xenakis herma

[fyrexia]

somebody ever played herma by xenakis for piano solo.
quite incredible with the terribly fast changes of FFF to PPP or PPP to FFF.
I am playing it and making a recording of myself . Maybe somebody already has played it , just want to now hes opinion about the work and what do you think about it....

When i got finish i will post my record

Cheers

Jose

[soliloquy]

My favorite piano piece of all time


Can't wait to hear your recording :O

[jre58591]

i too would like to hear your herma. i dont find many people these days that can play xenakis (properly).

[fyrexia]

in 3 or 4 days i will post it. i will play it the best i can.

[counterpoint]

I'm very eager of Herma too 

And I would be very interested in a video of Berio Sequenza IV

I'm so sorry I can't play it myself - my piano has no 3rd pedal 

[fyrexia]

the sequenza IV is very good and i am looking forward to play it too but when i finish herma

[fyrexia]

anybody has seen a video of berio sequenza I and IV and VI.
i am trying to look for the best for me and play it

[fyrexia]

anyway i am looking for those sequenzas in transcriptions for piano

[counterpoint]

Only one of Berio's Sequenzas is for piano, it's no. IV.

No. I is for flute and no. VI for viola.

I would be very happy to hear (and see) you play Sequenza IV

[soliloquy]

anyway i am looking for those sequenzas in transcriptions for piano

He wanted them transcribed, counterpoint.

Maybe I will transcribe them


FOR A PRICE!

[invictious]

Can anyone provide sheet music for this piece please?

[jre58591]

xenakis died in 2001, so no. theres a video on youtube with yuji takahashi and he shows the music.

[cygnusdei]

So this is no longer 'contemporary' music?

[jre58591]

sure it is. his music was still composed very recently.

[mephisto]

Compared to Xenakis' other pieces I find this piece extremely dissapointing. But Xenakis did of course compose this piece the way he wanted to, so I do still like him.

[counterpoint]

I heard Herma in a radio transmission of a recital by Claude Helffer long long ago.
It was like   

There is only a pale shadow of the explosive power of Herma in the Takahashi video.

[invictious]

That piece just made me go

Wow.

[fyrexia]

2 more days and i will go to the my collegue studio to make a clean record.....
i will post it then in 2 days....
hope i play it perfect :p

[soliloquy]

hope i play it perfect :p

I have 11 recordings of this piece, and you'd be the first 

Anyway here's that video: 

And this is only medium difficulty for Xenakis, just as a random note for all those people who think Rach 3 is the hardest piece

[soliloquy]

Oh, randomly, how long have you been practicing/learning the piece?

[fyrexia]

well i have been practising it like already 5 weeks.

[pies]

Record Evryali next

[invictious]

I can probably miss a whole page, make a whole bar of mistakes, go into the wrong key by accident, and still no one would notice

[fyrexia]

haha those audience dont even now who is mozart then

[counterpoint]

well i have been practising it like already 5 weeks.

Oh, then you don't need to post it. That's like "i have been practising Scarbo already 5 weeks, I hope, it will be perfect"   

[thalbergmad]

I can probably miss a whole page, make a whole bar of mistakes, go into the wrong key by accident, and still no one would notice

If you blew your piano up with dynamite, i would not notice the difference.

I have tried listeneing to this music, but it don't ring my bell.

However, the skill required to play it, must be immense.

Thal

[fyrexia]

5 weeks for scarbo is diferent. Scarbo Takes few time to make it perfect. it takes more on memorizing it (for me...)....
Anyway herma is not easy although i dont play herma everyday.... i got other things that my collegue gives me..... something like ligeti etudes, they are sometimes pain in the ass
But i still love it

[soliloquy]

Come on people let's keep it civil; we'll see how well he plays it tomorrow anyway.


And as I said before, I can't wait to hear your recording

[cmg]

Okay, now I'm intrigued. 

Xenakis.  I know the name, am aware of his importance, but have heard very little of his music.  And of that "very little" -- that snippet of Herma on Youtube -- it appears to be very disjunct, atonal and pretty damned cerebral.  I know there must be more.  Takahasi is an incredible pianist, by the way.  Gawd, effortless technique grappling with galloping thickets of notes. 

