The UPIC System: Origins and Innovations

Abstract

T HE IDEA OF THE UPIC system goes back to 1953-54, when Iannis Xenakis wrote music for orchestra, using graphic notation for representing musical effects that were too complicated to be specified with traditional staff notation. The work Metastasis (written in 1953-54 and premiered at Donaueschingen in 1955) makes systematic use of glissandi (continuous transition between two notes of different pitches). Xenakis drew the glissandi as straight lines in the pitch-versus-time domain. The score is written for sixty-one different instrumental parts. The great number of glissandi creates a sound space of continuous evolution comparable to the ruled surfaces and volumes that he used in architecture.

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