"Drawn Into the Flight Path of the Sounds": Xenakis Listening Thread

"The listener must be gripped... The sensual shock must be just as forceful as when one hears a clap of thunder or looks into a bottomless abyss."

The plan is to listen to the entire oeuvre chronologically, 45-60m per week, for as long as it takes.

For this week, let's try

Zyia (folk), S, male vv (10 minimum), fl, pf, 1952
Metastaseis, 1953–4
Pithoprakta, 1955–6
Diamorphoses, 2-track, 1957–8
Concret PH, 2-track, 1958
Analogique A & B, 9 str + tape, 1958

And I'll recopy the complete list of works (orig source Oxford Music Online). We'll skip any unpublished works.

Orchestral:
Anastenaria: le sacrifice, orch (51 insts), 1953, sketch
Metastaseis, 1953–4; SWF SO, cond. H. Rosbaud, Donaueschingen, 16 Oct 1955
Pithoprakta, 1955–6; Bavarian RSO, cond. H. Scherchen, Munich, 8 March 1957
Achorripsis, 21 insts, 1956–7; Colón cond. Scherchen, Buenos Aires, 20 July 1958
Duel, 2 small orchs, 1959; Radio Hilversum PO, cond. D. Masson and F. Terby, Hilversum, 18 Oct 1971
Syrmos, 12 vn, 3 vc, 3 db, 1959; Ensemble Instrumental de Musique Contemporaine, cond. Simonović, Paris, 20 May 1969
Stratégie, 2 small orchs, 1959–62; Venice Festival Orchestra, cond. B. Maderna and C. Simonović, 25 April 1963
ST/48, 48 insts, 1959–62; Orchestre Philharmonique de l’ORTF, cond. L. Foss, Paris, 21 Oct 1968
Akrata, 16 wind, 1964–5; cond. Simonović, Paris, 1965
Terretektorh, 1966; Orchestre Philharmonique de l’ORTF, cond. Scherchen, Royan, 3 April 1966
Polytope, 4 orch groups, 1967; Ensemble Instrumental de Musique Contemporaine, cond. Simonović, Montreal, Expo 67, 1967
Nomos gamma, 1967–8; Orchestre Philharmonique de l’ORTF, cond. C. Bruck, Royan, 4 April 1969
Kraanerg (ballet), orch, tape, 1968; Ottawa, June 1969
Synaphaï, pf, orch, 1969; Pludermacher, cond. M. Tabachnik, Royan, 6 April 1971
Antikhthon (ballet), 1971; cond. Tabachnik, Bonn, Festival Xenakis, 21 Sept 1974
Eridanos, 8 brass, str orch, 1973; Ensemble Européen de Musique Contemporaine cond. Tabachnik, La Rochelle, 13 April 1973
Erikhthon, pf, orch, 1974; C. Helffer, Orchestre de l’ORTF, cond. Tabachnik, Paris, 21 May 1974
Noomena, 1974; Orchestre de Paris, cond. G. Solti, Paris, 16 Oct 1974
Empreintes, 1975; Netherlands Radio PO, cond. Tabachnik, La Rochelle, 29 June 1975
Jonchaies, 1977; Orchestre National de France, cond. Tabachnik, Paris, 21 Dec 1977
Aïs, amp Bar, perc, orch, 1980; S. Sakkas, Gualda, Bavarian RSO, cond. Tabachnik, Munich, 13 Feb 1981
Pour les baleines, str, 1982; Orchestre Colonne, cond. D. Masson, Orléans, 2 Dec 1983
Lichens, 1983; Liège PO, cond. Bartholomée, Liège 16 April 1984
Shaar, str, 1983; Jerusalem Sinfonietta, cond. J.- P. Izquierdo, Tel Aviv, 3 Feb 1983
Alax, 3 ens of 10 insts (fl, cl, 2 hn, trbn, hp, perc, vn, 2 vc), 1985; Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Köln, Gruppe Neue Musik Hanns Eisler, cond. E. Bour, Cologne, 15 Sept 1985
Horos, 1986; Japan PO, cond. H. Iwaki, Tokyo, 24 Oct 1986
Keqrops, pf, orch, 1986; R. Woodward, New York PO, cond. Z. Mehta, New York, 13 Nov 1986
Ata, 1987; SWF SO, cond. M. Gielen, Baden-Baden, 3 May 1988
Tracées, 1987; Orchestre National de Lille, cond. J.-C. Casadeus, Paris, 17 Sept 1987
Kyania, 1990; Montpellier PO, cond. Z. Peskó, Montpellier, 7 Dec 1990
Tuorakemsu, 1990; Shinsei Nippon Orchestra, cond. H. Iwaki, Tokyo, 9 Oct 1990
Dox-Orkh, vn, orch, 1991; Arditti, BBC SO, London, cond. A. Tamayo, Strasbourg, 6 Oct 1991
Krinòïdi, 1991; Orchestra Sinfonica dell’Emilia-Romagna ‘Arturo Toscanini’, cond. R. Encinar, Parma, May 1991
Roáï, 1991; Berlin RSO, cond. O. Henzold, Berlin, 24 March 1992
Troorkh, trbn, orch, 1991; C. Lindberg, Swedish RSO, cond. E.-P. Salonen, Stockholm, 26 March 1993
Mosaïques, 1993; Orchestre des Jeunes de la Méditerranée, cond. Tabachnik, Marseilles, 23 July 1993
Dämmerschein, 1993–4; Cologne RSO, cond. Peskó, Lisbon, 9 June 1994
Koïranoï 1994; NDR SO, cond. Peskó, Hamburg, 1 March 1996
Ioolkos, 1995; SWF SO, cond. K. Ryan, Donaueschingen, 20 Oct 1996
Voile, str, 1995; Munich Chamber Orchestra, cond. C. Poppen, Munich, 16 Nov 1995
Sea-Change, 1997; BBC SO, cond. A. Davis, London, 23 July 1997
O-Mega, perc solo, chbr orch, 1997; E. Glennie, London Sinfonietta, cond. M. Stenz, Huddersfield, 30 Nov 1997