Could those of you who admire him, tell me what his compositional aims are?  Is his music in opposition to other modernist compositional schools, or a movement towards something totally new.  It strikes me, very superficially, as very complex, athletic atonalism, at least for the keyboard.  I can't imagine the enormous technical and intellectual resources needed to play his music.  It doesn't appear to be accessible on a first, superficial hearing, either.

What structural forms does he favor?  Is he consistently atonal or does he use serial techniques that float around key centers?

What should I be listening for?  What makes Xenakis so special?  Why should I get to know him better?  He sounds like a lot of work, so I would appreciate some good reasons from people who know his music, as to why I should bother.

Thanks in advance to anyone who wants to enlighten me here.

[soliloquy]

Okay, now I'm intrigued. 

Xenakis.  I know the name, am aware of his importance, but have heard very little of his music.  And of that "very little" -- that snippet of Herma on Youtube -- it appears to be very disjunct, atonal and pretty damned cerebral.  I know there must be more.  Takahasi is an incredible pianist, by the way.  Gawd, effortless technique grappling with galloping thickets of notes. 

Could those of you who admire him, tell me what his compositional aims are?  Is his music in opposition to other modernist compositional schools, or a movement towards something totally new.  It strikes me, very superficially, as very complex, athletic atonalism, at least for the keyboard.  I can't imagine the enormous technical and intellectual resources needed to play his music.  It doesn't appear to be accessible on a first, superficial hearing, either.

What structural forms does he favor?  Is he consistently atonal or does he use serial techniques that float around key centers?

What should I be listening for?  What makes Xenakis so special?  Why should I get to know him better?  He sounds like a lot of work, so I would appreciate some good reasons from people who know his music, as to why I should bother.

Thanks in advance to anyone who wants to enlighten me here.

Xenakis is a stochastic composer, which means his works are written based upon mathematical principles.  Herma is written using boolean algebra; I will take a picture of the graph (it's in his book Formalized Music) tonight when I get home and show you.  His works are based on many different formulai such as but not limited to Markov Chains, Game Theory, Group Theory, Boolean Algebra, Banach Spaces and Vector Calculus (many composers would then go on to write music based on vectoral mathematics, which is now called "Spectral" or "Post-Spectral" music), and a lot of it is not WRITTEN by computers, but he did often plug his formulai into computers.  He is also one of the pioneers of electronic music, some of his major electronic works being Diamorphoses, Kraanerg, La Legend d'Er and Persepolis.  His music was, at the time, very much in opposition of some of the modern schools, as he felt they limited artistic freedom, although I personally find that to be somewhat in contradiction with using a computer and some Calculus to write a piece, but what do I know XP  In a good deal of his earlier major works such as Metastasis, Pithoprakta, Acchoripsis and Duel, he would try to distinguish the sounds he created by certain variables, which were rate, density, volume and sound (like glissando, pizzicato etc).  The works are not meant specifically to be "complex" or "athletic", although the form he wrote in gave absolutely no baring to the limitations of the performer so many of them are some of the most difficult works in existence, such as his piano concerto "Synaphai", which is arguably the single most difficult piano piece, with the possible exceptions of Finnissy's "Folklore" and Barrett's "Tract".  His string quartet, ST/4, is also possibly the most difficult string quartet also, with the only possible exception being Ferneyhough's.

Anyway, as he is my favorite composer, I have sheets and recordings to pretty much everything Xenakis published (and even two unpublished pieces), and I could probably share them with you if you wanted to study him further   Also, there is a video of Synaphai on youtube, along with videos and recordings of several other pieces of his.  I would recommend finding recordings of Metastasis, Evryali, Kyania, La Legend d'Er and Palimpsest before getting into some of his more complex works.

