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From my Master's Recital on April 26, 2015 in Smith Recital Hall at the University of Illinois.

Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) was a leading figure in the post-war movement of avant-garde music. Born in Greece, Xenakis studied architecture and engineering at the National Technical University of Athens while simultaneously taking lessons in harmony and counterpoint. After moving to France and making a name for himself as an architect, Xenakis began composing his own music. He applied his mathematical and statistical skills into music theory and integrated architecture within his compositions. He was also a pioneer of electronic and computer music. Psappha is one of two compositions that Xenakis wrote for solo percussion and is a true tour de force of the multiple percussion repertoire. Composed in 1975, it was premiered by Sylvio Gualda in 1976 at the Round Place in London during the English Bach Festival. The piece draws its inspiration from the Greek poetess Sappho, mostly from the small rhythmic cells that are typical of her poetry. Xenakis forgoes traditional music notation and instead uses a type of graph notation, with dots placed along a time grid which results in sixteen different registral lines corresponding to each instrument. He is not specific in which instruments must be used, instead he scores for groups of materials (woods, skins, and metals) and further breaks these groupings into register (high, medium, and low). Xenakis clarifies these choices by stating that Psappha “is a purely rhythmical composition, which means that colour is used only to render more clearly the polyrhythmic construction.”