Conversations With Iannis Xenakis

Rating:
Summary: Xenakis is quite extraordinary shaper of raw structures
Review: It seems interviews is some type of postmodernist genre, we seem to have more of them. Well they are the most direct form of learning the complexity of someones thought,and today with multi-dimensional expressions travelling in many directions, interviews help focus all these extranneous fields of thought. Xenakis is quite an interesting composer because he really starts music again. He says things like this during these interviews, how each work begins again. Varga is also quite competent in conversational interrogatories. This book is well organized as well ,touching all the highpoints from the early formative bleak years living as an exile in Paris to the dazzling success as European architect and thinker of the modern world. Xenakis is fascinating precisely because he brings much more than music to his music. He hates Mozart but loves Schubert, and loves the shape of things, cones,trapezoids which all influence his end-of-the-world-like musical structures more than a chord progression. There is also nice excerpts from his work you will never find in a music store today.