ICE/Xenakis

For me, listening to Xenakis is a stripping-away of everything that I think I know about music.  In ICE’s Miller Theatre production of Oresteia, the composer’s only opera, I was struck by the startling intensity ofXenakis‘ innovation: an extended duet between a baritone and a percussionist, with the baritone playing two characters (one in falsetto); passages for the highest piccolo and clarinet playing imaginable; and a Greek chorus that chants and screams, sometimes in dizzying mixed meters.  This is much more than novelty.  Constant innovation was Xenakis‘ expressive currency in music; the rate at which he reinvented himself, often within a single work, is probably unsurpassed in all of music.  To listen to the music is to constantly shift one’s frame of reference, and in an attempt to get inside the composer’s head, I stop caring about the loose musical values I’ve been taught in conservatory.  Harmony?  Intonation?  For Xenakis, the building blocks of music are redefined, and become tools to express the inexpressible.  Xenakis tries to discover a pure musical truth, mythic and granitic, like uncovering an ancient tome.