Choral:
Zyia (folk), S, male vv (10 minimum), fl, pf, 1952; cond. R. Safir, Evreux, 5 April 1994
Anastenaria: procession aux eaux claires, SATB (30vv), male choir (15vv), orch (62 insts), 1953, sketch
Polla ta dhina (Sophocles: Antigone), children’s vv, wind, perc, 1962; cond. Scherchen, Stuttgart, 25 Oct 1962
Hiketides: les suppliates d’Eschyle, 50 female vv, 10 insts/orch, 1964; cond. Simonović, Paris, 1968
Oresteïa (incid music/concert work, Aeschylus), chorus, 12 insts, 1965–6; cond. Simonović, Ypsilanti, MI, 14 June 1966
Medea (incid music, Seneca), male vv, orch, 1967; cond. Masson, Paris, 29 March 1967
Nuits, 3 S, 3 A, 3 T, 3 B, 1967–8; cond. M. Couraud, Royan, 7 April 1968
Cendrées, chorus, orch, 1973–4; cond. Tabachnik, Lisbon, 20 June 1974
A Colone (Sophocles), male/female vv (20 minimum), 5 hn, 3 trbn, 6 vc, 4 db, 1977; Metz, 19 Nov 1977
A Hélène, Mez, female vv, 2 cl, 1977; Epidavros, July 1977
Anemoessa (phonemic text), SATB (42 minimum), orch, 1979; cond. R. Dufallo, Amsterdam, 21 June 1979
Nekuïa (phonemes and text from J.-P. Richter: Siebenkäs and Xenakis: Ecoute), SATB (54 minimum), orch, 1981; cond. Tabachnik, Cologne, 26 March 1982
Pour la Paix (Xenakis), SATB, 2 female spkrs, 2 male spkrs, tape (UPIC), 1981, version for SATB (32 minimum); cond. M. Tranchant, Paris, 23 April 1982
Serment-Orkos (Hippocrates), SATB (32 minimum), 1981; Greek Radio Choir, Athens, 1981
Chant des Soleils (Xenakis, after P. du Mans), SATB, children’s choir, 18 brass 6 (hn, 6 tpt, 6 trbn) or multiple, perc, 1983; Nord-Pas-de-Calais [simultaneous performance in several towns of the region], 21 June 1983
Idmen A/Idmen B (phonemes from Hesiod: Theogony), SATB (64 minimum), 4/6 perc, 1985; Antifona de Cluj, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, 24 July 1985
Knephas (phonemes by Xenakis), SATB (32 minimum), 1990; cond. J. Wood, London, 24 June 1990
Pu wijnuej we fyp (A. Rimbaud), children’s choir, 1992; cond. D. Dupays, Paris, 5 Dec 1992
Vakchai Evripidou (Les Bacchantes d' Euripide), Bar, female vv (also playing maracas), pic, ob, dbn, hn, tpt, trbn, 3 perc, 1993; J. Dixon, cond. N. Kok, London, 1 Sept 1993
Sea-Nymphs (phonemes from W. Shakespeare: The Tempest), SATB (24 minimum), 1994; cond. S. Joly, London, 16 Sept 1994

Other vocal:
Tripli zyia, 1v, pf, 1952, unpubd
Trois poèmes (F. Villon: Aiés pitié de moy, V. Mayakovsky: Ce soir je donne mon concert d’adieux, Ritsos: Earini Symphonia [Spring Symphony]), 1v, pf, 1952, unpubd
La colombe de la paix, A, 4vv (SATB), 1953, unpubd
Stamatis Katotakis (table song), 1v, male vv, 1953, unpubd
N’shima, 2 Mez/A, 2 hn, 2 trbn, vc, 1975; cond. J.-P. Izquierdo, Jerusalem, Feb 1976
Pour Maurice, Bar, pf, 1982; S. Sakkas, C. Helffer, Brussels, 18 Oct 1982
Kassandra (Aeschylus), Bar + 20str psalterion, perc, 1987; Sakkas, Gualda, Gibellina, 21 Aug 1987 [second part of Oresteïa: see CHORAL]
La déesse Athéna (Aeschylus), Bar, pic, ob, E♭ cl, db cl, dbn, hn, pic tpt, trbn, tuba, perc, vc, 1992; Sakkas, cond. Tabachnik, Athens, 3 May 1992 [scene from Oresteïa: see CHORAL]

Chamber:
Dipli Zyia, vn, vc, 1951, unpubd
ST/4, str qt, 1956–62; Bernède Quartet, Paris, 1962
ST/10, cl, b cl, 2 hn, hp, perc, str qt, 1956–62 cond. Simonović, Paris, May 1962
Morsima-Amorsima, pf, vn, vc, db, 1956–62; cond. Foss, Athens, 16 Dec 1962
Analogique A, 9 str, 1958 [must be performed with tape work Analogique B]; cond. Scherchen, Gravesano, summer 1959
Amorsima-Morsima, cl, b cl, 2 hn, hp, perc, str qt; cond. Foss, Athens, 1962
Atrées, fl, cl, b cl, hn, tpt, trbn, 2 perc, vn, vc, 1962; cond. Simonović, Paris, 1962
Eonta, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, pf, 1963–4; cond. P. Boulez, Paris, 16 Dec 1964
Anaktoria, cl, bn, hn, str qt, db, 1969; Octuor de Paris, Avignon, 3 July 1969
Persephassa, 6 perc, 1969; Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Persepolis, 9 Sept 1969
Aroura, 12 str, 1971; cond. Tabachnik, Lucerne, 24 Aug 1971
Charisma, cl, vc, 1971; Royan, 6 April 1971
Linaia-Agon, hn, trbn, tuba, 1972; cond. Tabachnik, London, 26 April 1972
Phlegra, 11 insts, 1975; cond. Tabachnik, London, 28 Jan 1976
Epeï, eng hn, cl, tpt, 2 trbn, db, 1976; cond. S. Garant, Montréal, 9 Dec 1976
Retours-Windungen, 12 vc, 1976; Berlin PO, Bonn, 20 Feb 1976
Dmaathen, ob, perc, 1976; N. Post, J. Williams, New York, May 1977
Akanthos, 9 insts, 1977; Ensemble Studio 111, Strasburg, 17 June 1977
Ikhoor, str trio, 1978; Trio à Cordes Français, Paris, 2 April 1978
Dikhthas, vn, pf, 1979; S. Accardo, B. Canino, Bonn, 4 June 1980
Palimpsest, eng hn, b cl, bn, hn, perc, pf, str qnt, 1979; cond. S. Gorli, Aquila, 3 March 1979
Pléïades, 6 perc, 1979; Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, 17 May 1979
Komboï, amp hpd, perc, 1981; Chojnacka, Gualda, Metz, 22 Nov 1981
Khal Perr, brass qnt, 2 perc, 1983; Quintette Arban, Alsace Percussions, Beaune, 15 July 1983
Tetras, str qt, 1983; Arditti String Quartet, Lisbon, 8 June 1983
Thalleïn, pic, ob, cl, bn, hn, pic tpt, trbn, perc, pf, str qnt, 1984; cond. E. Howarth, London, 14 Feb 1984
Nyûyô [Setting Sun], shakuhachi, sangen, 2 koto; 1985; Angers, Ensemble Yonin-No Kai (Tokyo), 30 June 1985
Akea, pf, str qt, 1986; Helffer, Arditti String Quartet, Paris, 15 Dec 1986
A l’Ile de Gorée, amp hpd, pic, ob, cl, bn, hn, tpt, str qnt, 1986; cond. Kerstens, Amsterdam, 4 July 1986
Jalons, pic, ob, b cl, db cl, dbn, hn, tpt, trbn, tuba, hp, str qnt, 1986; cond. Boulez, Paris, 26 Jan 1987
XAS, sax qt, 1987; Raschèr Quartet, Lille, 17 Nov 1987
Waarg, pic, ob, cl, bn, hn, tpt, trbn, tuba, str qnt, 1988; cond. Howarth, London, 6 May 1988
Echange, solo b cl, fl, ob, cl, bn, hn, tpt, trbn, tuba, str qnt, 1989; H. Sparnaay, cond. Porcelijn, Amsterdam, 26 April 1989
Epcycle, solo vc, fl, ob, cl, hn, tpt, trbn, tuba, 2 vn, va, db, 1989; R. de Saram, Spectrum Ensemble, cond. G. Protheroe, London, 18 May 1989
Okho, 3 djembés, tall African drum, 1989; Trio Le Cercle, Paris, 20 Oct 1989
Ophaa, hpd, perc, 1989; Chojnacka, Gualda, Warsaw, 17 Sep 1989
Tetora, str qt, 1990; Arditti String Quartet, Witten, 27 Apr 1991
Paille in the wind, vc, pf, 1992; J. Scalfi, Woodward, Milan, 14 Dec 1992
Plektó, fl, cl, perc, pf, vn, vc, 1993; cond. R. Platz, Witten, 24 April 1994
Ergma, str qt, 1994; Mondrian String Quartet, The Hague, 17 Dec 1994
Mnamas Xapin Witoldowi Lutoslavskiemu [In Memory of Witold Lutosławski], 2 hn, 2 tpt, 1994; cond. W. Michniewki, Warsaw, 21 Sept 1994
Kaï, fl, cl, bn, tpt, trbn, vn, va, vc, db, 1995; cond. D. Coleman, Oldenburg, 12 Nov 1995
Kuïlenn, fl, 2 ob, 2 cl, 2 bn, 2 hn, 1995; Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Amsterdam, 10 June 1996
Hunem-Iduhey, vn, vc, 1996; E. Michell, O. Akahoshi, New York, 9 Aug 1996
Ittidra, str sextet, 1996; Arditti String Quartet, T. Kakuska (va), V. Erben (vc), Frankfurt, 4 Oct 1996
Roscobeck, vc, db, 1996; R. de Saram, S. Scordanibbio, Cologne, 6 Dec 1996
Zythos, trbn, 6 perc, 1996; Lindberg, Kroumata Ensemble, Birmingham, 10 April 1997

