XENAKIS AS A SOUND SCULPTOR

International audienceOne of the main revolutions —and maybe the most important one— of twentieth century music is the emergence of sound. From Debussy to recent contemporary music, from rock'n'roll to electronica, the history of music has progressively and to some extent focused on the very foundation of music: sound. During this history —when, in some way, composition of sound takes the place of composition with sounds—, Xenakis plays a major role. Already from the 1950s, with orchestral pieces like Metastaseis (1953-54) or Pithoprakta (1955-56) and with electronic pieces like Diamorphoses (1957) or Concret PH (1958), he develops the idea of composition as composition-of-sound to such an extent that, if the expression was not already used for designating a new interdisciplinary artistic activity, we could characterize him as a " sound sculptor "