Xenakis and Nature: From Natural Sciences to an Environmental Music?

Nature plays a central role in the thought and music of Iannis Xenakis. Its influence can be identified on three levels. The first relates to the references Xenakis makes to maths and natural sciences. The references to maths serve as a “foundation” for the music through a process of abstraction. The references to natural sciences draw on models, through a process of analogue transfer. The second level is the type of nature that Xenakis evokes: the nature of modern science — of chaotic phenomena — which runs parallel to his Dionysian quest for fusion with nature. The third level identifies clearly discernible, direct references made by Xenakis to natural phenomena (the sound of cicadas, storms, etc.), and leads to the hypothesis that these references belong not to the classical aesthetic of representation but to environmental music.