Solo instrumental:
Seven piano pieces without title, Menuet, Air populaire, Allegro molto, Mélodie, Andante, pf, 1949–50, unpubd
Suite, pf, 1950–51, unpubd
Thème et conséquences, pf, 1951, unpubd
Herma, pf, 1960–61
Nomos alpha, vc, 1965–6; S. Palm, Bremen, 5 May 1966
Mikka, vn, 1971; I. Gitlis, Paris, 27 Oct 1972
Evryali, pf, 1973; C. Helffer, Paris, 1974
Gmeeoorh, org, 1974; C. Holloway, U. of Hartford, CT, 1974
Psappha, perc, 1975; S. Gualda London, 2 May 1976
Theraps, db, 1975–6; F. Grillo, 26 March 1976
Khoaï, hpd, 1976; E. Chojnacka, Cologne, 5 May 1976
Mikka ‘S’, vn, 1976; R. Pasquier, Orléans, 11 March 1976
Kottos, vc, 1977; M. Rostropovich, La Rochelle, 28 June 1977
Embellie, va, 1981; G. Renon-McLaughlin, Paris, 1981
Mists, pf, 1981; Woodward, Edinburgh, 1981
Naama, amp hpd, 1984; Chojnacka, Luxembourg, 20 May 1984
Keren, trbn, 1986; B. Sluchin, Strasbourg, 19 Sept 1986
A r. (Hommage à Ravel), pf, 1987; H. Austbö, Montpellier, 2 Aug 1987
Rebonds, perc, 1988; Gualda, Rome, 1 July 1988

Tape
some works exist in one or more revised realizations

Diamorphoses, 2-track, 1957–8; Brussels, 5 Oct 1958
Concret PH, 2-track, 1958; Brussels, Philips Pavilion, 1958
Analogique B, 2-track, 1958–9 [must be performed with chbr work Analogique A]; cond. Scherchen, Gravesano, summer 1959
Orient-Occident, 2-track, 1960; Cannes, May 1960
The Thessaloniki World Fair (film score), 1-track, 1961
Bohor, 4-track, 1962; Paris, 15 Dec 1962
Hibiki Hana Ma, 12-track, 1969–70; Osaka, Expo 70, 1970
Persépolis, 8-track, 1971; Persepolis, 26 Aug 1971
Polytope de Cluny, 8-track, lighting, 1972; Paris, 17 Oct 1972
Polytope II, tape, lighting, 1974; Paris, 1974
La legénde d'Eer (Diatope), 4- or 8-track, 1977; Paris, 11 Feb 1978
Mycenae alpha, 2-track, UPIC, 1978; Mycenae, 2 Aug 1978
Taurhiphanie, 2-track, UPIC, 1987; Arles, 13 July 1988
Voyage absolu des Unari vers Andromède, 2-track, UPIC; Osaka, 1 April 1989
GENDY3, 2-track, Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis, 1991; Metz, 17 Nov 1991
S 709, 2-track Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis, 1994; Paris, 2 Dec 1994

The versions of Zyia that I see on Spotify, Youtube, and a quick look at Naxos all seem to be for solo soprano with flute and piano but that version also seems to date from 1952 so should be fine.

Thanks for setting this up. I’ll get on it asap.

Oh wow, you went ahead with it. Awesome. I shall return...

Yes pls

I listened to two recordings of Zyia: the one on Spotify sung by Angelica Cathariou and this one, with Raquel Camarinha singing: https://youtu.be/qLxLx29S2yA ; found a score on Scribd. The one on Youtube made the stronger first impression - and it's a strong one, with pretty (if very complex) melodies juxtaposed against clusters in the piano's low register, sometimes reminiscent in a way of what Vivier would get up to a couple of decades later. Quite different from the stochastic music we typically associate with Xenakis, still very much built around melody and metre. The vocal melody lines often draw on diatonic collections and even suggest tonal goals, although these change frequently and the clusters in the piano part obscure tonality. Metre also changes often, with additive patterns appearing at times.

Metastaseis - opus 1! Just listened to two versions this morning, the Rosbaud-conducted one on this box: https://www.discogs.com/Various-Musique-De-Notre-Temps-Reperes-19451975/release/2583078 and the Tamayo-conducted RAI Symphony one I streamed on Naxos, which I liked so much I listened to it two more times. We're into the real deal now - huge, terrifying sound masses with that stunning first crescendo. Must have been incredible to see in 1955, a half-decade before Ligeti's and Penderecki's sound mass pieces, well before sci fi and horror film directors adopted those sounds. I'm sure it would still be a dazzling live experience. This was actually the first piece I ever heard by Xenakis, in an undergrad music history class. Definitely made an impression.

Just took a look at the score and wow, yeah, 60 different parts, all written out by hand. Sort of incredible that there was a time when a Greek guy in his early 30s could even write something like this as his op. 1 and get it performed.

I've listened to Zyia twice now, several hours apart. I like what the piano and flutes doing a lot, though the presence of vocals (not sure I've heard Xenakis with a solo vocalist before!) makes me slightly anxious about what I'm missing in the absence of a translation. The low clunky piano rhythms around, say, the 5:00 mark bring to mind Messiaen. Though it's fair to say that I'm kinda conditioned to hear Messiaen in things!

Pithoprakta - just listened to the Tamayo-conducted Luxembourg Orchestra recording. This is probably the Xenakis piece I've listened to most, since I used it when teaching for a couple of years. He kept the 46 strings, two trombones, and wood block from Metastaseis but not the rest of the winds and brass. All playing individual parts again. Doesn't quite have the huge dramatic moments of Metastaseis but I find it a bit more satisfying as an overall composition, I think. The arc-like form is very pleasing and well-constructed and the percussive extended techniques on the strings are great. The composition was inspired by Brownian motion iirc. A great demonstration of this concept:

The collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field. These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen as totality, is a new sonic event.

Yeah, tbh, I have no idea where the text for Zyia comes from or what it's saying. If someone has a translation or speaks Greek, would be happy to hear!

Heroic! Looking forward to this.

Hi, is it okay for me to join in with this? I probably won't have much of interest to contribute, but despite having heard about "this guy Xenakis" for much of my music-listening life I've never really investigated the work, so this would be a cool learning experience.

following, this guy is on my list to investigate further

Same here.

Everyone is welcome!

