Iannis Xenakis
I’m a huge fan of electronica music, and alongside several other critics, I believe the future of music lies in the electronic realm. Like books and newspapers will be phased out, so will traditional guitars and drumsets.
However, starting in the late 1940s, pioneers such as Pierre Schaeffer and (my boy) Iannis Xenakis experimented with emerging technologies and wrote pieces using magnetic tape, phonographs, and tape recorders to record naturally occurring sounds, a now well-known and expanded genre called musique concrète.
Schaeffer is credited as a pioneer, and is essentially the granddaddy of electronica. However, Xenakis’ works are far more intriguing. For instance, listen to THIS.
During the late 1940s, architect and experimental composer Iannis Xenakis could find no one to accept and help him with his work. Fatefully, in 1954, Xenakis was accepted into the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète, an organization co-founded by Schaeffer, dedicated to studying and producing electronic music of the concrete music variety. Orient Occident, (see link above), is a gorgeous example of Xenakis’ electronic work, but his orchestral compositions, once finally brought to fruition, are off the f*cking wall. So, I want you to watch and listen to the video below. It’s a Xenakis original from the mid-1950s. Peep the experimental classical.
