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( el, Μεταστάσεις; spelled in correct French transliteration, or in some early writings by the composer ) is an
orchestra
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families.
There are typically four main sections of instruments:
* bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...
l work for 61 musicians by Iannis Xenakis
Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde ...
. His first major work, it was written in 1953–54 after his studies with Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...
and is about 8 minutes in length. The work was premiered at the 1955 Donaueschingen Festival
The Donaueschingen Festival (german: Donaueschinger Musiktage, links=no) is a festival for new music that takes place every October in the small town of Donaueschingen in south-western Germany. Founded in 1921, it is considered the oldest festiva ...
with Hans Rosbaud
Hans Rosbaud (22 July 1895 – 29 December 1962) was an Austrian conductor, particularly associated with the music of the twentieth century.
Biography
Rosbaud was born in Graz. As children, he and his brother Paul Rosbaud performed with their ...
conducting. This work was originally a part of a Xenakis trilogy titled ''Anastenaria
The Anastenaria ( el, Αναστενάρια, bg, Нестинарство, translit=Nestinarstvo), is a traditional barefoot fire-walking ritual with ecstatic dance performed in some villages in Northern Greece and Southern Bulgaria. The commun ...
'' (together with ''Procession aux eaux claires'' and ''Sacrifice'') but was detached by Xenakis for separate performance.
''Metastaseis'' requires an orchestra of 61 players (12 wind
Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hou ...
s, 3 percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
ists playing 7 instruments, 46 strings
String or strings may refer to:
*String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...
) with no two performers playing the same part. It was written using a sound mass
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...
technique in which each player is responsible for completing glissandi
In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a glide from one pitch to another (). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In some contexts, it is distinguished from the co ...
at different pitch levels and times. The piece is dominated by the strings, which open the piece in unison before their split into 46 separate parts.
A ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...
was choreographed to Xenakis' ''Metastaseis'' and ''Pithoprakta
''Pithoprakta'' (1955–56) is a piece by Iannis Xenakis for string orchestra (with 46 separate solo parts), two trombones, xylophone, and Woodblock (instrument), wood block, premièred by conductor Hermann Scherchen in Munich in March 1957. A typ ...
'' by George Balanchine
George Balanchine (;
Various sources:
*
*
*
* born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze; ka, გიორგი მელიტონის ძე ბალანჩივაძე; January 22, 1904 (O. S. January 9) – April 30, 1983) was ...
(see ''Metastaseis and Pithoprakta
''Metastaseis and Pithoprakta'' is a ballet by New York City Ballet co-founder and ballet master George Balanchine to two orchestral works by Iannis Xenakis: ''Metastaseis (Xenakis), Metastaseis'', written 1953–54, and ''Pithoprakta'', written 1 ...
''). The ballet was premiered on January 18, 1968 by the New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company' ...
with Suzanne Farrell
Suzanne Farrell (born August 16, 1945) is an American ballerina and the founder of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Farrell began her ballet training at the age of eight. In 1960, she received a scholarship t ...
and Arthur Mitchell.
Title
The Greek title Μεταστάσεις was transliterated by the composer himself in various ways when writing in French: ''Les Métastassis'', ''Métastassis'', and ''Les Métastaseis''. The Greek digraph ει is pronounced as " i" in modern Greek, and the correct French transliteration is ''Metastasis''. The title page of the published score gives ''MetastaseisB'' in the composer's handwriting, and it appears typeset in this form on the score cover as well. The title, a ''portmanteau
A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsHarley, James (2004). ''Xenakis: His Life in Music'', p.256n5. Routledge. . "The word ''metastaseis'' is to be understood as being in the plural form, and is in fact often misspelled through overlooking this fact. ''Meta'' (after or beyond) -''stasis'' (immobility), refers to the dialectical contrast between movement or change and nondirectionality. According to the composer's own description, "''Meta''=after + ''staseis''=a state of standstills—dialectic transformations. The ''Metastaseis'' are a hinge between classical music (which includes serial music) and 'formalized music' which the composer was obliged to inculcate into composition". These transformations include both the glissando mass events and the permutation of the 
The second movement does have some sort of melodic element. A fragment of a
Los Angeles Philharmonic
piece detail, ''Metastasis''.
Perusal score at Boosey & Hawkes
(requires free registration) {{Authority control Compositions by Iannis Xenakis 1954 compositions
tone row
In music, a tone row or note row (german: Reihe or '), also series or set, is a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale, though both larger and smaller sets ar ...
s. The "B" (''beta'') refers to the revisions suggested by Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen (21 June 1891 – 12 June 1966) was a German conductor.
Life
Scherchen was born in Berlin. Originally a violist, he played among the violas of the Bluthner Orchestra of Berlin while still in his teens. He conducted in Riga ...
: reduction of the strings from 12-12-12-12-4 to 12-12-8-8-6.
Analysis
''Metastaseis'' was inspired by the combination of an Einsteinian view of time and Xenakis' memory of the sounds ofwar
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
fare, and structured on mathematical ideas by Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...
