Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), Greek composer and architect, was one of the first to react against the post-Weberian serialists and pointillists who dominated music in the 1950s. Initially, his most notable achievement was the invention of "stochastic" music based on the mathematical laws of probability. This is a method of composition which uses mathematical formulae to calculate the length and intensity of each sound. As his career has progressed, he became one of the world's best-known composers of electronic music, or music generated by computers.

Iannis Xenakis was was born into a cataclysmic time in pre-World War II history, and like many others who were forced to put their ambitions aside until the world was at peace again, he had to wait until his middle twenties before he was able to follow the desire of his heart and become a composer.

He came from a prosperous Greek family based...