Sound storms

Nothing pleased Iannis Xenakis more than a great big rattling storm. The sound of a thunderclap would have him running out of his home half naked to join the elements. If he was at sea, he’d sniff out any lightning and sail his yacht directly at it. The Greek composer was what we might call a hard bastard — a musical Ray Mears. As part of the Greek resistance during the war — battling first the Nazis then the British — Xenakis lost an eye to shrapnel. His compositions betray the same traits: those of the adrenalin junkie, the adventurer, the kamikaze.

What would happen if I composed a piece solely made up of the swooping sounds we call glissandi, he asks in Mikka ‘S’ (1976). Apart from make the audience seasick? The result is a dizzying study in zero gravity — an attempt to recreate one of those hairy voyages in the Med perhaps. In ST/4-1, 080262 (1956–62) he fed the only computer in France (at the offices of IBM) with pages of code which spat out a ballistic string quartet.

Xenakis (1922–2001) suffered for this computer work. His compositions were tagged ‘mathematical’. But this was maths in the service of something quite unmathematical: the conjuring up of some of the most visceral music ever written. Stochastics, as this music came to be known, was the attempt to recreate accurately the violent randomness of natural phenomena — of hailstones hitting a roof, for example. To properly mimic nature’s fractal volatilities you had to do something quite unnatural.

The Wigmore Hall were offering up a ‘Xenakis Day’ last Saturday, which consisted of 11 shortish chamber works (mainly for strings, one for piano quintet) spread over two concerts given by the American JACK Quartet.