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Xenakis - Metastaseis

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description Xenakis - Metastaseis Overview

Xenakis’ Metastaseis is a significant 20th-century orchestral composition by Iannis Xenakis. The piece utilizes complex mathematical principles, specifically stochastic processes, to generate vast, evolving textures through sustained string movements. It's notable for its innovative approach to musical structure and its exploration of relationships between logic and sound. This work is primarily of interest to composers, musicologists, and listeners engaged with avant-garde and modernist classical music seeking challenging and unique sonic experiences.

help Xenakis - Metastaseis FAQ

What creates the famous opening glissando in Metastaseis?

Individual string players slide along separate pitch paths, producing a huge fan of glissandos rather than one conventional chord progression. Xenakis plotted these trajectories graphically, linking musical time and pitch to architectural thinking.

Was Metastaseis composed with stochastic music techniques?

Metastaseis uses mathematical and architectural procedures, although Xenakis's later works developed stochastic probability methods more explicitly. Its massed string textures and calculated transformations already announce the approach that made him distinctive.

How large is the orchestra in Metastaseis?

The score calls for an orchestra of more than 60 players, with the string musicians frequently assigned individual parts. That division is essential because the opening and closing sound masses depend on many independent glissandos.

What does Metastaseis have to do with architecture?

Xenakis worked as an engineer and architectural collaborator in Le Corbusier's studio. The ruled surfaces suggested by the score's glissando diagrams are often connected with his design work for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.

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