Description: With the benefit of access to sketches and recordings in the Xenakis Archives, James Harley presents analytical and critical discussions of Kraanerg's music and reception, including the relationship of the score to the recorded parts. Harley is a composer with first-hand experience of the interlocking fields of acoustic and electronic music that Xenakis made his own. The book is accompanied by a CD, which helps to conceptualize the extremely complex score.
Review Quotes: 'James Harley's detailed account of one of Xenakis's most substantial compositions is an exemplary piece of scholarly reconstruction. With ample material on the work's biographical and technical background, and a thorough survey of its performance history and critical reception, a vivid picture emerges of those mid-twentieth-century years in which pioneering and uncompromising avant-garde enterprises like Xenakis's achieved a rare and relatively brief artistic momentum.' Arnold Whittall, King's College London, UK