The unity of Xenakis’ instrumental and electroacoustic

music. The case of “brownian movements”

Makis Solomos

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Makis Solomos. The unity of Xenakis’ instrumental and electroacoustic music. The case of “brownian
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 1

The unity of Xenakis’ instrumental and electroacoustic music. The case of

the “Brownian movements”
Makis Solomos
Perspectives of New Music vol. 39 n°1, 2001, p. 244-254.

Technology and the autonomy of compositional practice

Xenakis’ instrumental music (including also vocal music) has already been studied in a
lot of articles, reviews and even books1. For his electroacoustic music —I use here the
historical word, including in it also the pure electronic music— there are for the moment only
a few analysis2. And as for the relationships between his instrumental and his electroacoustic
music, we only have general commentaries. This is only to say that the present paper is a
calling for further analysis. Indeed, in an attempt to show the unity of Xenakis’ instrumental
and electroacoustic music, I will only focus on a special topic: the influence of Xenakis’
experience with random walks for sound synthesis in the late 1960s, to his instrumental pieces
of the 1970s.
This special topic has to be connected with one general question: what is the part of the
influence of music technology to music itself? It has often been said that the composers of the
1950s were much influenced by their electroacoustic experience, transposing their results in
this domain to their instrumental music. David Ewen wrote that Xenakis, in his beginnings,
“explored the possibilities of simulating electronically produced sounds and sonorities with
conventional instruments”3. Hugues Dufourt, probably thinking to his own music and to
“spectral music”, repeated the same statement4. However, this is not exact. It is true that the
electroacoustic practice of the 1950s made Ligeti, Stockhausen or Berio discover radical new
ways of conceiving music in general and, consequently, that they applied them in their
instrumental music. But Xenakis is more like Varèse, who wrote radically new music before

1 See the commented bibliography in Makis Solomos (ed.), Présences de Iannis Xenakis / Presences of Iannis
Xenakis (Paris: CDMC, 2001), 231-265, also on www.iannis-xenakis.org.
2 I quote the most important ones: Agostino Di Scipio, “Compositional Models in Xenakis’s Electroacoustic
Music”, Perspectives of New Music 36 no. 2 (1998): 201-243, “The problem of 2nd-order sonorities in Xenakis'
electroacoustic music”, Organised Sound 2 no. 3 (1997): 165-178; Peter Hoffmann, “Analysis through
Resynthesis. Gendy3 by Iannis Xenakis”, in Présences de Iannis Xenakis (op. cit.), 185-194; Peter Hoffman,
Makis Solomos, “The Electroacoustic Music of Xenakis”, in Proceedings of the First Symposium on Computer
and Music (Corfu: Ionian University, 1998) 86-94; Herbert Ruscol, The Liberation of Sound. An introduction to
Electronic Music (Prentice-Hall International, 1972), 154-162, 233-237; Pierre Schaeffer, La musique concrète
(Paris: PUF/Que Sais-Je, 1967), 81-82; Makis Solomos, A propos des premières œuvres (1953-1969) de I.
Xenakis (Ph.D. dissertation, Université Paris 4, 1993), 263-272; Ronald J. Squibbs, “Images of Sound in
Xenakis' Mycenae-Alpha”, in Gérard Assayag, Marc Chemillier, Chistian Eloy (ed.), Troisièmes journées
d'informatique musicale JIM 96 = Les cahiers du GREYC 4 (1996): 208-219; Stefania de Stefano,
“Spettromorfologie e articolazione strutturale in Diamorphoses (1957) di Iannis Xenakis”, in M.C. De Amicis
(ed), Atti del Congresso di Dittatica della musical elettronica (L'Aquila: Instituto Gramma, 1998), 131-133. We
have to add also articles refering to Xenakis’ technological innovations, the UPIC and the GENDYN program; I
quote only some: Peter Hoffmann, “Implementing the Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis”, in Gérard Assayag, Marc
Chemillier, Chistian Eloy (éd.), op. cit., 341-347; Gérard Marino, Marie-Hélène Serra, Jean-Michel Raczinski,
“The UPIC System: Origins and Innovations”, Perspectives of New Music 31 no. 1 (1991): 258-269; Marie-
Hélène Serra, “Stochastic Composition and Stochastic Timbre: GENDY 3 by Iannis Xenakis”, Perspectives of
New Music 31 no. 1 (1993): 236-257.
3 David Ewen, Composers of Tomorrow’s Music (New York : Dodd Mean and Co, 1971), 125.
4 See Hugues Dufourt, “Hauteur et timbre”, Inharmoniques 3 (1988): 69.
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the introduction of the new technology, a music that is no more composed with sounds but
composes the sound. Xenakis developed this concept of music already in his orchestral works
Metastaseis (1953-54) and Pithoprakta (1955-56), i.e. before his electroacoustic experience
—his first electroacoustic piece is Diamorphoses (1957).
More generally, and speaking again about the other composers who emerged in the
1950s, we can notice that the introduction of the new technology (i.e. the means of
electroacoustic music of this epoch) in music didn’t cause a breaking: works which use or not
use this technology can be very similar in their conception. Of course, as argue Agostino Di
Scipio, the dimension of the technè is very important5, but the technè includes the whole
music technique and can not be reduced to the so-called new music technologies. Coming
back to the beginnings of electroacoustic music, I will say with Theodor Adorno that the new
means (the electroacoustic one) converged with the evolution of music itself6.
This paper will try to uphold this point of view by dealing with an exceptional case,
where Xenakis, in the late 1960s-beginning of the 1970s, transposed to his instrumental music
an experience with electronic music: we will see that even in this case —where the
compositional idea resulted direcly from an experience with technology— the compositional
practice keeps its autonomy.

