Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis Adam Berner “Athens - an anti-Nazi demonstration - hundreds of thousands of people chanting a slogan which reproduces itself like a gigantic rhythm. Then combat with the enemy. The rhythm bursts into an enormous chaos of sharp sounds; the whistling of bullets; the crackling of machine guns. The sounds begin to disperse. Slowly silence falls back on the town.” (Matossian, p. 58)
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These are the words Iannis Xenakis used to describe his vivid aural memory realized in the 1954 composition Metastasis, his first major orchestral work. The epiphany he experienced during this episode centered not on individual sounds, but of the collective sound of opposed forces en masse and how this sound linearly transformed. It was the symmetry of the sound of chaos. Immediately praised and denounced at its debut, the piece, which would serve as a kind of overture to all of his later output, was undeniably unique and jarring to a public rapt with neo-classicism and serialism. It was programmatic, but in inspiration only; its mathematical probability-based musical language was so new that it seemed to defy standard thematic and harmonic analysis in favor of pure visceral effect. Its bold exploitation of timbres and near total lack of tonality or categorical rhythm ushered in a new school of thought in composition. The seeming chaos was actually a careful experiment in chance, signaling the birth of a new musical style Xenakis termed “Stochastic Music,” or more simply, the music of probabilities. Composed for an orchestra of 65 players, Metastasis is written entirely divisi, making a virtual soloist out of each musician. Its form and technique were so unique to players at the time there was reportedly quite a bit of arguing about its validity among the musicians at its first rehearsal in 1954 (Varga 1996, p. 35). But there was no denying the originality therein, and anything more than a surface level analysis showed tremendous thought and manipulation of the musical medium towards Xenakis’ innovative ends. Romanian born, Xenakis spent most of his young life in Greece at a boys school for wealthy foreigners. His accent often caused him to be the focus of ridicule, re-enforcing his already isolated nature. Although his mother had a musical background, other pursuits had always taken precedence for him. The library was his main sanctuary, a place where he spent hours absorbing book after book, focusing mainly on the ancient Greek masters. Even though his academic record was anything but stellar, his personal research was voracious. “Here Xenakis began to erect the intellectual scaffolding upon which he would build a lifetime’s work of research and creative expression” (Matossian, p. 14). The stability of government in Greece was tenuous at best, as numerous regimes rose and fell with regularity. World War II brought a string of occupations, from the Italians, to the Germans, and finally as the war ended, the British. It was just before the Italian invasion in 1940 that Xenakis traveled to Athens to enroll in the Polytechnic Institute. His education was sporadic there over the next 7 years as the school was closed and reopened throughout the occupation, even being used as a wartime prison at one point (Matossian, p.17-27).
