Formalized Music THOUGHT AND MATHEMATICS IN COMPOSITION Jannis Xenakis Indiana University Press BLOOMINGTON LONDONFree Stochastic Music Ath aed above all, music has a fundamental function, which isto catalyze the sublimation that it can bring about through all means of expression, It celta woNBh fixations which are landmarks to draw towards a total Galation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness 4 Mra immeliate, rare, enormous, and perfec. Ita work of art sce in this undertaking even for a single moment, it attains ite Boal. This tremen- dows truth isnot made of objects, emotions, or sensations. iis beyond these, Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is beyond musie. This why est can tet torealms that religion still aecupies for some people. But thit transmutation of every-day artistic material which transforms ata! Products into meta-art isa secret. The “postascd” reach it withers owing its “mechanisms.” The others struggle inthe ideological and ache ‘There exists a historical parallel between European music and the Successive attempts to explain the world by reason, ‘The mus oF antiquity, Prana ated deterministic, was already strongly influenced by the aches “f Pythagoras and Plato, Plato insisted on the principle of causality, "for itis impossible for anything, to come into being without cause” (Tima), Sic causality lasted until the nineteenth century when it undermene ‘The English tansiation of Chapa. I-VI is by Christopher A. Butchers 1Fig. 1, Score of Metastasis, 1953/54, Bars 309-17