The String Quartets of Iannis Xenakis

Abstract

He clung to the few experiences he had shared with her: the gift of a flute whose sounds had astonished him, her wish that he should enjoy music and especially play the cello. He refused to let her go.If the tenderness of Anton Webern's musical expression at the loss of his mother is difficult for some listeners to hear in his scores, how much more so for the iconoclastic music of Iannis Xenakis? Be that as it may, Matossian's revelation of this intimate memory from his childhood provides a clue to the composer's attraction to the cello, and, by extension, to the chamber string genre, particularly the string quartet. This perhaps surprising personal inspiration is reinforced in the recently published interviews with Bálint András Varga.