Xenakis would have definitely wanted it that way. The full quote referenced above, as quoted in Ross, is in fact "The listener must be gripped and—whether he likes it or not—drawn into the flight path of the sounds, without a special training being necessary. The sensual shock must be just as forceful as when one hears a clap of thunder or looks into a bottomless abyss."

He's not a composer I'd say I'm exceptionally well-versed in myself so this is meant to be educational for all involved.

Ιάννης Ξενάκης otm.

I've got all his stuff and am most familiar with and have a preference for his piano works and have nothing of interest to say beyond oafish inarticulate enthusiasm - so I'll be another lurking observer here. Maybe learn something for once!

Btw, Nagx3, I don't think it's just your conditioning: Xenakis studied with Messiaen. If you can read French, this gets into the relationship between the two, with some discussion of Zyia: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/770144/filename/Notes_sur_les_relations_musicales_entre_Xenakis_et_Messiaen.pdf

It seems like this is a piece Messiaen went over with Xenakis when he was working on it. The quotes from Xenakis's notes show that Messiaen's comments were important to him. He mentions Messiaen's praise and specific comments on various compositional elements, thanked him and said it was thanks to his encouragement and instruction in Indian rhythms as well as Le Corbusier and Greek folk music, and even noted that he felt like "a new man" because of Messiaen's encouragement:

15 novembre 1952. Messiaen a vu la Zyia. Il l’a lue attentivement en en trouvant des fautes de copie. Il m’a dit : « Mais c’est formidable le progrès que vous avez fait depuis les harmonisations. Vous avez maintenant une langue, un style. C’est très très bien. Comment avez-vous fait ? Vous vous rendez compte ? ». J’ai dit que c’était grâce à lui, à son encouragement, à ses leçons, ensuite à la rythmique hindoue, à Le Corbusier et ?? à la musique populaire grecque.
Il m’a répété son étonnement [41] à plusieurs reprises.
Il m’a dit qu’il voudrait bien entendre la partie centrale, ?? [soprano], flûte et piano, qu’il trouve exceptionnelle à cause de la combinaison des timbres, mélodies et rythmes.
Il a eu un doute quant au raccord de la strette avec les doubles croches de Bartók, mais, a-t-il dit, ce sera très bien quand même.
...
Il a trouvé la partie du piano solo avec la variante du refrain très bien et pas du tout longue et statique, à cause des accidents rythmiques (changements de mesures).
Il m’a proposé de montrer la Zyia de sa part à Marcel Couraud pour qu’il la mette dans ses
...
[42] Je commence à me sentir à nouveau un homme parce que les paroles de Messiaen sont très encourageantes et parce que je ?? ?? ?? {suis d’accord avec lui}. C’est le début de la fin du Moyen âge ?22 »

He recalled the composer Iannis Xenakis saying that it would take him six months to figure out a 30-minute Cecil Taylor piece. Xenakis is “my favorite European composer,” Taylor continued

Cecil was obv a big fan.

The few things I'd heard from him were very abstract and cacophonous, so the relative accessibility and simplicity of Zyia is a nice start. Looking forward to following this.

now listening to Metastaseis. Yeah this guy is the Autechre of orchestral music

thanks so much for this, Sund4r. will check in later tonight when i get a chance to listen to this first set of compositions.

Diamorphoses: I always preferred Xenakis's instrumental music to his electronic music so it's good to be able to revisit and reconsider these pieces I haven't listened to in ages. This was his first electronic work, done at Pierre Schaeffer's GRM studio, again, while he was Messiaen's student. A musique concrète work in ternary form based on white noise as well as aiui samples including bells, trains, and jet engines. On the first couple of listens, I listened for the form, which seems clear enough, with the low-end white noise largely dropping out or becoming less consistent in the second section. The glissandi derived from the bell samples are v cool. Obv people have done much more complex and elaborate things with electronic processing since then but the creativity and vision here still come through and the form is very well-balanced and pleasing. (And noise artists still do LESS complex and elaborate things as well!) Has a similar dark, intense character as some of his instrumental music from around the same time, and certainly when compared to other early musique concrète.

Concret PH: next piece on the CD. This short work is derived from 1s samples of crackling embers, layered in different densities, similar to the sound mass processes he was working with in his instrumental music. Written for the Philips pavillion at the World Fair, to be played between playings of Varèse's Poème électronique. It doesn't have as much dramatic impact but the sounds are pleasant.

I want in but I didn't see this thread until right now. I assume we do 5 pieces a week so if you miss one, you can catch up later?

45-60m of music a week and we're still in the middle of the first week.

Is anyone doing a Spotify playlist? Should I?

That would be great if you want to do that, thanks!

A few of the more prominent recordings on Youtube:

Metastaseis - Orchestre National de l'O.R.T.F./Maurice Le Roux
Metastaseis - Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra/Arturo Tamayo

Pithoprakta - Orchestre National de l'O.R.T.F./Maurice Le Roux
Pithoprakta - Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra/Arturo Tamayo

Diamorphoses - magnetic tape

Concret PH - magnetic tape

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1J3dBKMAwe0ttB13rMogfX?si=IlhgenD_S1e5M0Wkv3nqFQ if anyone needs it. Open to suggestions ofc

Haha, freaky timing.

Analogique A+B: well, this is definitely different. A piece for 9 strings (Analogique A) and 4-track tape (Analogique B), where the ensemble and the tape alternate in a call and response fashion. From what I gather from here: https://www.iannis-xenakis.org/fxe/catalog/oeuvre_15.html , the A part was composed by stochastically generating material in arbitrary ranges of pitch (frequency?), volume, and density, and these ranges change according to probabilities determined by a Markov chain, resulting in eight 'sonic states'. The tape part is an early (the first?) granular synthesis composition, based on similar processes. Unlike the other pieces so far, these structural ideas are not apparent on listening, at least to me in two distracted listens. Feels comparatively static. Some interesting sounds for certain. I might give it another try.

Spotify link for this one: https://open.spotify.com/album/6DqkaXUhKsbnshFkzhnfOG?si=GXgMPYPmSceXKtcafUxRQQ

Thanks, Tom!

Running late on this... I’ll get there before the week’s through.

I'm familiar with Concret PH and Diamorphoses from an LP called Electro-Acoustic Music that I got out of the library as a teenager. Those versions are apparently revisions from 1968, although I don't know if that simply means that was when a stereo mixdown was made. The liner notes to that record describe Diamorphoses as having four parts, with the two inner sections having less sonic density than the other ones.

I wonder if the relative homogeneity of the sound sources that he uses makes his work easier to parse for "rock" based listeners than composers who used a very eclectic variety of sounds. There is more of an atmosphere and mood here than in some electronic music of the era where the composer is changing directions every 15 seconds.

I probably won't be able to listen to everything week by week, but threads like these are a great resource to go back to at a later date!

Interesting. The liner notes to the 1997 Xenakis - Electronic Music CD describe Diamorphoses as a ternary form, which is audible to me and is a standard classical form, but I can see how you could subdivide the middle section into two subsections for a four-part form.

Analogique sounds pretty cool on first listen. Definitely never heard that before. Though I've tended to get more mileage out of his chamber stuff and his tapes/electronic stuff than the vast-clouds-of-sound stuff and he's neatly catering for that niche market here. :)

Catching up. Zyia is indeed Messiaen-esque, occasionally even Bartókian in its writing for the piano (maybe because Xenakis was born in Brăila?), with a dash of André Jolivet in its conception of neo-classicism as a return to pre-Christian Greek sources. I also hear echoes of Ravel's Cinq mélodies populaires grecques, which leads me to speculate that Xenakis perhaps subsequently felt the need to break with the 'exotisant' gaze of the French scene through a more forceful idiom of his own. Anyhow, I very much agree with Sund4r that the vocal melodies in particular look ahead to Claude Vivier (himself a quasi student of Messiaen via Gilles Tremblay), although to my knowledge Xenakis doesn't seem to have explored this avenue much further in his later compositions.

