Talk:Metastaseis (Xenakis)

message: This needs more de-purpling of my prose and a sanity check; it's part of an essay I wrote for class three years ago. But since I had it sitting around, I attempted to make an article out of it, and unusually for something I write about a composition, none of it is actually original research. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 22:39, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment

message: The article states at its start that the piece is for 65 musicians, but later says 61. Which is it?
Realillusions 12:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is 61 musicians, with the three percussionists playing seven instruments. I am going to correct this in the article's introduction. — Tobias Bergemann 12:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Instrumentation 

message: On the YouTube image that accompanies a recording of this piece ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZazYFchLRI), I see that Xenakis calls the work "META – STASEIS". Puzzling. Not only is it not the Greek word for "metastasis" (that I can determine, not being a Greek speaker), but it's not even a word. It's not even one word, it's TWO WORDS, combined with a hyphen or dash. We all know what Meta means, but what does "Satseis" mean? Upon a lengthy Google search, I seem to find that it generally means "standing, station, status" -- all of which words mean pretty much the same thing. However, this does not necessarily bring us to an understanding of the title "Meta - Staseis". Does anyone have any direct quotes from Xenakis as to it's meaning, or have any insight into the Greek language? My guess is that it may refer to architectural structures. Softlavender (talk) 02:55, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orginal title of work (and the meaning of that title) 

message: Well, this stuff reminds me a LOT of Ligeti's Atmosphères. Though it was Ligeti who coined the term in about 1961, it appears to me Xenakis uses the very same technique here even roughly 8 years before. Or would you experts (I can't call myself one) rather believe that the musical structure of "Metastasis" be different from micropolyphony? At least the "no member of the orchestra has the same score" bit is identical to what Ligeti conceived. -andy 77.190.4.110 (talk) 16:03, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There is one important difference, and that is that Xenakis is gradually bending pitches along defined curves, whereas Ligeti's individual lines are more free to move in "melodic" fashion. In this way, the techniques used to produce the aural results are different. Both, however, are guided by global changes in density and register, so to this extent you are correct. In those days, of course (and for a long time after), it was something of a point of honour never to admit to having done anything that might be seen to have been done before, especially by a competitor. Therefore, Xenakis's "clouds" could not possibly be related to Stockhausen's "sound showers", nor could Boulez's Third Piano Sonata, Stockhausen's Klavierstück XI, or Haubenstock Ramati's "mobiles" have anything to do with Morton Feldman's series of Intersections or Henry Cowell's "Mosaic" Quartet. The cry (as lampooned in Monty Python's Life of Brian) was, "We are all individuals!" Of course, this is perfectly true: there are always distinctions to be made, often important ones. It is also true, however, that there is nothing new under the sun, and historians, authors of textbooks, and journalists are usually determined to keep as many of those dratted individuals from escaping their Procrustean pigeon-holes as possible. Personally, I think Elias Canetti's aphorism says it best: "It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes".—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:23, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Micropolyphony or not, that's the question