The “Brownian movements” in Xenakis’ music: origins and autonomisation

At Bloomington (USA), in the end of the 1960s, Xenakis can use for the first time a
computer for sound synthesis. Reestablishing the probabilistic way of thinking of his
beginnings, he conceives a method of synthesis radically new. As well known, during that
time, the methods for sound synthesis were dominated by the Fourier harmonic analysis. In
his article “New Proposals in Microsound Structure”7, Xenakis rejects these methods, for
many reasons —for instance, the fact that the Fourier analysis is related to tonal music. The
most important one is that harmonic analysis “lies in the improvised entanglement of notions
of finite and infinity […] To summarise, we expect that by judiciously piling up simple
elements (pure sounds, sine functions) we will create any desired sounds (pressure curves),
even those that come close to very strong irregularities —almost stochastic ones. […] In
general, and regardless of the specific function of the unit element, this procedure can be
called synthesis by finite juxtaposed elements. In my opinion it is from here that the deep
contradiction stem that should prevent us from using it”8. It is why he proposes the inverse
way: to start directly from the pressure curves, defined with the means of complex, stochastic
methods —“we wish to construct sounds with continuous variations that are not made out of
unit elements. This method would use stochastic variations of the sound pressure directly”9.
To do so, he uses several probabilistic functions (random walks) and gives some graphical

5 See Agostino Di Scipio, “Questions concerning music technology”, Angelaki: journal of the theoretical
humanities 3 no. 2 (1998): 31-40.
6 See Theodor W. Adorno, “Musik und neue Musik” (1960), Quasi una fantasia, Gesammelte Schriften band 16
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978), 476-492.
7 Published in Iannis Xenakis, Formalized Music (Bloomington: University Press, 1971), 242-254 (new edition:
Stuyvesant NY: Pendragon Press, 1992).
8 Ibid, p. 245-246.
9 Ibid, p. 246.
 3

