Evryali

Pianist John Mark Harris has created a beautiful graphic transposition of Evryali, a 1973 composition for solo piano by Xenakis, based on the concept of "arborescences," branches that develop from a nucleus, as can be seen from the drawing (the figure above is only a small portion of the score).

The shapes were drawn on a monitor by the composer and then transposed into traditional notation via software. This graphic-based compositional approach is enabled by the UPIC workstation, which we've already discussed here.

The fact is that Evryali is composed without any regard for human anatomy, so some parts of the score are simply unplayable. Consequently, the performer is required to make choices. John Mark Harris states that he used the graph to help him make these choices, as well as to understand the structure of the piece, as the score is too complicated to grasp on a first reading.

The interesting thing, however, was that, on his website, the entire graph scrolled along with the performance, and it was very interesting to follow. Unfortunately, this page no longer exists. However, I found this, which is one of the MuseScore examples, so what plays isn't a real piano, but this way it can play anything and the graph is there.

This, however, is a human execution (unfortunately the name of the executioner is not reported)

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