The solo piano piece Evryali (1973) by Iannis Xenakis that will be examined here, is the

second of the three solo piano pieces that Xenakis composed in his lifetime. Except the
complex theoretical, scientific and philosophical aspects that run through this piece it
displays an extremely difficult physical aspect in the performance. In order to understand
the intentions of the composer and in order to give life to this work we will have to examine
every aspect mentioned above. First we will be begin by examining the title of the piece
which has its roots in the Greek mythology, and since the title is not chosen randomly it will
provide us with the basic aesthetic background of the piece.

Evryali was one of the Gorgons of Greek mythology, along with her sisters Stheno and
Medusa. The three sisters were horrifying creatures that had hair made of venomous snakes
and the ability to turn to stone anyone that looked right into their eyes. Evryali and Stheno
were immortal while Medusa was not. In the myth, Perseus begins his journey to kill the
mortal sister Medusa and on his he encounters goddess Athena, who provides him with
information and with her shining shield that helped him kill Medusa by looking at her from
the reflection of the shield and not directly in the her eyes. The two sisters of Medusa wake
from their sleep and try to avenge her death but the hero manages to escape. Perseus offers
the gorgon's head to Athena to wear on her breastplate, to thank her for her help in his
quest. In Greek, Evryali means "the wide open sea". Greek mythology gives to the sea
immense importance and is considered one of the first life creating forces. In the Pelasgian
version of Greek mythology the feminine creative principle if called Evrynomi, the goddess of
all creation who rose from chaos and separated the sea from the sky. That name given to a
creature that can stop life instantly provides us with a very interesting contrast, that of
absolute creation and absolute destruction, that of life and death that are now embodied in
one figure. This opposition has a parallel on a physical level also, in the sense that between
all the vibrating particles that vibrate to make all the solid objects and creatures there is a
vast space of "emptiness". On a macroscopic level, this is reflected in the universe by the
immense empty space between the distant stars. In physics this contrast is found in the
concept of entropy, which is the tendency of the universe and any isolated system in it to
dissolve into an increasing form of disorder. So as meaning and coherence are created there
is an unavoidable tendency for all this to drain away. And while this is happening new
concepts will rise that will give new meaning and new life. That is why entropy is perhaps
one of the background working mechanisms of the universe. Thus, the name Evryali contains
two opposite images: that of the destroyer displayed in the Gorgon sister, and that of the
creator found in the word's etymology and mythological background. While creation gives
birth to life and meaning, the all-encompassing background remains and all of that tend to
flourish until they are absorbed back into themselves. This battle between order and chaos is
what is proposed by Xenakis with the title Evryali with clear parallels with the workings of
the music, as will be explained later. Xenakis philosophy is mostly based on the ancient
Greek concept of philosophy, which is to search for meaning in the universe and all of its
workings. The means to do that was to practice and combine all the fields of science and arts
such as mathematics, physics, astronomy, metaphysics, music, logic, history, politics to
mention a few. Xenakis by combining in all of his music the scientific with the mythological
aspect he is continuing in the same path as the ancient Greek philosophers for the search of
meaning. Combining logically opposite things is usually a paradox. The reality with the mind
that is experiencing it are deeply connected and the experiencing mind is projecting its
subjectivity to the experience making reality what it is. The Greek philosophers did not
separate the mind from the reality it ordered, believing that both participated in the same
intelligibility. Whatever the balance is between the two, they considered the divine, or the
transcendental to be present and experience able. So, the question arises how can one
experience this transcendental state: how can one re-order the mind so that it abandons the
subjective point of view and come in touch with the Divine, with the Essence of experiential
reality. The person that succeeds in reaching the transcendental level would experience an
unusual state called ecstasy. This state can relate to the Platonic idea of Divine Madness.
This is a trance state that offers objective truth: a state of coming in touch with the Divine,
and a gateway to a deeper understanding of existence. Xenakis was studying a lot of the
ancient philosophy, and all this background and an certain connection can be made
between the ecstatic state of this philosophy and the transcendental difficulty of Evryali.
Spiritual ecstasy breaks the borders of the physical world entering the realm of objective
truth, and that is mirrored in the music which requires the performer to go beyond the
conventional, even beyond the physically possible. The Greek philosophers tried to give
meaning to the existence starting with logic as their tool. Logic though, need a leap into a
state of awareness that will help the mind embrace the objective. This was the state called
ecstasy. In that state, one comes in touch with information that are otherwise are
incomprehensible from a rational point of view. That is what wants to be achieved by the
composer here, with the presence of the element of impossibility. The composer here
enhances the practice of philosophy and mythology with his creation, by creating a setting
that will help make that leap towards the ecstatic state of awareness. Music has many things
in common with language since they both use sound to communicate. They both have signs
that can be written, that represent sounds so they both can be understood without sound.
Another relation is that music follows a kind of rhetorical argument since meaning derives
from the relation between its elements based on a time continuous. Although, the referents
that music uses are way more abstract than language and can be manipulated in many more
ways, so for this reason music has the ability to transcend rational experience with the
nature of what it communicates. That means that music has linguistic characteristics, but
lacks the precise definition of what the sounds signify, which differentiates it from language.
Music like language, also has a vocabulary and an order in its smallest components, but the
true meaning derives from the relation of this elements, their bigger structure and how they
are composed. To use Xenakis words about the abstractness of music:

