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The Origins of Stochastic Music 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Iannis Xenakis
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Extract

Art (and especially music) has a fundamental catalytic function, which is to effect sublimation by all its means of expression. It should aim to lead by constant points of reference towards that total exaltation in which, unaware of self, the individual will identify with an immediate, rare, vast and perfect truth. If a work of art achieves this even for an instant, it has fulfilled its purpose. This massive truth does not consist in objects, nor feelings, nor sensations; it lies beyond them, as Beethoven's Seventh lies beyond music. For this reason, art is capable of leading to those regions still occupied by certain religions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 78 , Autumn 1966 , pp. 9 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

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Footnotes

1

Translated and abridged by G. W. Hopkins from Xenakis's papers ‘Les musiques formelles’ in the Revue Musicale No. 253/254, and reprinted by permission.

References

2 Messiaen's analysis of this work is legendary, and influenced many of his pupils in the 1950s. (Translator's Note).

3 In calculating the statistical frequency of types of musical events (modes of attack, degrees of intensity, etc.) according to the laws of probability, Xenakis calls upon James Bernoulli's Limit Theorem, otherwise known as the ‘Law of Large Numbers’. In simplified terms, this theorem states that: ‘If p be the true probability of the happening of a certain event in a single trial, n a number of trials, and s the number of times the event is observed to happen in those n trials, then, as n increases, the probability approaches certainty that the statistical frequency, s/n, will approach p-' I am indebted for this formulation to The Fundamental Principles of Mathematical Statistics by Wolfenden, Hugh H. (Toronto, 1942)Google Scholar. (Translator's Note)

4 Defined in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary as “Pertaining to conjecture”.

5 Xenakis's word is ‘materialisation’; elsewhere he writes: ‘materialisation = communication’, Thus ‘realisation’ may be taken broadly, as a double-entendre. (Translator's Note)

6 We should call this ‘musique concrete’. (Translator's Note)