Xenakis’ Sieve Theory: A Remnant of Serial Music?
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Abstract
Xenakis sternly criticized serial music in the mid-fifties, developing a proposal of compositional procedures which were mainly based on probabilistic laws that he framed under the principle of indeterminism. However, the sieve theory he started to develop in the sixties was a return to deterministic strategies for composing. Through the scrutiny of several Xenakis’ notes and sketches, from his period as an auditing student at Messiaen’s classes to the period in which he composed Nomos Alpha, I argue that sieve theory should be regarded, to be better understood, trough the lenses of his personal earlier speculations with twelve-tone music techniques.
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