Iannis Xenakis - Oophaa (Audio + Full Score)

Iannis Xenakis - Oophaa, for amplified harpsichord and percussion (1989) Harpsichord - John Mark Harris Percussion - Greg Stuart Oophaa was composed shortly after finishing Okho and marked Xenakis’s return to the unusual chamber ensemble of harpsichord and percussion, after Komboï. According to Xenakis, its name is not based on lexical roots, but it is rather taken from individual phonemes. Scholar Andreas Kouras argues that it could be “a Greek exclamation used while dancing and celebrating“. It premiered on September 17, 1989, at the Warsaw Autumn Festival, a venue that the composer visited frequently, where he also premiered a number of his previous works. It was first performed by the dedicatees of the piece, percussionist Sylvio Gualda and harpsichordist Elisabeth Chojnacka, who had been performing together as a duo in many modern music festivals at the time and commissioned many compositions for them after Komboï. It was published by Éditions Salabert later