[counterpoint]

My view of the music of Xenakis is not so intellectual, but just look what you hear and hear what you see. I'm fully aware, that there is much mathematics and stastics knowledge  used in these pieces. But I think, it is not needed to know (but sometimes interesting), how the composer exactly found out the concrete notes and their parameters. The music, which is the result of all this mathematical and intellectual work, speaks for itself in the end. Take the music for what it is, don't search for a hidden message, for motivic work etc. It's like a firework of sounds (without doing the instruments any harm  )  I see similarities to the paintings of Jackson Pollock, the inventor of "action painting", who gets the effect by a complete different creation process. He splatters the color over the painting canvas simply by intuition and gets wonderful structures "by chance".

[pita bread]

The Nimbus Ensemble is going to be performing:

Xenakis - Palimpsest
Hosken - World Premier, written over Xenakis' Palimpsest
Schoenberg - 5 Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16 (Arr. Greissle)

@ the Colburn School (across from Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles) on March 29.

Anyone interested in meeting up for this?

[hodi]

complexity,math,calculations,graphs..

[mephisto]

May I just say that I think Herma is Xenakis' strangest and least accesible piece, and if you hate it you might still really like many of his other pieces.

[elevateme_returns]

I have 11 recordings of this piece, and you'd be the first 

Anyway here's that video: 

And this is only medium difficulty for Xenakis, just as a random note for all those people who think Rach 3 is the hardest piece

do you HONESTLY think this is good music?? hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

[soliloquy]

do you HONESTLY think this is good music?? hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Why am I not surprised it's not something you appreciate?

[elevateme_returns]

because ive heard my 5 year old sister play a very similar piece!! and she was improvising. so is she a genius?? why would anyone waste so much time learning this garbage. you might aswell just hit the piano

[soliloquy]

because ive heard my 5 year old sister play a very similar piece!! and she was improvising. so is she a genius?? why would anyone waste so much time learning this garbage. you might aswell just hit the piano

I think the only necessary comment is "lol"

[franzliszt2]

lol

[elevateme_returns]

cant you at least explain what it is you like about the music? if you can call it music

[soliloquy]

cant you at least explain what it is you like about the music? if you can call it music

Explain what you dislike about it first.  Be careful how you word yourself though; you wouldn't want to accidently say something stupid under the pretence of having little-to-no knowledge on Xenakis.  I think your friend did that not too long ago and well... you know how that turned out

[franzliszt2]

Where do you study?

[elevateme_returns]

no i dont know, how did it turn out? ok, heres what i dislike about it. its awful to listen to . and it sounds like someone is just hitting the piano. your turn, what do you like about it?

[franzliszt2]

I'm just curious to no whether you actually study his music at a conservatoire or university or summit, or just read books.

[soliloquy]

no i dont know, how did it turn out? ok, heres what i dislike about it. its awful to listen to . and it sounds like someone is just hitting the piano. your turn, what do you like about it?

Why is it awful to listen to?  Do you dislike the dissonance, atonality or both?


I like dissonant and atonal works.

[elevateme_returns]

Why is it awful to listen to?  Do you dislike the dissonance, atonality or both?


I like dissonant and atonal works.

why? they make practically no musical sense! and if you love them so much, surely it must be a huge pleasure for you to just sit down and hit the piano?

[franzliszt2]

I love a lot of contempory/dissonant music. Xenakis does nothing for me. I feel nothing when I listen to his music. It bores me. I don't no why, but it just does. With music that seems random, I just want to sit and transcribe it to stop the bordom

[soliloquy]

why? they make practically no musical sense! and if you love them so much, surely it must be a huge pleasure for you to just sit down and hit the piano?

Incorrect.  They make no sense to people who do not understand them.

[invictious]

But they do to people who pretend to understand.
WOooo, flame wars.
Actually, I also heard my sister play something similar the other day..and she can't even play Mozart's sonata in C Major K545.

Can someone explain to that young man?
I mean, I like dissonant and atonal works too, like 20th Century Russian composers, but I think this is too much for me to like it. Although this still makes sense to me in an awkward manner.

[thalbergmad]

To me it sounds horrible, but i guess a lot of people would say the same about Moscheles who i adore.

If i can't whislte it, i ain't interested.

Thal