. Music usually consists of a set of sounds ordered in time; music played backwards is hardly recognizable. Messiaen's similar observations led to his noted uses of non-retrogradable rhythms; Xenakis wished to reconcile the linear perception of music with a relativistic view of time. In warfare, as Xenakis knew it through his musical ear, no individual bullet being fired could be distinguished among the cacophony, but taken as a whole the sound of "gunfire" was clearly identifiable. The particular sequence of shots was unimportant: the individual guns could have fired in a completely different pattern from the way they actually did, but the sound produced would still have been the same. These ideas combined to form the basis of ''Metastaseis''.
While in Newtonian physics time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
flows linearly at a universal rate, the Einsteinian view describes it as a function of matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic partic ...
and energy
In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...
; change one of those quantities and time too is changed. Xenakis attempted to make this distinction in his music. While most traditional compositions depend on strictly measured time for the progress of the line, using an unvarying tempo
In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often ...
, time signature
The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value ...
, or phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
length, ''Metastaseis'' changes intensity, register, and density of scoring, as the musical analogues of mass and energy. It is by these changes that the piece propels itself forward: the first and third movements of the work do not have even a melodic theme or motive
Motive(s) or The Motive(s) may refer to:
* Motive (law)
Film and television
* ''Motives'' (film), a 2004 thriller
* ''The Motive'' (film), 2017
* ''Motive'' (TV series), a 2013 Canadian TV series
* ''The Motive'' (TV series), a 2020 Israeli T ...
to hold them together, but rather depend on the strength of this conceptualization of time.
The second movement does have some sort of melodic element. A fragment of a twelve-tone
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
row is used, with durations based on the Fibonacci sequence
In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers, commonly denoted , form a integer sequence, sequence, the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. The sequence commonly starts from 0 and 1, although some authors start ...
. (This integer sequence is nothing new to music: it was used often by Bartók, among others.) One interesting property of the Fibonacci sequence is that the further into the infinite
Infinite may refer to:
Mathematics
*Infinite set, a set that is not a finite set
*Infinity, an abstract concept describing something without any limit
Music
* Infinite (group), a South Korean boy band
*''Infinite'' (EP), debut EP of American m ...
sequence one looks, the closer the ratio
In mathematics, a ratio shows how many times one number contains another. For example, if there are eight oranges and six lemons in a bowl of fruit, then the ratio of oranges to lemons is eight to six (that is, 8:6, which is equivalent to the ...
of a term to its preceding term comes to the Golden Section
In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0,
where the Greek letter phi ( ...
; it doesn't take long before the result is correct to several significant figures
Significant figures (also known as the significant digits, ''precision'' or ''resolution'') of a number in positional notation are digits in the number that are reliable and necessary to indicate the quantity of something.
If a number expre ...
. This idea of the Golden Section and the Fibonacci Sequence was also a favorite of Xenakis in his architectural works; the Convent de La Tourette was built on this principle. See: Modulor
The Modulor is an anthropometric scale of proportions devised by the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965).
It was developed as a visual bridge between two incompatible scales, the Imperial and the metric systems. It is based ...
.
Xenakis, an accomplished architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
, saw the chief difference between music and architecture as that while space is viewable from all directions, music can only be experienced from one. The preliminary sketch for ''Metastaseis'' was in graphic notation looking more like a blueprint
A blueprint is a reproduction of a technical drawing or engineering drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets. Introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1842, the process allowed rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number ...
than a musical score, showing graphs of mass motion and glissandi like structural beams of the piece, with pitch on one axis and time on the other. In fact, this design ended up being the basis for the Philips Pavilion
The Philips Pavilion was a World's Fair pavilion designed for Expo '58 in Brussels by the office of Le Corbusier. Commissioned by electronics manufacturer Philips, the pavilion was designed to house a multimedia spectacle that celebrated postwar ...
, which had no flat surfaces but rather assumed the shape of hyperbolic paraboloid
In geometry, a paraboloid is a quadric surface that has exactly one axis of symmetry and no center of symmetry. The term "paraboloid" is derived from parabola, which refers to a conic section that has a similar property of symmetry.
Every plane ...
s like those used to model the musical "masses" and swells of his string glissandi. Yet unlike many avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
composers of this century who would take such a thing as the completed score, Xenakis notated every event in traditional notation.
References
Further reading
*Baltensperger, André (1996). ''Iannis Xenakis und die Stochastische Musik''. Bern: Verlag Paul Haupt. Cited in Hurley (2004), p. 356n9. *Matossian, Nouritza: ''Xenakis''. London: Kahn and Averill, 1990. . *Xenakis, Iannis: ''Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition'', second, expanded edition (Harmonologia Series No.6). Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1992. . Reprinted, Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2001.External links
Los Angeles Philharmonic
piece detail, ''Metastasis''.
Perusal score at Boosey & Hawkes
(requires free registration) {{Authority control Compositions by Iannis Xenakis 1954 compositions