examples of pressure curves calculated by such functions. Figure 1 shows a pressure curve
calculated with “exponential x Cauchy densities with barriers and Randomised Time”10.
Probably because the computer means in Bloomington or in the just born Parisian
CEMAMu11 weren’t enough strong, Xenakis didn’t compose at that time a piece using such a
sound synthesis method. The first work containing some probabilistic sounds is La Légende
d’Eer (1977, music for the Diatope)12. And the two unique pure probabilistic electronic
compositions are Gendy 3 (1991) and S.709 (1994): Xenakis had to wait the early 1990s for
generalising probabilistic sound synthesis —in the GENDYN program of the CEMAMu13.
Coming back to our period, we can easily imagine that a man like Xenakis, after having
invented a radically new method for sound synthesis, couldn’t wait for hearing the result in a
composition! As he couldn’t do it so in electronic music, he applied this principle to his
instrumental music, in a transfer very characteristic of his way of thinking —do not forget
that, initially, the probabilistic methods were applied in instrumental works of the 1950s.
Doing this transfer is very easy. Taking the graphs of probabilistic sound curves, the only
think to do is to change their coordinates: the horizontal axis will be allocated to the time of
instrumental music and the vertical axis will indicate the pitches —and, finally, the graph will
be converted in instrumental notation, as with the graphs of glissandi in the 1950s. The result
is, in Xenakis’ terminology for this compositional method, a “Brownian movement”. As well
known, Brownian movements are “processes of chaotic movements of small particles
suspended in a liquid or a gaze, which are the result of their collision with the molecules of
the environment”14 —if we can hear Xenakis’ Brownian movements as good metaphors for
the Brownian movements of physics is another question!
Mikka (1971, for solo violin) is the first composition using this method. It is also the
one in which the Brownian movements (in the sense of Xenakis’ instrumental music) produce
sounds that can be compared —using of course another metaphor— to the sounds produced
by the aforementioned probabilistic methods. Indeed, the whole piece seems like a random
walk. The violin glissandi of Mikka —we have to insist in the role played by the strings for
Xenakis: a lot of his compositional innovations were first tested for them— is the perfect
metaphor for continuously varied probabilistic sound curves. The continuous glissandi (except
for some tenutos) produced with these graphs are very different from the linear, directional
glissandi that Xenakis used by the past: their direction and their slope is probabilistic (see
figure 2).
The purists will be shocked by the double transfer that made Xenakis to compose
Mikka. First, he started from the image of Brownian movements (in the physical sense) to
conceive a new way of sound synthesis. Second, as he couldn’t, at that time, realise a whole
piece with such sounds, he transferred the graph of a sound curve to a graph for instrumental

10 Ibid, p.251.
11 Founded in 1966, the EMAMu changed his name into CEMAMU (Centre d'Etudes de Mathématique et
Automatique Musicales) in 1972.
12 For these sounds, the calculations were made in the CEMAMu and the sound synthesis in the WDR’s studio.
13 For bibliography about the program GENDYN and the piece Gendy 3, see previous footnote. See also
Xenakis’ articles “Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis” and “More Thorough Stochastic Synthesis” in the new edition
of Formalized Music (op. cit.), 289-294 and 295-322.
14 Encyclopedia of Mathematics, vol.1 (London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), 483.
 4

music. But the biggest inventions are very often du to such experimental, empirical methods;
they are very often due to pure chance (in the common and not mathematical sense)! It is the
way of physics, biology and all experimental sciences —it is also the way, moreover, of
mathematics in a lot of cases. Precisely, with Xenakis —and with some other composers of
his generation—, music became partially experimental. A traditional composer is supposed to
recreate, by the means of the famous “interior audition”, pre-existing sounds —of course with
new combinations. For the composers of the second modernism (post 1945 music), the matter
was to produce unheard sounds. The only way for that is experimentation. For instance, it is
clear that the famous glissandi of Metastaseis are the pure results of experimentation. We can
suppose that Xenakis couldn’t hear them interior, as such sounds didn’t exist before. And he
invented them by the means of pure graphs.
To come back to the Brownian movements of Mikka, the purists have to agree that,
despite the double transfer, this compositional method (the Brownian movement in the sense
of Xenakis’ instrumental music) has autonomy. By listening Mikka, nobody is forced to think
immediately to the Brownian movement in the physical sense or to the random sound curves.
The listener can hear the random glissandi of Mikka as pure instrumental music. If his
imagination is attached to traditional music, these sounds could remind him East Asian
melodies.

