The Greek electronic and computer music legacy of Iannis Xenakis : KSYME, IRMA and other

Anastasia Georgaki (University of Athens)

Through his itinerary Xenakis has had a peculiar relationship with his native country. Although his music embodies an ideal akin to that of the ancient Greeks, in which the arts, particularly music, are branches of human intelligence his relationship with modern Greece was not evident. From 1947 till 1974 he was in exile, and from 1975 till his death he has been both honoured and doubted by the Greek audience. Although the difficulties that Xenakis has affronted as an avant-garde composer in a country who came out from many political, social and financial problems, his music and personality had a great impact on many Greek composers and especially on those who have been implicated in electronic and computer music.

In this article we will present the relationship of Xenakis with modern Greece (concerts, composers, institutions) since 1975, and we will focus on:

• the legacy of composers, directors, dancers, musicians and researchers who have been implicated in the production of the Mycenae Polytope (1978) and the impact that this event has had in the Greek artistic community of the ‘80s
• his collaboration with ΚSYME (center of contemporary music research) which has been the pole of attraction for many young composers and researchers in many domains of music (musical acoustics, music and mathematics, electroacoustic composition, ancient tragedy, polytopes, etc.). KSYME has been founded officially in 1986 by I. Xenakis and S. Vassiliades and for several years has achieved to expand the musical, scientific and technological thought of I. Xenakis in the Greek community.
• the impact that Xenakis’ music and thought on Greek contemporary music composers and researchers (inside and outside) who have mostly been implicated in experimental  audiovisual arts and electroacoustic/computer music.

Anastasia Georgaki was born in Lefkada. She studied Physics (University of Athens) and Music (accordion, piano, harmony, counterpoint).. She studied also Computer music  at IRCAM (DEA and PhD in Music and Musicology of the XXth century). During the period 1995-2002 she has been teaching Musical Acoustics and Computer music at the Music Department of the Ionian University at Corfu where she has been elected lecturer in 2001. She has participated in many computer music conferences and has published a number of articles concerning the synthesis of the singing voice, interactive music systems, and Greek electroacoustic music; she has co-organised two symposia on Music and Computers (Ionian University). She has also collaborated with the Greek research institute ILSP in music information retrieval European projects (Wedelmusic). Since October 2002, she is lecturer in Music Technology at the Music Department of the University of Athens. She is actually collaborating with the Computer science department (University of Athens) on physical modelling of Greek traditional instruments and Greek vocal modelling. She is a professional accordion player and her future research projects focus on controlling synthetic voices through a MIDI-acccordion.