Even with the benefit of experience, I was expecting Metastaseis to come as a shock after Zyia, but the nifty thing about these listening threads is that they help you re-contextualize and re-historicize that which might otherwise seem sui generis. When listening to them back-to-back, both come across as constructs made of space, which to my mind implies a move away from narrative (a chiefly temporal art) and makes me wonder what Metastaseis in particular would sound like if it were played backwards or cut up and stitched back together in a different order. After all, the title really just means 'change' (including political change, which is not irrelevant here), as though to mark not only a break with his juvenilia but also to indicate that the work itself is by no means set in stone, a music of constant becoming rather than of being, quite unlike the fantasies of a return to European civilization's Greek 'roots' some of the aforementioned French composers peddled in their own compositions.

Pithoprakta is where Big Brain Xenakis really comes to the fore. Glissandos conceived as the thermodynamic movement of gas molecules, underlying scientific laws promulgated by German and British dudes whose names I'm too much of a philistine to remember, probability theory as the basis of aesthetics… I imagine this is all a musicologist's wet dream, and I am in no position to intelligently comment on any of it, but I will say that the application of theorems drawn from other disciplines to notated music remains an incredibly fecund compositional approach and – as much as I value it in its own right – it does put the comparative narrow-mindedness of integral serialism to shame. I will also say that it also sounds great (tbf I'm a sucker for string orchestras, here augmented by two discreet trombones, xylophone and a wood block), and the coexistence of pointillistic pizzicatos and nearly smeared glissandos foreshadows Ligeti's beloved 'clocks & clouds'.

Musique concrète is a blind spot for me more often than not, but I found much to enjoy in Diamorphoses, the second piece of his I had never heard so far (after Zyia). Sund4r summed it up nicely, and helped me get a better grip on what goes on in this piece, which does indeed strike me as more modern (and listenable, frankly) than what many of Xenakis's peers were up to at the time in their own electronic experiments. The link between this and his orchestral works is also quite obvious in terms of their sense of shape, and it gets me thinking about how much of Xenakis's art is one of correlation and translation between different media, almost as though he were guided by a theory of forms, if you'll forgive the lame reference.

Concret PH is considerably glassier and hence more, uh, concrete, but it also evokes a piano, which creates a strange aural illusion whereby the abstract (absolute music) and the figurative (recognizable noises made by everyday objects) coexist. It makes for an eloquent little fragment (or shard).

Analogique is perhaps the toughest nut to crack thus far, although quite interesting in that it spells out what I was just saying about correlation: its stated aim is to seek analogies between the strings and their corresponding tape material, which often requires that the two soundworlds take turns, thereby stressing their distinctness. This dual state greatly serves the piece imo – listening to A and B in isolation wouldn't work quite as well.

As a student of, mainly, the natural sciences it's possible Xenakis' borrowings from extra-musical disciplines are part of the appeal before even hearing a note. I mean, I don't feel like it aids comprehension (the maths, when written out, looks immensely scary) but when one reads about him and finds diagrams of probability distributions and auditory response thresholds, etc, a certain deeply nerdy part of my brain gets all "these are a few of my favourite things". Hehe.

Can't find Analogique on youtube and I've forgotten my spotify password as I use it so little, so I guess I'll have to skip it? Bah.

Some scattered thoughts, probably of no use to anyone (I'm also going to try to avoid musicology terms in fear of using them wrong in front of proper musical theorists/classical buffs, so I'm gonna come across as very basic):

Zyia - not what I was expecting but I really like this one. The vocal fixes me, an anchor point in the sea, while the instrumentation roils. Nice, nice.

Metastaesis and Pithoprakta are in line with what I expected Xenakis to sound like, probably b/c the former is the only one I've heard before. The latter almost gave me an anxiety attack tbh. I used to chill out to Stockhausen and sounds like that, I don't think I can do it any more. Doesn't mean I don't like it, it's super cool, but my chest was definitely tightening in places.

Diamorphoses - love this but I want to argue with pomenitul's statement that it's more modern (and listenable, frankly) than what many of Xenakis's peers were up to at the time in their own electronic experiments, I'm just not sure I'm up to the job. Would be interested to know what pieces you were thinking of specifically in your comparison, and maybe we could tease out why we differ in stances?

Concret PH - this is gorgeous and I wish it went on forever. It's obviously the least 'composed' of all the pieces on the list, but the sounds are perfect for me.

I was thinking of stuff like Varèse's Poème électronique, Stockhausen's Studie II, Boulez's Etudes I & II, Barraqué's Etude (I see a pattern here!), etc. Luc Ferrari, Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, Bernard Parmegiani and other noted musique concrète practitioners from that era are in a different category as far as I'm concerned because they devoted the quasi entirety of their efforts to the genre.

Ah, okay, so that rules out some counterpoints, and I don't know the Boulez or Barraqué. Poème électronique is basically godhead to me, so I've got to disagree about its listenability at least. Do you think that what separates out Diamorphoses is that it's already moved to composition where the examples you mention are still stuck in exploration?

If you don't know Vivier's Lonely Child, it might be worth a try if you like Zyia.

I do not, thank you!

Do you think that what separates out Diamorphoses is that it's already moved to composition where the examples you mention are still stuck in exploration?

I would say so, yes. Keep in mind that I am generally not very receptive to tape music/musique concrète/sound collage/early electronic experiments/Cageian 'banal noises are also music', so my assessment is bound to be harsh by default – no doubt unfairly so, but we all have our blind spots. Perhaps I'll overcome this one someday.

Check out the studio version with Susan Narucki – you can find it here.

xp

Oy, well, we shall have to differ then because those things are very much my jam. But I can accept the composition vs exploration thing, just relistened to Studie II and I definitely see it there, it sounds wonderful to my ears but it is rather simplistic, I think.

xp

I'm finding Pithoprakta much more pleasing than Metastaseis. The latter always seemed to be the Xenakis piece mentioned when I started to read bits and pieces on 20th century music in the '90s. I've listened to it a few times as a result and I don't recall making much progress with it. It's rarely actually ugly and those moments where a large proportion of instruments converge in a sustained period of something suggesting a more or less conventional harmonic relationship do achieve a pleasing sense of resolution. But I'm still craving something more to drag me forward.

I don't think I'd previously spent any time with Pithoprakta but, despite it feeling less dense, more hazy still in terms in harmony and occasionally like a scratchy mess (LOL) I somehow sense more persistent forward momentum, which is apparently important to this particular brain. So yay for Pithoprakta!

Agreed. Metastaseis is the more legendary piece, but Pithoprakta yields greater rewards.

Listening to the playlist now, which includes two Zyias, two, Metastaseis, and two Concret PHs, and still slides in under CD length (shameless plug). Zyia the first (for Soprano) is surprisingly tuneful or tonal. It sounds like it's of the tradition of Balkan music, to some extent. The low end keyboard clusters are like the deeper sounds of the dauli. Now this could be more to do with my generally poor understanding of Balkan harmony and tonality, but the melodies and most of the harmonies do sound pretty close to conventional for the style.

And the rapidly switching 4ths or 5ths (or maybe a much weirder interval) remind me of zurna melodies, where cutting off a note presents a seemingly unrelated note, which I always assumed was a drone.

