Anestis Logothetis

Anestis was born in Bulgaria of Greek parents and moved to Tessaloniki in1934. He became influenced by modern composers such as John Cage, Earle Brown, and Bruno Maderna. Initially he wrote a number of works using conventional musical notation and different combinations of instruments and orchestrations. Around 1957 he started developing electronic music in Gottfried Michael Koenig's studio in Cologne, producing his composition Fantasmata in 1960. 

One aspect of Logothetis' artistic talent is expressed in his graphic notations in which he has developed a personal system of musical symbols. They present the interpreter with a clear and directly understandable "sound picture". This kind of notation is also comprehensible to the layman as Logothetis' scores make visual sense even if the viewer has no musical training. "Culmination" is not instrumented. The material is distributed among the players; each of them then interprets the "picture" on each page of the score with his own instrument. Logothetis writes in this connection: "The choice of instruments is unlimited, so that new sources of sound can constantly develop, as can new ideas, in contrast to traditional sources of sound." This means that to the extent to which an ensemble mobilizes all its individual and collective means in order to perform the work it also at the same time reproduces its own unique conception, its own "collective personality".

Here is one of his works, performed by The San Francisco Conservatory New Music Ensemble.

Culmination