Xenakis and the Society of Timbres

Anton Vishio (Harvard University/Vassar College, USA)

The breathtaking drama of much of Xenakis’ music seems to derive from a paradox, at least given the way we tend to think of dramatic agency in Western music.  Accustomed as we are to the idea that performers themselves are the protagonists, we then are confronted with a body of work in which the individual act is subsumed in a mass of activity, in which it is often unrecognizable.  Still, occasionally the mass seems to act as one, creating the effect of one large organism.  The origins of this approach in the composers’ thought are well known; this style of music derived from observations of the behavior of crowds at political gatherings and particularly from Xenakis’ study of the statistical physics of Maxwell and Boltzmann.  Significantly, as Philip Ball has recently shown, Maxwell’s thinking about the behavior of particles in gas was itself influenced by statisticians of society; so it should not be surprising that some physicists now have turned their attention back to the workings of society, a development that would likely have delighted the composer.
Yet the connections between probabilistic models for how the world works and music composed on similar principles is still not easily forged.  In my paper I shall set out to develop a model for the timbral flux, which I call the “society of timbres”, in certain works of Xenakis for orchestra, primarily Jonchaies but also Synaphaї and Horos. The flux is similar in some respects to the “Brownian movements” that Makis Solomos has discussed, and that were used by Xenakis in at least the first of those pieces; in addition to such stochastic motions, there are also moments, some explicit and some surprising, where the flux coalesces as described above.  The model bears some relationship to recent work in music theory on issues of process, such as Christopher Hasty’s theory of rhythm.  While the model is perceptual rather than computational, I do attempt to quantify activity at different timbral levels, exploring how these conflict in general but occasionally come into some sort of alignment, via the overlay of a series of binary switches.  The goal is to show that the drama of the society of timbres, like any society, is built of conflict and consensus.  I think the implications of this are revealing for timbral conjunctions in general; and I speculate on what a theory of orchestration understood on this model of Xenakis might look like for earlier music, both of the early 20th century and before.
In conclusion, I draw some tentative connections between what the model might say about Xenakis’ metaphorical vision for an ideal society with the physics of society.
Anton Vishio is a PhD candidate in music theory at Harvard University, where he studied theory with David Lewin and composition with Donald Martino.  He has taught at several schools, including McGill and Buffalo, and is currently a visiting lecturer at Vassar College.  His interests are in non-tonal music generally; he has also given papers on polyrhythm, mode, and the relationship of performance and theory.