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Born to Greek parents in May 1922, Xenakis grew up in Braila, southwestern Romania \u2013 the site of a large Greek community. His father was the managing director of an English export-import agency and one of the richest men in the city. His mother was a pianist, who died after giving birth to a stillborn daughter \u2013 a traumatic experience for the then-5-year-old Xenakis that in his own words left him \u2018deeply scarred.\u2019<\/p>\n
After his mother\u2019s death, Xenakis was educated by a series of English, French and German governesses, before being sent to boarding school in Greece, where he sang in the school boys\u2019 choir, studied notation and was introduced to a great deal of classical music. But he also had a keen interest in physics and mathematics, and, after graduating from school, went on to train as a Civil Engineer in Athens.<\/p>\n
The Greco-Italian War hit in October 1940, beginning with the Italian invasion of Greece. Xenakis joined the National Liberation Front, later becoming part of the armed resistance \u2013 a painful experience which he refused to discuss until the much later in his life. Following the end of the Second World War, he continued to fight for his homeland as part of the Communist resistance, suffering a horrendous facial injury when shrapnel from a British tank blast hit his cheek, blinding him permanently in one eye. Later he was sentenced to death in absentia (a sentence that was finally revoked in 1974), having fled, in 1947, to Paris.<\/p>\n
He became an architect! And a pretty eminent one, working with the great Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier on architectural projects including the the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair, as well as housing developments in France and government buildings in India.<\/p>\n
Alongside the day job, Xenakis continued to study composition in Paris, and soon met some of the most famous composers of the day, including Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen<\/a><\/strong>, whom he approached for composition lessons. But Messiaen, recognising Xenakis\u2019s originality, turned him down, advising him to steer clear of formal training and instead continue with his own musical experiments. Which he did with great gusto.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Oof, that\u2019s a tricky one. This, after all, was a man who, over the course of his life, took inspiration from mathematics, Greek mythology<\/a><\/strong>, architecture, pointillism, the sound of rain, the song of cicadas, the patterning of the stars and of gas molecules, as well as the post-war developments in electro-acoustic music. People have variously compared his music to the sound of an alien species, or someone on the receiving end of root canal treatment. They have also commented on its visceral power, its elemental ferocity, as well as its complexity (Xenakis wasn\u2019t one to make life easy for performers). But if there\u2019s one thing that\u2019s universally true about his work is that it sounded like absolutely nobody else\u2019s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHow would you describe Xenakis\u2019s music?<\/b><\/h2>\n
What is his most famous piece of music?<\/b><\/h2>\n