ABSTRACT
This chapter examines several points of convergence between the two composer's musical poetics, including their use of additive rhythm, serial techniques and permutations. However, the central place accorded to Messiaen involves a particular view of Messiaen's musical poetics. Both as a pupil and later, as a recognized composer paying tribute to his master, Iannis Xenakis appears to have reacted to Messiaen's thinking with critical distance, showing attraction for only certain aspects of Messiaen's work. In the later testimonies, Xenakis gives Messiaen a central place in his autobiographical historiography. Citing Nouritza Matossian, Jean Boivin has written that Xenakis went to introduce himself to Messiaen at the end of one of his classes in 1951. All of the works composed during Xenakis's time in Messiaen class bear, in varying degrees, the mark of Messiaen's teachings, but Le Sacrifice, turned out to be a true tribute to Messiaen's compositional models insofar as it willingly integrates compositional models typical of Messiaen.
