Iannis Xenakis was born in 1922 (or 1921) in Brăila, Romania, into a Greek family. He grew up in Athens, where he completed studies in civil engineering. During World War II, he took up arms against the German occupation, and later against British occupation during the Greek Civil War. In 1947, after being seriously wounded and forced into hiding, he fled Greece and settled in France, where he worked for 12 years with Le Corbusier, first as an engineer, and later as an architect (Convent of Sainte Marie de La Tourette; Philips Pavillon at the Brussels World Exposition in 1958, site of the first performance of Poème électronique by Varèse, and famous for its use of hyperbolic paraboloids).

He also studied with Olivier Messiaen and, in his early works, sought to combine elements of popular music with avant-gardist concepts (e.g., Anastenaria (1953)). He went on to abandon this approach, favouring instead forms of musical “abstraction”, characterised by two elements: references to physics and mathematics, and the exploration of “plastic” aspects of sonority.

The premieres of Metastaseis (1953-1954) and Pithoprakta (1955-1956), which revolutionised orchestral music, defined the composer as a major figure outside of the serial school, largely through the application of a probabilistic method of composition, the introduction of the concept of the sonic mass, and the use of sonorities comprising exclusively (either sustained or metered) glissandi. It was at this time that Xenakis also began experimenting with musique concrète, leading notably to the development of granular synthesis (Concret PH, 1958). His first book, Formalized Music [Musiques Formelles] (1963), describes the composer’s mathematical- and science-based compositional techniques, from the use of probabilities (Pithoprakta, Achorripsis, 1956-1957) to set theory (Herma, 1960-1961) and game theory (Duel, 1959), as well as introducing his first attempts to compose using computers (programme ST, 1962).

In the 1960s, mathematical formalisation as a foundation for composition increasingly became a focus for Xenakis, notably giving rise to his application of group theory (Nomos alpha, 1965-1966) and the development of the notions of being “inside” and “outside” of time (as discussed in his article “Towards a Metamusic” [Vers une métamusique] (1965-1967)); one may find an architectural application of these concepts in the Ville cosmique (1965) project. In contrast, his work Eonta (1963-1964) applies a purely sound-based model of composition. Other pieces in this vein, such as Nuits (1967), as well as his spatialised works, such as Terretektorh (1965-1966) and Persephassa (1969), brought Xenakis a large following; audiences observed that formalisation and abstraction do not preclude works which are markedly Dionysian, whereby music may be viewed as an “energetic phenomenon”. The following decade saw the composition of Polytopes (Polytope de Cluny (1972-1974) and Diatope (1977)), works which characterised the utopic early stage of development of immersive multimedia technologies. Through his use of “arborescences” (i.e., the creation of melodic contours according to a generative process: Erikhthon (1974)) and Brownian motion (Mikka (1971)), Xenakis once again adopted a graphic-based approach to composition (it was such an approach that gave rise to the glissandi that characterise Metastaseis). His research in this respect gave rise to the development of UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu; the first graphic synthesiser), with which he composed Mycènes alpha (1978). In the late 1970s, Xenakis made extensive use of sieve theory; its use in the composition of Psappha (1975) gave rise to a new direction in the composition of works for percussion instruments. Also around this time, Xenakis’ use of pitch “sieves” seems to bespeak his quest to achieve musical universality; the beginning of his work Jonchaies (1977), for example, employs a scale which is evocative of a Javanese pelog.

The beginning of the 1980s saw the composition of Aïs (1981), in which, as with Orestie (1965-1966), an ancient Greek text served as the inspiration, but the former piece also included a reflection on death. Throughout that decade, Xenakis’ aesthetic continued to evolve. There were occasional explosions of sonic energy, e.g. Shaar (1982) and Rebonds (1987-1988), and ongoing research into formalisation - with sieves applying in practically all works from this time and the application of ceullular automatons in Horos (1986) - but the overall trend was toward works which were increasingly sombre in nature, e.g. Kyania (1990). Among his final works, Ergma (1994) and Sea-Change (1997) are characterised by a stripped-down, highly refined sonic landscape. His last piece, (O-Mega (1997) takes its name from the final letter of the Greek alphabet. Iannis Xenakis died 4 February 2001.