I hope the lyrics are about drinking ouzo and kicking your husband out of your house, but it seems unlikely.

On to the second Zyia, which seems more dramatic somehow? And the comparisons to Greek folk music seem more tenuous. If the tempi are slower, how did it pull in two minutes shorter?

Metastaseis for 60 musicians, but you only put five on the cover? That's cold. Also I hope whoever was playing woodblock got a raise, playing all those volume markings.

Luxembourg's woodblock is shrill.

Pithoprakta sounds like a dissection of a game of Plinko.

In the last minute of Pithoprakta, it doesn't sound too crazy, but imagine seeing a string orchestra perform it live and get that sound.

This recording of Diamorphoses sounds like it was taken from a 78, but I guess that's part of the charm? Definitely not something my local amateur wind band is going to put on.

I would love to see the score to Diamorphoses.

Xenakis scores never disappoint. Mostly it seems to be weird mathy stuff that I can't figure out, a circle with bar lines and diagonal lines between colored note heads or something. Graphical stuff rules, and makes me glad I quit the idea of playing professionally.

Remastered Concret PH: like sticking your head inside a rain stick while it's being upturned.

emil.y I don't know what to say. When I was in high school we had a pair of soft mallets where the stick parts were made of some kind of hideous metal that, when you clicked them together, sounded like biting your teeth on a soda can. That's what concret PH sounds like to me. I can't imagine being relaxed by this noise.

UGH I'm listening to it TWICE why am I DOING THIS

I wasn't sure Analogique A+B was going to have both the call and the response, but it seems to (on this Spotify recording). A little yelpy but otherwise good fun. Honestly the string part by itself I wouldn't be interested in, the weird imitation strings 50s synth bits are what keep me going.

A YouTube version of Analogique A+B: https://youtu.be/qSbdkTArkN8

There's a score for Diamorphoses?

Maybe that's not a safe assumption.

some kind of hideous metal that, when you clicked them together, sounded like biting your teeth on a soda can

There's definitely a bad reaction to the taste/feel of metal in your mouth I can imagine, but tbh this sounds like it would make a good noise to me.

Thanks for the youtube link, I'll catch up in a bit.

I'd never really given much thought to the Xenakis/noise continuum, mostly because my knowledge of the latter is severely lacking, but it does make perfect sense.

Diamorphoses is ofc a recorded musique concrète piece so I imagine if there's a 'score', it would be either some kind of pre-planning diagram or an after-the-fact listening score like the one for Ligeti's Artikulation? I don't think he used graphic notation for his instrumental works? Everything I've seen is v precisely traditionally notated.

But if you found a diagram or listening score, I'm totally interested to see it. (Or is there something else?)

On Xenakis vs noise, I haven't heard this album but it might be instructive: https://www.discogs.com/Iannis-Xenakis-Persepolis-Remixes-Edition-I/release/197685

There's a research paper on Diamorphoses here that I haven't read yet. There's a bunch of images, including a sort of graphical transcription. When I was in college I borrowed an early Stockhausen CD from the school library, a bunch of it was musique concrète and there were color coded images that represented the sounds somehow, so I guess I assumed all musique concrète started with a score. Admittedly that is kind of an absurd idea, now that I think about it.

(TBC I did not find that paper last night, I just found it now, and was shooting from the hip based on really limited knowledge of the style. Don't drink and Xenakis, kids.)

Tonight We're Gonna Xenakis You Tonight

Don't drink and Xenakis, kids.

Hard disagree:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7f/73/5f/7f735fad75dfef6c639b1ff7b3460995.jpg

Ha, who is he talking to there?

Is he holding two whiskies?

No idea, alas.

xp I sure hope so!

I'm glad I lived to see this day.

The research paper (more like a presentation, almost PowerPoint in style) is really interesting. It's dry, but so far it's not too far over my head. Although the next section is called "Logarithmic perception of density," so I may be about to tap out. Also the author doesn't translate a few Xenakis quotes from an interview in French, although I could Google Translate those if I really felt the urge.

Also the "morphophone" looks like one of those record players that costs more than a car.

Re: that photo, I found the source. He's chatting with Roger Reynolds.

http://www.rogerreynolds.com/gallery/gallery_reynolds_xenakis.html

Ah ha

…who is 86 now! The JACK Quartet just released an album featuring two of his recent works, incidentally. I haven't heard them yet, but I certainly will very soon.

This week's selections:
Achorripsis, 21 insts, 1956–7
Duel, 2 small orchs, 1959
Syrmos, 12 vn, 3 vc, 3 db, 1959
Herma, pf, 1960–61
Orient-Occident, 2-track, 1960

Achorripsis: I like this one a lot. Comparatively sparse and a bit reminiscent to me of Webern in its pointillistic texture but with the man's signature shifts of statistical density (calculated with matrices of probabilities from what I gather, with instruments grouped based on timbre), allowing for a very clear linear form, which I always appreciate with him. As noted here, "transparent textures, string glissandi and pizzicati, dabs of colours that might have dazzled the serialists of the time if they'd been less dogmatic": https://www.iannis-xenakis.org/fxe/catalog/oeuvre_12.html

Syrmos: listening to the Ensemble Resonanz recording on Spotify and holy shit. The sounds he gets from these 18 strings are huge. Sweeping glissandi, pizzicati, and col legno sounds. So, reading a bit, I gather that he did make graphic scores for pieces before notating them conventionally? The excerpt of the (traditionally notated) score here is v cool and actually v precise in terms of the tuplet durations between stopped pitches that slide into each other: http://iannis-xenakis.org/fxe/catalog/oeuvre_16.html

Reviews from the 60s, in English and French: http://www.centre-iannis-xenakis.org/files/original/683f89c597901f78fc57014c95ad1fdc.pdf

Woah, missed this! Bookmarked!

Re novelty vs satisfactoryness of Metastaseis vs Pithoprakta: it may be relevant that the former kinda documents Xenakis's disillusionment with integral serialism; the work was made the same year that he wrote the article "La crise de musique sérielle", and the middle bit is, if I remember correctly, serially based. To make the story tidier than it probably is, you can almost hear the switch over into his own idiom, while in Pithoprakta, it's probably all him, so to speak.

The serial crisis in his view, again surely oversimplified and according to my memory (corrections etc very welcome!), was that the efforts to introduce as much variation and as little repetition as possible had had the paradoxical effect of making everything sound the same, a grey mass, to our perception. His solution then was to manipulate parameters directly at a macro level, ie the things that we do perceive differences between, and rather let those decisions percolate down to the detailed notes.

The premiere of Metastaseis in Germany was apparently a bit of a scandal, and it took some time before the local avant-garde came around to him. I can't find any references to this on the internet, but I seem to remember reading an old review where words like "Katzenmusik" and "Totenmusik" were used.

Duel: When I was looking for Xenakis recordings a few years back, this one and Stratégie were pretty much the only two mature works I couldn't find at all. (It seems there is a Stratégie on YouTube.) Of course, these are probably the two works of his that will sound most different from performance to performance: the mathematical basis is game theory, and the works are themselves games. Two conductors continuously signal to their separate orchestras which parts of the score should be played in which manner, and amass points based on a two-dimensional table of the respective options.

Given their modest length, I've always thought it would be fun to have a CD dedicated to each work, with (say) four conductors facing off in two semifinals, followed by a third-place match and a final, so that we could hear a number of realizations of each piece. :)

Does that mean you've actually done this whole trip before?? You could be our guide! Didn't know that there are serial elements in the middle of Metastaseis! I'll look into that.

