Copyright

Pierre Albert Castanet

Published On

2024-10-09

Page Range

pp. 115–142

Language

  • English

Print Length

28 pages

7. Continuum versus Disruptum

A Poetic-philosophical Approach to the Instrumental and Vocal Works of Iannis Xenakis

  • Pierre Albert Castanet (author)
  • Sharon Kanach (translator)
Chapter of: Meta-Xenakis: New Perspectives on Iannis Xenakis’s Life, Work, and Legacies(pp. 115–142)
While playing wonderfully with the various physical and metaphysical notions of the world, Iannis Xenakis conceived his own laws regarding the continuous/discontinuous conduct of the spatio-temporal references in his instrumental and vocal music. In this chapter, which voluntarily excludes electroacoustic music, the scores of Naama, Persephassa, Pithoprakta, Tetras, Nuits, Tracées, Jonchaies, Mikka, Mikka 'S, Metastasis, Thallein, Embellie, Eonta... are summoned and explored both on the aesthetic-philosophical and on the analytic-musicological level.

Contributors

Pierre Albert Castanet

(author)
Professor Emeritus at University of Rouen
Honorary Associate Professor at Paris Conservatory

Composer and musicologist specializing in “contemporary music,” Pierre Albert Castanet is Professor Emeritus at the Université de Rouen Normandie (Musicology) and Honorary Associate Professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (Analysis). Former Director of the Department of Cultural Careers (Université de Rouen Normandie), he is the Director of Musicological Collections for the publishers Michel de Maule, Basalte, Ina-GRM, Millénaire III, Les Cahiers du CIREM (International Center for Research in Musical Aesthetics). He is a member of the Academy of Sciences, Belles-lettres and Arts of Rouen, and he taught for ten years in the Doctoral program “Music and Musicology of the 20th century” (Ircam, ENS, EHESS) in Paris. In addition to numerous lectures given in Russia, Canada, Algeria, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, etc., he has also lectured for some fifteen years at the Cité de la Musique/La Philharmonie de Paris.

Sharon Kanach

(translator)
Co-president of the Centre Iannis Xenakis (CIX) at University of Rouen

The American musician Sharon Kanach first went to France to study with Nadia Boulanger. Very quickly however, in 1978, her path crossed that of Iannis Xenakis, with whom she studied and collaborated closely, especially on his writings (Arts/Sciences: Alloys; Formalized Music; Music and Architecture…). With the publisher Pendragon Press (recently closed) she was the editor of the Xenakis Series where a total of six books were produced. In 2009, she founded the Xenakis Project of the Americas under the auspices of the Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at the Graduate Center of City University of New York and is currently Co-president of the Centre Iannis Xenakis (CIX) based at the Université de Rouen Normandie (France), under the auspices of the research lab Groupe de Recherche d’Histoire (GRHis). Between 2013–23, she was on the Editorial Committee of Circuit, musiques contemporaines. In 2022, under her directorship, the CIX initiated the Meta-Xenakis Consortium to celebrate the centenary of Xenakis’s birth. Kanach has been promoted to “Chevalière de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French Ministry of Culture.