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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Helena Smith in Athens

Visionary composer, polymath and ‘true cosmopolitan’: Greece finally pays tribute to Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis in 1981, by Jane Bown. Photograph: Jane Bown/The Observer

He was the high priest of 20th-century modernity, a founding father of electronic music, a pioneer of multi-faceted talent. Where others feared to tread Iannis Xenakis stepped, breaking the boundaries of sound, employing mathematical formulae – game theory included – to compose what had never been heard before.

No musician – or architect, for he was that too – was as steeped in the classics nor as avant garde nor as quintessentially Greek.

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