Orient-Occident: this is actually the only one of this week's pieces I've heard before. It's pleasant, in the best sense of the term - I find the timbres and rhythmic passages quite pleasurable to listen to. I somehow didn't quite clock until now that it was originally made to accompany a film that was supposed to portray various cultures from prehistory to the time of Alexander the Great. Xenakis seems to have taken a rather abstract approach to this, without any obvious cliché allusions that I can recognize, so much that I couldn't tell you by listening what any of the referenced cultures are supposed to be, but it makes for a nice sense of panoramic variety.

Interesting about Duel and Stratégie btw. Didn't know he wrote anything that aleatoric.

Does that mean you've actually done this whole trip before??

Started, not completed. Important difference. :) (I think things fizzled out a bit around Persephassa, for no specific reason.)

Re serialism in Metastaseis: looking at Wikipedia, I may have misunderstood; according to that page, the serial techniques were used in the middle part of Anastenaria, the three-part work of which Metastaseis was originally the third and final (and nonserial)part. On the other hand, this abstract fits with how I understood it.

Herma is great. Maybe I'm just partial to Takahashi for her Feldman playing, but this piece manages to convey emotions without anything you could point out and hum the following day.

Also, how about an ILX fan cover of Duel? Does anyone have access to the score? We could be the defining recording of the piece.

Oh! I just noticed something in the score to Achorripsis: Every tenth measure is numbered, as is not uncommon at all, except that the number comes after the requisite number of measures have been finished, not before the numbered measure! That is, contrary to what I think is common practice, the number 10 in a square is placed on the boundary between measure 10 and 11, not between measure 9 and 10. I find this far more logical, it has always annoyed me that the first number usually turns up after nine measures, and the remaining ones every tenth measure thereafter.

Unless, of course, this is also a common alternative convention that I've never noticed.

However, he uses another illogical convention: Notes sounding an octave higher/lower than written are marked by the number 8, fine, but then notes two octaves higher/lower should logically be marked 15, not 16 as here. I mean, I get why 16 is used, but there is no sensible way of counting 16 up from the written note and end up on the sounded note.

All of these things (as well as two fifths not adding up to a tenth but a ninth, etc) I guess stem from the number zero not being an immediate concept to humans, and/or the tendency to think in numbers of objects rather than the space between them. It's not so long ago that it was customary to e.g. consider a Wednesday to come three days after Monday, which seems a convention as useful as any other until you try to add or subtract.

Um, that was a digression.

(So an octave ought really to be called a septave, the unison should be a zeroson, the two fourths C-G and G-D would add up to the eighth C-D, and all would work out. I'm not holding my breath.)

I was thinking of stuff like Varèse's Poème électronique, Stockhausen's Studie II, Boulez's Etudes I & II, Barraqué's Etude (I see a pattern here!), etc. Luc Ferrari, Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, Bernard Parmegiani and other noted musique concrète practitioners from that era are in a different category as far as I'm concerned because they devoted the quasi entirety of their efforts to the genre.

Diamorphoses is 1958, Stockhausen had moved on to Gesang der Junglinge by then, so Studie II is not a great comparison. Things were moving fast in those days!

Fair point.

Btw if someone wants to do a series of musique concrète polls at some point, I'd be on board.

All of these things (as well as two fifths not adding up to a tenth but a ninth, etc) I guess stem from the number zero not being an immediate concept to humans, and/or the tendency to think in numbers of objects rather than the space between them. It's not so long ago that it was customary to e.g. consider a Wednesday to come three days after Monday, which seems a convention as useful as any other until you try to add or subtract.
(So an octave ought really to be called a septave, the unison should be a zeroson, the two fourths C-G and G-D would add up to the eighth C-D, and all would work out. I'm not holding my breath.)

Disagree that this would be more logical. I've never heard of that in terms of counting days of the week but I don't think this is the same - ordinal numbers are not the same as cardinal numbers. Interval size isn't labelled based on counting equally sized units (unless you're doing it in terms of tones or semitones). A cello playing C + a violin playing C doesn't add up to zero - it adds up to harmonic unity. A major third is the distance from the first note to the third note of the major scale, not a total of three units of something; the distance between a major third and a perfect fourth is less than the distance between a major second and a major third. Labelling measure numbers after the bar instead of before is unconventional (at least today) but isn't necessarily illogical. Labelling two octaves as a 16th is just madness.

I mean, if we want to actually measure intervals mathematically, we just say that an octave is 12 semitones, which is far more precise than calling it a septave or something.

I've listened to Takahashi's recording of Herma a few times now and have to admit I haven't found a way in yet. Maybe I should read more about it?

I hadn't read anything about it before listening, but maybe I just have lower standards for 20th century solo piano music? Or I was in a particularly receptive mood. Her recordings of Feldman were my only point of reference, for her playing I mean-- obviously the composers are not much alike.

No, I don't think it means you have low standards! It's a well-respected piece, I gather. I just didn't really feel like I understood it yet.

xps

Fair points, Sund4r. I concede that the current terminology works without particular problems in practice, but I cannot help finding it somewhat suboptimal. A minor point: I think how intervals measure in semitones is a red herring, or a separate matter; for tonal music at least, it seems to me that diatonic distance does make sense as a measure in itself, regardless of semitone buildup. In a major-scale metric, for instance, it makes sense in some contexts to say that the distance between a major third and a perfect fourth is the same as between a major second and a major third, even if it is only half the distance in a chromatic or log-frequency metric.

(Btw, the thing with measure numbers was that I found it more logical to label it after the bar.)

I guess the thing with a term like "(perfect) fifth" is that in actual use, it is just a convenient label for a certain relationship, without particular regard to the numeric content of the term. I mean, I would be much more likely to call a C-G interval in a Xenakis piece a "fifth" rather than a "seven-semitone interval", even if the number five has no relevance whatsoever there (as opposed to in a Beethoven sonata).

Fwiw, pcset theory, commonly used for analysing and sometimes writing post-tonal music, IS based on regarding C-G as a distance of seven semitones rather than a tonal relationship of a P5.

("Steps" - distinct from "whole steps/half steps" - are the units that are consistent between tonal intervals. I don't really see a logical inconsistency with saying that a third involves a distance of two steps.)

I listened to Marc Ponthus's recording of Herma this morning and it clicked right away. Maybe Takahashi softened me up.

Anyway, back to the works. There is quite the difference in tempo in the two recordings of Achorripsis on Spotify – the Luxembourg/Tamayo takes it at the pace specified in the score (approx 7 minutes), but the EIMC Paris/Simonovitch is almost 25% faster, at 5:19!

I don't have anything intelligent to add, but Achorripsis is a favourite of mine – I love how it mimics serialism without resorting to its strictures. Syrmos sounds more typically Xenakis-esque to my ears, and while I like his way with string instruments in general, it doesn't strike me as the most memorable of his compositions. Herma remains a mystery to me – I am much more partial to his later pieces for solo piano. Lastly, Orient-Occident, which I had never heard before, is absolutely incredible: evocative and abstract in equal measure, a kind of precursor to kosmische Musik.

Special shout-out to YouTube user 'do you have a a eggs for me', who posted the following comment 8 years ago, in response to Orient-Occident:

I just don't understand

Agree with Sund4r that the Ensemble Resonanz recording of Syrmos sounds massive! The score says that each voice may be doubled, maybe that option has been taken here? Re tuplets: I noticed that both this one and Achorripsis are chock full of 5-to-4-to-3 juxtapositions; I haven't noticed any higher tuplets.

