The "Music for strings" CD on Mode is also a wonderful thing, as are most of the performances on Tamayo's ongoing series of discs of the orchestral music. I am also very fond of his music for smaller ensembles though: Epei, N'Shima, Palimpsest, Thallein, Jalons, Phlegra and so on. But I also like the Montaigne double CD of music for piano, strings and both together. Something that really ought to come out on CD some time is Tabachnik's recording of Cendrées for chorus and orchestra, but then there are hundreds of beautiful things recorded for Erato which, if Warners' past record is anything to go by, won't ever see the lighht of day again.

Absolutely. And also the latest Mode instalment, a 3CD box of the complete (solo and accompanied) percussion music.

Couldn't they go into one of those 4CD cheapo boxes, like the Ohana and the ... oh, another composer who also got one of those, I can't remember just now.

Ian's post interests me, because I somehow (I must be a freak) miss the visceral impact bit that gets everyone into Xenakis in the first place, so I start roughly where he is now, trying to find more to it than that.

What Xenakis do I have? I have the Musica Viva 2006 thing from Col Legno (includes Metastaseis, Troorkh, Ais), this CD of electronic music, which I don't think I've listened to much actually, Persepolis, and some other pieces scattered around various CDs, including Waarg, XAS, DOX-ORKH and Psappha. Of these, I do like Metastaseis (obv), Psappha and Troorkh. It turns out I don't have much of what people have kindly been recommending, so perhaps I should withold judgement for a bit.

It's not so much that I dislike Xenakis's music, but I don't get that wow factor that everyone else does (and I like my music as loud and as brash as the next guy). To me its obviously distinctive, but lacking something that makes me care about it.

Well, I'm sure you know that received notions of beauty, subtlety or 'well-writtenness' (the whole concept of which I have attacked in an article I'm editing at the moment) are not things I place any particular store by (let alone that awful term 'musicality' - total mystification pure and simple). Maybe it's more that I find music that appeals mostly on a gut level doesn't appeal quite as much as it once did, in part because I've come to value a somewhat more rationally and engaged mode of listening (I know some will think this is to over-intellectualise music, but I prefer to have my mind turned on than turned off) - Monteverdi, Rameau, Charpentier, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, some Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, some Berlioz, some Liszt, Brahms, some Bruckner, Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Bartók, Boulez, Barraqué, Stockhausen, Nono, some Berio, Cage (yes), Feldman, Lachenmann, Spahlinger, Ferneyhough, Finnissy and many others satisfy this, whilst music to 'lose yourself' in I find more shallow these days. But I'm interested in your comments - how exactly do you think the 'individual and incisive intellect' manifests itself in the music?

By the way, I should reiterate that I still like Xenakis's music very much (and will continue to play it). Just I maybe don't think he's quite as great as some others here do. It's not a case of 'not getting it anymore'.

Why we wonder is it that there is on this forum a preponderance of seventh-raters among the composers proposed for discussion? There have been Cage, Ramati, Tudor, Killmayer, Nyman, Sorabji, Bussotti, Shockercovitzky, Glass, Davies (twice already), Ferneyhough, Turnage, and several others.

So may we add our voice to that of Mr. TimR-J? We are sorry to have to say it, but the works of this man Xenakis are offensive to the cultivated musical taste.

We possess, and have in the past carefully listened to, recordings of the following: "Polytope," "Metastatis," "Prithoprakta," "Atrées," "Syrmos," "Orient-occident," "Herma," "Eonta," "Akrata," "Nomos alpha," "Oresteia," "Nomos Gamma," "Anaktoria," "Synaphaï," "Antikhthon," "Aroura," "Mikka," "Erikhthon," "Empreintes," "Khoaï," "Mikka 'S'," "Windings," "Aïs," "Mists," "Serment-Orkos," and "Jalons."

They are all bad, and Aïs is the worst! Its principal part is for an "amplified baritone" who does not sing but rather utters nasty and horrible cries. It was broadcast with great fanfare by the B.B.C. some twenty years ago, and the extreme ugliness of it led us to decide never to attempt an audition of anything of this man ever again.

Not only that, they all have silly names. We looked him up in Grove and there are absolutely no symphonies, piano sonatas, or string quartets. An unrelieved succession of silly names is in a composer a very bad sign indeed.

And he had many quite unsuitable and wrong-headed ideas about the application to music of concepts drawn from the natural sciences: stochasticism, "space," transformations, set theory, and goodness knows what else.

Of course we may excuse him as a person - he had to endure occupation by Germans. But a year or so after that he fought against our own brave British troops and it is not so easy to forgive him that even though he managed to do himself a mischief thereby. No, he would have done better to stick to his much-vaunted mathematics and computers.

By no stretch of the imagination does his musical reputation deserve to be coupled with those of Messiaen and Varèse - excellent second-raters each of them on our septenary scale.

Finally, some one (message 24) writes about "ideas of beauty." Oh dear no! That is an invalid concept; more of a confusion than a concept in fact. Similarly invalid are the "received notions of beauty" in message 25.

Sorry Sydney - I was listening to Ais on my way in to work this morning and I'm rather coming round to it. You may find me to be a short-lived ally...