The musical scale is a convention which circumscribes the area of potentiality and permits construction within those limits in its own particular symmetry.
Iannis XenakisRead
Music is not a language. Any musical piece is akin to a boulder with complex forms, with striations and engraved designs atop and within, which men can decipher in a thousand different ways without ever finding the right answer or the best one.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Music transcends language, offering multiple interpretations instead of a single correct understanding.
This quote by Iannis Xenakis highlights the complexity and multifaceted nature of music, suggesting that it cannot be confined to the limitations of spoken language. Just as a boulder possesses various forms and engravings that invite diverse interpretations, music evokes personal and subjective responses, emphasizing that there is no definitive or 'best' interpretation, only myriad perspectives that reflect individual experiences and emotions.
Themes
MusicArtInterpretationExpressionEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
Use this quote to introduce a discussion on the subjective nature of art in a classroom.
More from Iannis Xenakis
All quotes →To make music means to express human intelligence by sonic means. This is intelligence in its broadest sense, which includes not only the peregrinations of pure logic but also the "logic" of emotions and intuition. My musical techniques, although often rigorous in their internal structure, leave many openings through which the most complex and mysterious factors of the intelligence may penetrate.
Iannis XenakisRead
The collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field. These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen as totality, is a new sonic event.
Iannis XenakisRead
The listener must be gripped and whether he likes it or not, drawn into the flight path of the sounds without special training being necessary. The sensual shock must be just as forceful as when one hears a clap of thunder or looks into a bottomless abyss
Iannis XenakisRead
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