener without any idea of Xenakis' music. He was just so eager that he need Xenakis' music. I am so wondering Xenakis' music. It is very difficult for me to understand Xenakis' music,too. However I can appreciate it in its balance of different noises (? or sound only ). That is amazing....very similar with the structure of classical music but its all new.....
An aleatoric expanse... 🕸 It makes me feel suspended by threads... got a bit lost but enjoyed it. This was a fascinating score visually and musically. *Thanks for posting!*
Whenever I've had a really bad day, I close my eyes and listen to this piece. The sheer beauty of this exceptional work of art elevates my soul and gives me back my love for life. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert are nothing compared to the genius who composed this. Utterly beautiful...
Congratulations, amazingly done! I would love to see the graphic score in its totality on one page, I wonder what the structure of the whole looks like. Is that possible?
The clamor fills the city, and the inhibiting force of voice and rhythm reaches a climax. It is an event of great power and beauty in its ferocity. Then the impact between the demonstrators and the enemy occurs. The perfect rhythm of the last slogan breaks up in a huge cluster of chaotic shouts, which also sprcads to the tail. Imagine, in addition, the reports of dozens of machine guns and the whistle of bullets addipg their punctuations to this total disorder. The crowd is then rapidly dispersed, and after sonic and visual hell follows a detonating calm, full of despair, dust, and death. The statistical laws of these events, separated from their political or moral contcxt, are the same as those ofthc cicadas or the rain. Thcy are the laws of the passage from complete order to total disorder in a continuous or explo- sive manner. They are stochastic laws. Xenakis - Formalized Music
R Gray vegemite? It is a bitter and salty spread made from brewers yeast iirc. Apparently Australians spread a thin layer of it on their toast. Then they eat the toast, which is the amazing part. Tofu is made from soybeans... I like it in Chinese dishes but I imagine tofu-based imitation meat is an acquired taste.
What I find endlessly fascinating here is not so much the sound of it, but rather the attempt to find sonic representation of the original thought processes that were at work during the job of composing the piece. Imagine if someone invented a way to record as a sonic event the interpretation of a digestive process inside a human body in the aftermath of consuming a large meal... Pithoprakta might just be a literal sonic translation of Xenakis's brain activity.
To me, it sounds like insects crawling under the floor... truly unsettling, and I love it. The point of music is to evoke emotions, and this piece does that quite well.
@@asukalangleysoryu6695 except you don't intrepret shit when listening to music reasonably, there is understanding, and then there is making up understanding when you can't think of one. you are essentially wondering how babies are made, and because you can't figure it out, you make up a story that a stork carries babies to the parents and that is where babies come from, it is not the truth, it is a lie you built to make yourself believe you understand something, because you can't admit that you don't.
Close to your impression, this music brought right before my eyes the scheme of hubris (bewilderment/mental blindness - vengeance - hubris - wrath - (but no) purification).
