Iannis Xenakis



Iannix Xenakis (May 29, 1922 – February 4, 2001) was a Greek composer and architect and major contributor to musical modernism.

Quotes

 * "Art, and, above all, music, has a fundamental function, which is to catalyze the sublimation that it can bring about through all means of expression. It must aim through fixations which are landmarks, to draw [one] towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect. If a work of art succeeds in this undertaking even for a single moment, it attains its goal."
 * Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition, ISBN 1576470792


 * "The musical scale is a convention which circumscribes the area of potentiality and permits construction within those limits in its own particular symmetry."
 * Formalized Music


 * "Music is not a language. Any musical piece is akin to a boulder with complex forms, with striations and engraved designs atop and within, which men can decipher in a thousand different ways without ever finding the right answer or the best one..."
 * Introductory notes for Diatope performance, 1978