Playing the game with aleatorics and narrativity: Linaia-Agon by Iannis Xenakis

Abstract

In this article I examine the piece Linaia-Agon for brass trio (1972) by Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis, one of only three pieces by this composer, which are commonly referred to in literature as "game-pieces", from the perspective of Roger Caillois' typology of games, stemming from the social sciences, as well as from the framework of the mathematical game theory and its branch probability theory. Xenakis' "game pieces" belong to the field of controlled aleatorics, because they employ a certain level of indeterminacy; here I argue that it is precisely in this aspect of indeterminacy that their nature "as games" is revealed. I am concerned with the "translation" of the Ancient Greek legend about the musician Linos and the God Apollo - and of the mathematical calculations - into the language of the West European avant-garde music of the second half of the 20th century.