XENAKIS Life & Times

1922

LIFE: Iannis Xenakis is born on 29 May into a wealthy Greek family in Bra˘ila, Romania. His father runs an import and export business; his mother, a pianist, encourages his early love of music.

TIMES: Following catastrophic defeat in the Greco-turkish War, Greece cedes land in Thrace and Western Anatolia. Constantine I abdicates the throne and goes into exile.

1944

LIFE: As a member of the Greek People’s Liberation Army, he is injured during street fighting in Athens. His shrapnel wound blinds his left eye for the rest of his life.

TIMES: Codenamed ‘Operation Overlord’, the Allies’ Invasion of Normandy liberates France from the Germans within three months and weakens the Nazis’ position in WWII.

1977

LIFE: He develops UPIC, a computer system that can translate graphic images into music. He uses the system to create his Mycènes Alpha plus two further pieces.

TIMES: René Goscinny, the comic writer who, with illustrator Albert Uderzo, created the Astérix books, dies of a heart attack in Paris. Uderzo continues the series on his own.

1983

LIFE: Having worked since 1973 as a visiting professor at Paris’s Sorbonne, where he will remain in post until 1989, he is elected as one of the 40 members of the Académie Française. TIMES: Nazi war criminal Klaus

Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon’, is arrested in Bolivia and extradited to France where he will stand trial and be sentenced to life imprisonment.

1958

LIFE: Employed as an engineer at Le Corbusier’s studio in Paris, to where he fled from Greece in 1947, he works on a number of important projects, including designing the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. TIMES: At the final of the FIFA World Cup in Stockholm, the 17-year-old Pelé scores two goals and steals the show as Brazil beat Sweden 5-2 to lift the

Jules Rimet Trophy.

2001

LIFE: Following a lengthy illness that means his 1997 O-mega for percussion soloist and chamber orchestra will be his last work, he dies aged 78 on 4 February at his home in Paris.

TIMES: Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launch Wikipedia, intending their online encyclopaedia to be made available for everyone on a not-for-profit basis.