I can say that the eye is quicker, much more immediate and in direct contact with
reality, than the ear, which is less agile and more recessed, demanding reflective
thinking. Consequently, the ear must be more abstract and therefore create bases
which also are more abstract, bringing them closer to mathematics. 1

Music is a kind of symbolic logic, proceeding from personal, subjective experience,

ultimately using its composition and a very few referential elements to arrive at a level of
communication that is removed from the physical, yet which gives deeper meaning to
physical existence.2 So Xenakis combines so masterfully the elements of philosophy and
mathematics to create a piece that embodies the philosophy and state described above, and
why the difficulty of the piece always points towards the impossible. And certainly the
performance of this piece does not demand total perfection, it is not even wanted by the
composer. The element of impossibility is there for the reasons described above and for the
reason of chance that will be examined next. Just bringing the performer in the state of just
wanting to achieve perfection, the focus and the stretch of physical abilities that this state
demand, will surely have therapeutic effects on the abilities and the perception of the
performer, just as the ecstatic state of the ancient culture had therapeutic effects on
existence.

Now that the philosophical background of the composer and the piece have been
more or less defined, we will examine the attitude of the composer towards the
performer and the element of chance. These are revealed to us through his writings
and his musical notation. Xenakis states in his book formalized music:

Chance ... can be constructed up to a point and with great difficulty, by

means of complex reasoning which is summarized in mathematical
formulae; it can be constructed a little, but never improvised or
intellectually imitated.3

This is the reason why Xenakis uses exact musical notation and not aleatoric designs.
At first sight, the accuracy of notation would seem to demand total accuracy of
performance but that is impossible in practical terms, also it is not wanted by the
composer and total accuracy would not enhance the experience. Xenakis also denies
improvisation for achieving chance as humanly impossible: 'The interpreter is a
highly conditioned being, so that it is not possible to accept the thesis of
unconditioned chance, of an interpreter acting like a roulette game'. He also
considers aleatoric composition not an act of composition: 'The composer commits
an act of resignation. . .the problem of choice is betrayed, and it is the interpreter
who is promoted to the rank of composer by the composer himself'. 4

However, decision making is a part of the performance of this piece. This is

obvious in some parts of the piece where accuracy is clearly impossible. This
happens in bars 82-83 where playing all the notes together is impossible:

From the end of the first bar until the end of the second bar where the fifth
line starting from F sharp enters, playing all the notes in the required speed
is impossible. So here the performer has to decide in which way he can play
this passage achieving as much accuracy as possible and as closer to the
intended sound as possible. That can be achieved in many ways. One can
transfer notes in other octaves where they are accessible or one can skip
between lines omitting more ''unimportant'' notes each time suggesting that
at full speed they will sound simultaneously. Obviously, what decision is
made every time depends on the context of the music and the personal
taste and logic of the performer. It is for reasons like this why Xenakis had
four pianists to perform the same two works Herma and Evryali at the same
concert when he won the Beethoven prize in Bonn in 1977. Every
performance of this piece and every time also that it is performed, it will
constitute a unique experience much different than another but in the same
unifying context. This is how the elements of chance and decision making
are implemented in Xenakis music.
(Enter the solution of the spot)!!!

Despite the variety of extended techniques and unique ways of

notation in other pieces of Xenakis and generally in the strings, he decides to
remain in the conventional notation of the piano to achieve different effects
and contrast in sound. The first of his unique techniques that are used in
Evryali is that of stohastic composition. Xenakis evolved this style of
composition in the 1950s in response to the serial music that was practiced
at that time by many composers.''In place of the accumulation of notes
through the superimposition of unrelated lines, such as the serialists had
done, Xenakis proposed a new technique in which the positions in pitch and
time of masses of individual notes could be determined according to the
laws of probability. The composer describes the textures that result from
this compositional procedure as “clouds” or “galaxies” of sounds. In a
stochastic texture the time intervals between the attacks of the individual
sounds, as well as the intervals between the pitches, are determined
statistically. The result is intended to be an imitation of various types of
random processes that occur in nature as well as in human society.'' 5 So with
the help of statistical formulas the composer manages to approach the
randomness of nature underlined by a coherent background. ''These
formulas control in a general way the sizes of the intervals used and they
allow the composer to control the average rate at which the notes occur.
This average rate, which is measured in terms of the number of sounds per
unit time, is the texture’s “density.” Changes in density result in perceptible
differences between individual clouds of sounds'' .6
After Xenakis had developed the stohastic composition he was
opposed to the traditional linear polyphony of different voices. To quote his
own words from his article against serialism, "The Crisis of Serial Music":

