Utopian aesthetics: Philosophical perspectives upon the work of Iannis Xenakis

Xenakis holds a relatively peripheral position within the mainstream of scholarship on post-war composers. However, he occupied an extraordinary place in the history of music and art. Even amongst the hyper-modernist avant-gardes such as Stockhausen and Boulez, his music stands out due to its complexity and the polyvalence of his conceptual thinking, bringing together architecture, music and philosophy. On the surface at least, much of his music is seemingly rendered closed to all but those who know his prose works, notably Formalized Music, Arts/Science: Alloys and Musique. Architecture. His use of high mathematics and computer programs, in both electronic and acoustic music, reinforces the invisible barrier that resists a widespread interest in his music. Scholars on Xenakis are therefore few and the material available is rarely in English. However, this body of scholarship is authored by philosophers, architects, composers and computer scientists in addition to musicologists. It is reflective of the “colossal, intellectual odyssey” (Matossian 1986, 335) that his work is deemed to be as well as a homage to a man who is possibly the most multi-faceted, expansive and yet, cohesive artist of the twentieth century. The purpose of this article is to draw Xenakis into the context of the utopian genre. Previous scholarship hasn’t brought much light to bear upon Xenakis’ utopian impulse. It is often alluded to without explanation of how exactly utopian mechanisms function in his work. Utopianism combines formal aesthetics and artistic expression with philosophical premise and implicit politics. It is these qualities that can be traced throughout Xenakis’ work