The electroacoustic works of the Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) captivate with their radical ideas, sounds and compositional models. They were often conceived as multimedia works for specific locations and architectures. The richness of the approaches and processes gave rise to an extensive body of sources. Therefore, this volume is particularly dedicated to a philological approach, combining contributions by companions of Xenakis and renowned experts in Xenakis research with studies in philology of electroacoustic music. It concludes with a roundtable discussion of the performance of these electroacoustic works, thus linking the philological questions back to musical practice.
Das Buch wird auf Englisch erscheinen.
Veröffentlichung: erscheint im Frühjahr 2025
Über die Herausgeber_innen
Reinhold Friedl studied piano, composition, musicology and mathematics. PhD Xenakis’s tape music – a philology of electroacoustic music at Goldsmiths University London. Friedl is directing the avantgarde ensemble zeitkratzer and is a pioneer of extended piano techniques. He received numerous prizes and fellowships as well as commissions a.o. by the French State, Berliner Festspiele, Wiener Festwochen, Asphodel San Francisco, ZKM Karlsruhe, RomaEuropa Festival, BBC London, Ultima Oslo. Friedl released over one hundred CDs and LPs as composer and performer. Interdisciplinary cooperations with artists as Sasha Waltz, Frank Castorf (Volksbühne Berlin), Friedl curates the record series Perihel for Karlrecords (2022: 5LP and 5CD-Box Iannis Xenakis: Complete Electroacoustic Works), invented the Off-ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) and directed the music department of Podewil Berlin. Reinhold Friedl is guest professor at the Katarina Gurska Institute in Madrid. Lectures and concerts worldwide.
Thomas Grill works as a composer and performer of electroacoustic music, as a media artist, technologist and researcher of sound. His artistic work encompasses most varied fields of audible and trans-media art, focusing on loudspeaker-based music, electroacoustic improvisation, as well as installations and interventions. His education includes studies of technical physics in Linz, of computer music and electronic media and of interactive electronic instruments in Vienna. He earned a doctorate in composition and music theory at the University for Music and Performing Arts, Graz. Post-Doc research followed at the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI) in the domain of machine listening and learning. He is currently heading the Certificate Program in Electroacoustic and Experimental Music and co-heading the Artistic Research Center at the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Grill has been awarded with an Honorary Mention of the Prix Ars Electronica, with the Theodor-Körner prize, the Award of Excellence of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, the Outstanding Artist Award for Interdisciplinarity (Bonus prize) of the Austrian Federal Chancellery and various work stipends.
Nikolaus Urbanek (*1976) is Professor for Musicology and currently serves as Dean of Research Studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. He completed his doctorate in 2008 with a music-philosophical thesis on Adorno’s Beethoven Fragments at the University of Vienna. His research focuses on philosophy of music, music historiography, theory of musical writing (DACH-Research Project 2018–2021 Writing Music. Iconic, performative, operative, and material aspects in musical notation(s)).
Current book publications: Dialektik der Schrift. Zu Adornos Theorie der musikalischen Reproduktion, ed. by Julia Freund, Matteo Nanni, Jakob M. Schermann, and Nikolaus Urbanek, Paderborn: Brill / Fink 2022 (Theorie der musikalischen Schrift 3); Musik und Schrift. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf musikalische Notationen, ed. by Carolin Ratzinger, Nikolaus Urbanek, Sophie Zehetmayer, Paderborn: Fink 2020 (Theorie der musikalischen Schrift 1); Von der Autonomie des Klangs zur Heteronomie der Musik. Musikwissenschaftliche Antworten auf Musikphilosophie, ed. by Nikolaus Urbanek and Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann unter Mitarbeit von Sophie Zehetmayer, Stuttgart: Metzler 2018; Analyzing Black Metal – Transdisziplinäre Annäherungen an ein düsteres Phänomen der Musikkultur, ed. by Sarah Chaker, Jakob M. Schermann, and Nikolaus Urbanek, Bielefeld: transcript 2018.
Michelle Ziegler (*1981) is a research associate (postdoc) at the Chair of History of Technology at ETH Zurich and a lecturer in Basel, Bern and Vienna. She received a PhD in musicology at the University of Bern in 2018 with a dissertation on the graphic conception of the piano works of Hermann Meier. Subsequently she pursued inquiries into the materiality of notation in the DACH project “Writing Music” at the Paul Sacher Foundation Basel. She has published numerous articles as a music journalist for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and worked as a curator ie. for the electronic music festival “Zwei Tage Strom”. Her research areas include music of the 20th and 21st centuries, music and technology, archival practices and digital historiography.
Book publications: Musikalische Geometrie. Die bildlichen Modelle und Arbeitsmittel im Klavierwerk Hermann Meiers, Bern: Peter Lang 2022 (Publikationen der Schweizerischen Musikforschenden Gesellschaft 63); Mondrian-Musik. Die graphischen Welten des Komponisten Hermann Meier, ed. by Heidy Zimmermann, Michelle Ziegler, and Roman Brotbeck, Zürich: Chronos 2017.
