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Re: [microsound] reccomend a book



> >I am keen to read the Xenakis
>
> There's a really good book-length interview with him,
> "Conversations with Xenakis"...author's name is Varga, I think
> -- highly recommended
>
> There's also an interesting biography by a French woman whose
> name is.....uh, oh well

"Xenakis" by Nouritza Matossian (Armenian/British)

It's an easy read (certainly compared to Formalized Music, Jesus !), but it doesn't
contain much analysis of his music.

It seems to be out of print presently.

This is an interesting quote from the old edition of John Pierce's (another
scientist/composer) "The Science Of Musical Sound" about Xenakis/Formalized Music:

"The mathematics in his Formalized Music seems disjointed and sometimes irrelevant to
this engineer, and would throw any nonmathematical musician off, but it is apparently
of use to Xenakis, for he composes very attractive music."

On a similar note, I just noticed a new Ligeti bio published by Phaidon.

Andrei