ARTS/SCIENCES: ALLOYS

Following the Second World War and a semi-clandestine life due to his active participation in the Greek Resistance, in 1946 Iannis Xenakis completed a degree in civil engineering at the Athens Polytechnic Institute. In 1947, escaping a prisoner's camp established by the conservative post-war government, he fled Athens with the intention of going to the United States. En route, he stopped in Paris where he was introduced to Le Corbusier, architect, with whom he began working on architectural projects. Simultaneously, he attempted to pursue his interest in music. In 1951, he met Olivier Messiaen, composer, and attended his class at the Paris Conservatory.


As Xenakis’s musical ideas became better known, they also became better appreciated within the art world in France, Europe and the United States. In 1963, Aaron Copeland invited Xenakis to teach composition at Tanglewood. In 1967, he was invited as an Associate Professor to teach at the University of Indiana in Bloomington where he established a Center for Mathematical and Automated Music. Later, between 1972 and 1989, Xenakis taught at the Université de Paris 1, developing a seminar called Formalization and Programming in the Visual Arts and Music; and he was invited to prepare a dissertation comprising his life's work (music scores, architectural projects, theoretical writings) for a Doctorat d’État, equivalent to a PhD. 


Xenakis’s defense for his Doctorat d’État, and therefore of his entire artistic output to that date, took place on May 18, 1976, at the Sorbonne in Paris. He was awarded a Doctor of Letters and Humanities with a Very Honorable ranking.


Originally published in 1985 by Pendragon Press, this ebook, a revised edition of Sharon Kanach’s original translation, features new references and explanations that provide exceptional insight into Xenakis’s thoughts on music and its link between arts and sciences as alloys.