Linear polyphony destroys itself by its very complexity; what one

hears is in reality nothing but a mass of notes in various registers.
His compositional technique allowed him to create complex textures of
sound in a note-by-note manner without using the traditional polyphonic
lines, emphasizing in the aspects of musical texture without the notion of
distinct or non-distinct voices. After he had extendedly evolved stohastic
composition a decade later he reproached the topic of linearity in music
with a different perspective. The result of this reproach is the second
technique that we find in Evryali known as arborescence, the branching
structures. In this technique a single line evolves into more lines that moves
freely in any direction like the branches of a tree. The result in the texture of
arborescences is one that is more interconnected than that of the stohastic
texture, although they still contain the element of unpredictability by the
unexpected direction and separation of different branches. The composer
chooses first to draw the branches free hand on a gridline graph paper. The
points of the resulted graph help the composer to choose the pitches and
the attack times that will be transcribed into music. The aural result is an
effect that cover the whole range of the piano that transfers tremendously
accurate the visual impression of the graph.
The use of the pitch material of Evryali is similar to Xenakis's other
works. One of the basic principles behind the use of pitch material in
Xenakis's music is that he disregarded complete the octave equivalence that
has always been the notion in music. "In Xenakis’s conception, pitches
represent discrete steps along a continuum of frequencies that may be
compared to the real number line. This continuum moves in a single
direction from low to high, not cyclically in increments of an octave."7
Based on this and with the help of the mathematical set-theory he proposed
a new theory pitch organization, that he called "sieve theory". In his pitch
collections he has challenged the traditional octave boundary by creating
pitch collections containing pitches that exceed the interval of the octave.
To manipulate this collections he uses basic set-theory techniques to
combine and create new pitch collections, and the traditional technique of
transposition. I will state the basic simple rules of set theory to understand
the logic behind use of the pitch material in the piece. One set A is collection
of elements that contains no duplicates like the twelve-tone pitch set
collection in music. The order of the elements is unordered but presented in
ascending order for the sake of organization. The basic operations that can
happen between sets are those of: union, intersection, and
complementation. So, if we imagine two sets A and B that are selected from
a larger universal set U = {1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9} we can easily implement these
operations. If A = {0 3 4 6 7 9} and B = {1 2 4 6 7 8} the union is a new set,
AuB = {0 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9} containing all the elements that are found in either
A or B. The intersection would be another new set, AiB = {4 6 7} containing
the elements that exist both in A and B. The complement set is another new
set that contatins all the elements that are not found in the chosen set but
can be found in the Universal set. So the complement of set A would be ~A =
{1 2 5 8}. Xenakis uses this techniques in set collections of pitches that can
be represented in a pair of two numbers the first number representing the
interval between the pitches shown in semitones which represents the
period of the set, and the second number is the residue of the set which
defines the position of the collection. For example if we consider the middle
C as 0 then the set (5,0) would a set that contains pitches that are 5
semitones apart starting from middle C. If we change 0 to 1 we get the same
set transposed 1 semitone starting from middle C#. There are 5 of these sets
in the universal set that contains all 88 notes of the keyboard. Now if we
take an example of a union of two sets, we will understand how Xenakis
created the new sieve-theory scales, breaking the traditional notion of the
octave equivalence. For instance, if we take the union of the two sets (5,0) =
{...-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15...} and (3,0) = {... -15 -12 -9 -6 -3 0 3 6 9 12 15...} we
obtain the set (5,0)u(3,0) = {...-15 -12 -10 -9 -6 -5 -3 0 3 5 6 9 10 12 15...}.
Now the succession of the intervals of the new set is <...3 2 1 3 1 2 3 3 2 1 3
1 2 3...>. If we observe this succession we find out that the pattern <3 2 1 3 1
2 3> occurs twice between the pitches -15 and 0 and once more between
the pitches 0 and 15. So we find out that there is a period 15 semitones
which is the least common multiply of our two sets' moduli 5 and 3. This 15
semitone period is analogous to the traditional octave period that has been
used to construct scales and the method of classification by interval
analogous to the traditional scale construction such as diatonic, whole-tone,
octatonic etc.
In Evryali Xenakis uses sieve theory sets for the organization of the
material. If we examine the notes of the first opening bars shown below we
get the period of Set A which Xenakis uses in the first part of the piece.

The notes of these bars are: [C D D# E F G A]. Or in numerical notation [0 2 3

4 5 7 9]. The interval succession of these pitches is <2 1 1 1 2 (1)>. The last
number is placed in a parentheses because it completes the period and it
marks the beginning of the next unfolding of the set. So the period the first
set A is 10 semitones it makes up the whole material used in the piece until
mm.40.