process. Points on a line could also be removed from their continuous context and laws of discontinuity could be applied. Probability distributions, thanks to Xenakis, created new, unheard-of rhythmic patterns which, when applied to architecture, evolved into one of the most elegant architectural attributes of any façade: undulating glass panes.24 These too have become a ubiquitous feature of nearly all of Xenakis’s architectural projects, beginning with the Secretariat in Chandigarh and all subsequent projects under Le Corbusier, up until his ultimate architectural realization, that of his own summer home in Corsica, which is composed entirely of undulating glass panes.25 From mathematical calculations, to philosophical musings, to sketches, to technical drawings, to graphic “shorthand,” to elaborately notated scores, each and every one of his documents bears not only the contents but also the elegant beauty of the original idea behind it. The genesis from idea to artwork is manifest every step of the way. Over time, Xenakis’s “hand” becomes just as recognizable as Xenakis’s “sound,” and on some subliminal level, the two may be innately linked. Only time will tell, as the performance history of Xenakis’s works is just beginning to evolve from the first dedicatees to the next generation.26 Originally, Xenakis’s phrase “music to be seen” was his way of describing the total spectacle of his itinerant polytope, his Diatope, which was commissioned for the opening of the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1978: the music (his electronic work La Légende d’Eer) and concurrent light and laser show, both given within the architecture, he created specifically for the occasion [PL. 38]. For 24�
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“When I designed the undulating glass panes of the Convent de La Tourette I was making use of the results of my research into rhythmic patterns.” Varga, Conversations with Xenakis, 127. Xenakis, Music and Architecture, 194–195. The second volume in the “Xenakis Series” at Pendragon Press will address precisely this issue of: the transmission of performance practices in Xenakis’s often technically challenging scores. See Performing Xenakis, ed. Sharon Kanach (Hillsdale: Pendragon Press, forthcoming in 2010). This volume comprises some thirty testimonies from musicians of fourteen different nationalities, from his original dedicatees to the youngest generation of professional musicians just now approaching Xenakis’s music.
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