Xenakis Creates in Architecture and Music describes the collaborative interaction of internationally acclaimed composer Roger Reynolds, musician Karen Reynolds, and musically inspired composer, engineer, and architect Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) to create a house design, The Reynolds Desert House. The process combined aesthetics and intuition with mathematical systems, showcasing how art and science are balanced—by way of music and architecture—to address the essential technical aspects of music along with the role of emotion and energy. The book analyzes three representative chamber works and presents a trove of primary sources: letters, diaries, notes, photographs, sketches, and person-to-person conversations. What emerges are patterns of direct parallels between how Xenakis characterized the process of musical creation and his design of The Reynolds Desert House. Xenakis Creates in Architecture and Music is a testament to the singularly innovative and creative mind of Iannis Xenakis. Supplementary materials—including color reproductions of black and white images in the book—can be found at: www.rogerreynolds.com/xenakisreynoldsroutledge.html

Fills a major lacuna in the literature by bringing together various texts relating to architecture by the multi-faceted Xenakis, who worked with Le Corbusier for 12 years.

• Describes the creative energy of two highly respected 20th century artists, Iannis Xenakis both as engineer and composer, and Roger Reynolds, Pulitzer prize winning musician in 1989 • Will appeal to the professional sector of musicians and architects, and students in both of these disciplines • Connects the creative path of architecture and music, i.e., Xenakis’ treatment of “light” in an architectural context parallels his use of varying textural density in his music. • Analyzes chamber works Achorripsis, Thallein, and his string quartet, Tetras, which pertain to the interactive house design

On the legacy of Xenakis' innovations in music notation for contemporary composers Trained in mechanical engineering, Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) transformed mathematical models into architectonic musical entities. In the late 1970s Xenakis developed a digital apparatus that rendered waveforms drawn on a tablet as musical compositions. The device was called UPIC, or Unité Polyagogique Informatique du CEMAMu, named for the French contemporary music research institute that Xenakis had helped found a decade earlier. The device proved to be an essential tool for the development of contemporary music--a version of the software is still used by today's composers. Featuring archival materials, this book examines the origins of Xenakis' UPIC. It also serves as a compositional tool: embedded QR codes allow readers to create their own sound-images from UPIC compositions.

Pendragon Press is proud to offer this new, revised, and expanded edition of Formalized Music, Iannis Xenakis's landmark book of 1971. In addition to three totally new chapters examining recent breakthroughs in music theory, two original computer programs illustrating the actual realization of newly proposed methods of composition, and an appendix of the very latest developments of stochastic synthesis as an invitation to future exploration, Xenakis offers a very critical self-examination of his theoretical propositions and artistic output of the past thirty-five years. This edition of Formalized Music is an essential tool for understanding the man and the thought processes of one of this century's most important and revolutionary musical figures.

Considered to be one of the most revolutionary composers of the twentieth century, Iannis Xenakis pushed the boundaries of classical music. As a largely self-taught composer, Xenakis drew from his technical training in engineering and architecture to produce music that had the ability to both unnerve and enrapture his audiences. Motivated by his intense study of many scientific disciplines, he employed the mathematical rules of the natural world to test the traditional rules of counterpoint and harmony, and to explore the spatial texture of sound, colour and architecture. The Romanian-born Greek-French composer transformed twentieth century classical music for decades to come, leaving behind an undeniable legacy that continues to inspire and even shock listeners to this day. By approaching Xenakis’s creative output from a variety of perspectives, the contributors to this edited volume seek not only to situate Xenakis’s music within a larger cultural, social and political context but also to shed light on contemporary issues surrounding his work. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of Xenakis’s music (in the context of particular works) and musical philosophy: mathematical, structural, performative, as well as the genesis of his compositional style and distinctive sound. Xenakis’s artistic presence on the contemporary music scene, his political influence during the tumultuous protests in Paris ’68, and his first piano composition, Herma, are also explored in-depth providing new insights into the life and work of this avant-garde figure. This book will appeal to contemporary music researchers, students and scholars and may also be of interest to artists, performers and composers, alike.