The evolution of the Brownian movements

Let’s now have a look to the evolution of this compositional technique in Xenakis’
production. This evolution will confirm the autonomisation of this technique from its sources,
the aforementioned double transfer: by some very few changes, the Brownian movements of
Mikka will be completely transformed. Xenakis use them in a lot of works of the 1970s, along
with other compositional techniques —he stopped use them in the beginning of the 1980s15.
Because of the lack of space, I will only study the transformations that happen in N’Shima
(1975, for two mezzo, two horns, two trombones and cello)16.
Xenakis is very clear in the preface of the score of N’Shima: “The melodic patterns of
N’Shima are drawn from a computer-plotted graph as result of Brownian movement (random
walk) theory that I introduced into sound synthesis with the computer in the pressure versus
time domain”17. Almost the whole piece —and a relatively long one for Xenakis’ standards:
about 17 minutes of music— is produced with such graphs. The original graphs have not been
founded for the moment18, but it is not important for the present study. What is important is

15 For a more precise history of the Brownian movements in Xenakis’ compositions, see Makis Solomos, Iannis
Xenakis (Mercuès: PO Editions, 199), chapter 2 and 3. Xenakis uses them in Mikka (1971), Cendrées (1973),
Phlegra (1975), N’Shima (1975), Theraps (1975-1976), Retours-Windungen (1976), Mikka-S (1976), Epeï
(1976), Akanthos (1977), Jonchaies (1977), Ikhoor (1978), Dikhthas (1979), Palimpsest (1979), Anémoessa
(1979), Mists (1981), Komboï (1981), Chant des soleils (1983), Tetras (1983), Thalleïn (1984).
16 For a detailed analysis of N’Shima, see Ruth Béatrix Raanan: N'Shima de Iannis Xenakis: composition avec le
souffle. Analyse de l'œuvre (mémoire de D.E.A., Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales/Université Paris
IV/IRCAM, 1998); “Le souffle et le texte : deux approches formelles convergentes dans N’Shima de Iannis
Xenakis”, in Présences de Iannis Xenakis op. cit.) 173-178.
17 N’Shima, preface of the score, Paris, Salabert.
18 For graphical representations of N’Shima —which recompose the original graphs—, see Ruth Béatrix Raanan,
op. cit.
 5

the fact that the Brownian movements of N’Shima are very different, as sound result, from
those of Mikka. Figure 3 gives an indication for the execution of the voices tooken from the
preface of the score and figure 4 shows an extract of the voices in the score.
The result is very different from the sounds of Mikka for three reasons. First, the
ambitus of the glissandi is very small —this case occurs also in Mikka, but it is not the general
case—, producing in fact what the tradition calls portamenti, and not glissandi. Second, the
glissandi are in general extremely brief —this case is very rare in Mikka. Third, in contrast
with Mikka, they are attacked in every point of departure and, moreover, this attack is
sforzando. In Mikka the result is very smooth and continuous sound. In N’Shima, we have
chiselled sounds, made by a succession of small rhythmical impulses that are very tense. This
result is also confirmed by the choice of the medium: in Mikka Xenakis write for a kind of
abstract string; in N’Shima he asks for “‘peasant-like’, warm, full-throated, open, round and
homogeneous” voices19. The materialisation of the Brownian movements in the horns of
N’Shima (see figure 5), with the same new specifications as for the voices, produce also
completely new sounds, sounds that are not anymore heard as results of the aforementioned
double transfer, but as totally autonomous instrumentals sounds.

19 N’Shima, preface of the score.