TWO EXHIBITIONS open to the public today (Thursday, June 29), at EMΣΤ (National Museum of Contemporary Art), and they both explore the multi-faceted creative genius of Iannis Xenakis. EMΣΤ is pleased to present the first major comprehensive exhibition in Greece of Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), the avant-garde composer, music theorist, architect, engineer, mathematician, and one  of the most progressive creative thinkers and cultural practitioners of the second half of the 20th  century. In the 1950s, Xenakis broke the boundaries of contemporary music and devised a genre of  music that is entirely unique. Instantly recognisable despite being in a state of constant reinvention  and revolution, his radical music is, in essence, a reference to antiquity, an ode to nature and the  elements, a tribute to modernism at its most extreme, and is visionary in its use of technology.

Though widely acclaimed internationally, his work has yet to be presented in such an extensive way to date in Greece, and this exhibition represents the most extensive presentation of the work of this avant-garde composer, architect and mathematician, both in Greece and internationally.  The initiative for the Xenakis exhibition is in line with one of the museum’s missions, which is, among other things, to highlight the work of prominent or even lesser known but significant cultural practitioners of the Greek diaspora.

Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music such as the application of game theory, he was – and still remains – a seminal influence on the development of electronic and industrial music, and one of the innovators of multi-media art. He conjoined music with architecture, creating music for pre-existing spaces but also designing spaces for specific music compositions and performances, reconfiguring the classical spatial arrangement of the orchestra. He was also one of the first to deploy computers for musical composition. The exhibition highlights the multi-faceted, multidisciplinary practice of this singular figure – a true polymath – and illuminates the breadth of his prolific oeuvre demonstrating just how far ahead of his time he was, so unprecedented was his vision.

In 1947, during the Civil War and after receiving his degree in engineering from the Athens Polytechnic, Xenakis fled to Paris as a wanted-man for his resistance activities, only to return 27 years later after the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974, and receiving an official pardon after nearly 3 decades of self-imposed exile. Until his death in 2001 he composed over 150 works – from vocal, choral and orchestral, to chamber and solo music for piano, strings and percussion – as well as electronic music written on the UPIC, a computerised musical composition tool he devised that could translate graphical images into musical results. Xenakis also left behind a small but seminal architectural oeuvre, produced while working with Le Corbusier at the latter’s studio in Paris in the 1950s. Most emblematic of these is the Philips Pavilion which Le Corbusier charged him with, for the Brussels World’s Fair Expo 1958, with music by Edgar Varèse (his Poème Electronique), while at the entrance to the Pavilion Xenakis’ own composition Concret PH, could be heard. The exhibition includes the original model of the architectural structure.

Co-produced by ΕΜΣΤ and the Philharmonie de Paris, the exhibition focuses on the most important and ground-breaking work of Xenakis’s visual, literary, architectural, and musical output, while illuminating his personal history by contextualising the composer in his times, and the political and cultural movements that defined him as an artist. Based on the Xenakis Family archives, the exhibition parcours is designed around six chapters, centred on a number of major works, both musical and architectural. Presenting both personal and artistic material, a thematic and chronological narrative thread highlights his rich, expansive artistic vision, invites the visitor to gain insight into his tumultuous personal history, reveals the multitude of his ecumenical interests through the recreation of his library, and takes us on a journey of Xenakis’s unique universe as we discover his sweeping sound masses and ultra-modern multi-dimensional spatial and musical universes.

The exhibition is organised around six chapters, focusing on some of Xenakis’ most seminal works, both musical and architectural. A narrative thread, both thematic and chronological, invites the visitor to absorb Xenakis’ unique world through both sight and sound. The exhibition includes 20 musical and architectural opuses, 220 original and archival documents: photos, models, scores and personal items as well as a number of audio-visual works.

The National Museum of Contemporary Art (ΕΜΣT) is pleased to also present a second exhibition on the composer entitled ‘Iannis Xenakis and Greece’, which explores the controversial relationship with his ancestral homeland. The exhibition is produced by ΕΜΣΤ in collaboration with the Athens Conservatoire and the Contemporary Music Research Center (CMRC or KΣYME in Greek).

Born in Brăila, Romania, the son of a Greek merchant, Iannis Xenakis was sent with his siblings to the Anargyrios and Korgialenios Boarding School of Spetses, following the death of his mother in 1927. Later, as a student at the Athens Polytechnic, he joined the National Liberation Front (EAM) and took part in the National Resistance. During the ‘Dekemvriana’ or December events in 1944 (clashes between left wing resistance forces and the Greek Government, royalists and their British allies), he was wounded by an English mortar shell losing his left eye. He remained in Greece in semi-hiding before fleeing to France in 1947. Sentenced in absentia first to death and then to life imprisonment, he would only be able to return to Greece in 1974, following the amnesty granted by the then Greek prime minister Konstantinos Karamanlis. Maintaining close ties to Greece during his long exile abroad, Xenakis’s work became widely known in the country despite his absence.

The exhibition Iannis Xenakis and Greece draws from the extensive historical archive of CMRC, an organisation that was founded by Xenakis himself in 1979, along with the composer Stefanos Vassileiadis, the musicologist, teacher and architect-urbanist John G. Papaioannou, and 22 others, which is now hosted at the Athens Conservatoire. Rare documents and items, including original handwritten letters and texts by Xenakis, articles, music scores, event programmes, photographs, recordings, videos, and various objects, such as the UPIC (the electronic composition system he invented), cast light on his multi-faceted relationship with Greece, testifying to the fact that contemporary, avant garde music in Greece has a longer and more sophisticated history than is widely believed.

• The exhibitions ‘Iannis Xenakis: Sonic Odysseys’ and ‘Xenakis and Greece’ run 29/06/2023-07/09/2024
• National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST) is located in Kallirrois Avenue & Amvr. Frantzi Str, former Fix factory. Open Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun 10am-7pm and Thurs 10am-10pm. Closed Monday.
• For more info: http://www.emst.gr

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