Xenakis, Iannis

Xenakis, Iannis (b Brăila, Romania, 29 May 1922; d Paris, 4 Feb. 2001).
French composer, architect, and experimental artist, born in Romania to Greek parents. After the German invasion of Greece in 1941 he fought in the Resistance, losing the sight of an eye when he was badly wounded in 1945. In 1947 he settled in Paris, where he assisted Le Corbusier in his architectural practice from 1948 to 1960. He became a French citizen in 1965. Xenakis was best known as a composer; his works ‘are examples of a new and individual kind of musical thinking, based on models drawn from architecture, physics, and mathematics’ (The New Oxford Companion to Music, 1983). In the visual arts he is notable for being among the most prominent creators of ‘total environments’ involving both spectacle and sound, in particular for pioneering the use of multiple lasers in light environments. For the French Pavilion at ‘Expo '67’ in Montreal he created a vast ‘Polytope’ made up of large concave and convex mirrors suspended on electrified cables producing ‘visual melodies’ by the action of light sources. In 1972 he created a still more strange and elaborate form of total spectacle at the Roman Baths off the boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris.