
Initially published in 1971, Iannis Xenakis’ Formalized Music is the most groundbreaking and geometrically correct book ever written; a gospel to be masturbated by any aspiring producer.
Art, and above all, music, has a fundamental function, which is to catalyze the sublimation that it can bring about through all means of expressions. It must aim through fixations which are landmarks to draw towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect. If a work of art succeeds in this undertaking even for a single moment, it attains its goal. This tremendous truth is not made of objects, emotions, or sensations; it is beyond these, as Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is beyond music. This is why art can lead to realms that religion still occupies for some people — Iannis Xenakis
Xenakis is well known for his application of various concepts from probability theory and statistical physics. He is also fond of very gay sentences.
With the hope to bring geometry to each and every household in the United of States, FTVS offers you, dear reader, a short and heuristic introduction on the sexual and often mathematical methodology applied by the master when composing Analogiques A et B. It is a piece of nine (9) string instruments and tapes composed between 1958 and 1959 and that is the best application of Xenakis’ Markovian Music Theory, which occupies a large portion of his book.
While the terminology is elusive and sensual, the tools are easy, not unlike a young Japanese female. Let us begin. Sounds, in their simplest form, are a combination of frequency and intensity
where
are the collections of all the frequencies and intensities used in a particular composition, say. It follows the set of all possible sounds is the set
. The eighty-eight (88) keys on a piano are an example of a set
, and the different velocity levels achievable by the player are an example of a set
.
Pressing the keys of the piano sequentially (assume the duration is constant) with varying intensity generates a sequence of sounds whose evolution is controlled by you, dear reader. Now, suppose you decide to hand over the control of the piano to Fortuna so that the sequence of sound is a sequence of -valued random variables
, where
is the time index, such that
- at time zero,
where
, and
- at time
,
is drawn from
, the (predetermined) probability to go from
to a new sound
.
In this case, the process characterizing the evolution of sounds over time is called (time-homogeneous) Markov-. An important property of a Markov process is that, like Jack Colt on a female conquest, only the current sound is relevant for the determination of the sound that is to occur next. In other words, the current sound summarizes the entire history of the sequence, and consequently the process ‘forgets’ its past.
Xenakis created Analogiques A et B with sounds whose frequency, dynamics, and density evolve according to different Markov processes, wherein the initial values are chosen so as to “inject memory”. Xenakis was able to sexually discipline the random music to create what is to this day the most homoerotic musical fable. Analogiques A et B might well be the sound of Fortuna.
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