The musical scale is a convention which circumscribes the area of potentiality and permits construction within those limits in its own particular symmetry.
Iannis XenakisRead
The collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field. These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen as totality, is a new sonic event.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on how individual sounds come together to create a new auditory experience.
Iannis Xenakis highlights the nature of sound and how individual sonic events, such as hail or cicadas, can combine to form a complex auditory landscape. By recognizing these individual sounds as components of a larger whole, he draws attention to the interconnectedness of sounds and the richness of our auditory experiences, suggesting that art can emerge from the aggregation of seemingly simple or isolated elements.
Themes
SoundMusicArtExperienceNature
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about the art of sound design, this quote can illustrate how complex auditory experiences are created.
More from Iannis Xenakis
All quotes →Music is not a language. Any musical piece is akin to a boulder with complex forms, with striations and engraved designs atop and within, which men can decipher in a thousand different ways without ever finding the right answer or the best one.
Iannis XenakisRead
To make music means to express human intelligence by sonic means. This is intelligence in its broadest sense, which includes not only the peregrinations of pure logic but also the "logic" of emotions and intuition. My musical techniques, although often rigorous in their internal structure, leave many openings through which the most complex and mysterious factors of the intelligence may penetrate.
Iannis XenakisRead
The listener must be gripped and whether he likes it or not, drawn into the flight path of the sounds without special training being necessary. The sensual shock must be just as forceful as when one hears a clap of thunder or looks into a bottomless abyss
Iannis XenakisRead
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