Another random thought after a few works so far: One thing that pretty much doesn't happen within a piece, is change in tempo. Of course a corresponding-ish effect can be written out in changing note values instead, but it does seem to me that while the detailed action may ebb and flow, it feels like this happens against a ground that gives an impression of a measured, but relentless procession.

"Orient-Occident" is very good, but I don't think it or "Diamorphoses" are that different from what else was being produced in various studios in Paris in the late 50s/ early 60s. "Concret PH" was more original and then he really heads for pastures new with "Bohor".

what else was being produced in various studios in Paris in the late 50s/ early 60s

Any similar-sounding pieces you'd recommend in particular?

Oh, I'd have to think about that!

Actually, I've just listened to it and it's a lot clangier and screechier than I remembered! I can definitely hear Schaeffer in there though.

Made for a documentary film and commissioned by UNESCO, it seems.

Week 3:
ST/48, 48 insts, 1959–62
ST/4, str qt, 1956–62
ST/10, cl, b cl, 2 hn, hp, perc, str qt, 1956–62
Bohor, 4-track, 1962

I couldn't find any available recordings of the score for Thessaloniki World Fair.

*film score

James Harley (U of Guelph composer) on the ST series and ST/48 in particular at AMG:

In the period leading up to 1962, Iannis Xenakis was preoccupied with developing a compositional system that would be completely automated. His application of mathematical techniques adapted from probability theory in earlier pieces such as Pithoprakta and Acchorpsis lead to what he termed "stochastic" music. In this approach, as many compositional decisions as possible are made through the application of some probability function, often interlocked to create Markov chains, enabling one event to influence the next in some fashion. By 1962, Xenakis had managed to create a computer program to test his composition algorithm, and on that basis he produced a family of works.

The orchestral ST/48 is the piece of this set that is for the largest forces, but is probably the least known. It was not performed until 1968 and has been little performed since. The algorithm produces music on the basis of pre-defined sections, the durations to be determined by some function. ST/48, which lasts ten minutes, has seven sections, each lasting anywhere from twelve seconds (IV) to well over two minutes (V, VI). Xenakis' trademark glissandi are heard, but the strings are treated somewhat less intricately than in such piecvs as Pithoprakta. Instruments tend to play one note (or glissando) then drop out, creating a statistical, kaleidoscopic texture. The primary distinction between the seven sections is the noticeable shift in overall density. The highest degree of activity is found in sections I, V, and VII. The final one is quite brief and markedly denser than any of the others.

Bohor was side 1 of the LP I mentioned above. Apparently, the North American pressing of the LP was specifically mastered by Xenakis and Bob Ludwig to increase in volume at the climax? I haven't heard any versions on CD to compare. Three years later, Ludwig was mastering Metal Machine Music.

The liner notes to the LP are correct: "the piece demands total surrender". 20 minutes is about the right length for this kind of experience.

Although algorithmic/generative music is not overall my jam most of the time, ST/48 was actually pretty pleasant and unexpectedly placid-feeling on first listen.

Listening to JACK Quartet's recording of ST/4 on Naxos for the second time and not totally sure what to make of it. I don't really get the sense of form, narrative, and drama that I get from the Xenakis pieces I like most but the sounds are interesting and engaging in an ambient sort of way.

ST/10 isn't on Spotify, anyone have a YouTube link?

Bohor: I'm not sure if I've listened to this since I was an undergraduate - listening now, it seems like something that should have been way up my alley then. Maybe it was? The notes to the Electronic Music question whether we will ever know anything about how the piece was composed but this is actually quite detailed and informative: http://sites.music.columbia.edu/masterpieces/notes/xenakis/notes.html . I knew none of this!

I'm finding it a little harsh at times but it's also kind of an awesome (in the old meaning of the term) sound. Succeeds at evoking the intended feeling of "being inside a bell". The noise in the last three minutes is fantastic. I feel like the common thread between the pieces in the period we're exploring this week is a move away from dramatic linear sectional forms and more of a 'music as environment' aesthetic?

It just ended - feels like a shock to no longer be in the bell, and feel a little deafened.

ST/10 isn't on Spotify, anyone have a YouTube link?

I can find it on Spotify in Norway; might just be hard to search for by title, or licencing may differ between countries. It is on the album "Iannis Xenakis: Atrées, Morsima-Amorsima, Nomos Alpha, ST 4, Achorripsis", disc 2 track 3:

Album: https://open.spotify.com/album/43H1Wm5cYm7TEuMKrAvxEQ?si=jrIIHXJXRqSfBI2B1jaJEA
Track: https://open.spotify.com/track/7yp5MsjkDvvlYsTP9IhaqA?si=K9xb_3N8QImrHPxyztTqRQ

ST/4 is an adaption of ST/10, by the way (in case it wasn't obvious, the number indicates the number of players):

"The quartet is in essence a transcription of the score for the larger ensemble. ST/10 includes a string quartet as part of its ensemble, so those parts were lifted directly. The next step of the transcription, though, was to add in anything else from the other parts of ST/10 that would be possible for the quartet to play. This includes percussion, where a drum roll would be transcribed as tapping fingers on the body of the string instrument, and harp, where the extended lower range could be played by the cello with judicious adjustment of the tuning peg of the lowest string."

(From https://www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/12-13/xenakis/xenakis.html)

IIRC, the tuning-down-the-cello-while-pizzicatoing-trick is also used in the Nomos Alpha solo piece? We'll see when we get there soon enough.

I am falling behind already, fuck.

Bohor is legendary

one of the things I have grown to love about Xenakis' electronic works are the radical differences in each commercial release -- the mix is the performance. it used to drive me insane in the same way trying to find the 'best' recording of a symphony but you quickly learn to love the details

my go to listen for the 1957-1962 electronic works is a CDR rip of the Nonesuch 'Electro-acoustic Music' LP, which is far murkier but also has much greater dynamic range. nothing compares to how loud the ending of Bohor gets on those mixes. the EMF 'Electronic Music' CD jacks up the treble in fascinating ways -- tons of detail in the high end, but it's more like reading a score than hearing it. this thread might be an excuse for me to finally buy and burn a CDR of the Recollections GRM edition on bandcamp.

the youtube uploads of the orchestral pieces which sync the listening to the sheet music / graphical scores are kind of revelatory

skipping ahead to mention this, but Chris Marker's TV series 'The Owl's Legacy' spends all of episode 8 on Xenakis circa his development of the UPIC system. you can probably already imagine how much Marker has zooming the camera in on late 80's computer monitors as interns digitize images of owls to play them back as audio waveforms, or interviewing people about using lightpens to directly draw sound vibrations, it's all pretty reassuring

Ha, I didn't realize there were significantly different mixes on the different releases.

At least for the Nonesuch release, it is the same mix as the original French LP release but changed in the mastering process, as I mentioned above.

What's the story behind the 2019 remastered version on The Wire Recordings that is on Spotify?

I'm listening on free Spotify but based on the first few minutes, it seems loud and distorted compared to the version on the Electronic Music CD? Much less pleasant.

(That said, it's free Spotify so ignore everything I say.)

On one listen (while reading) to the Spotify link above, ST/10 didn't seem to reveal much more than the ST/4 adaptation to me but I'll listen again this week. Bohor definitely this week's highlight.

I'm only dipping in here and there but I've been inside the Bohor bell for ten minutes now and am spinning out a little. You can definitely hear the Iraqi and Hindu jewellery being dragged across something (and around yr head, again and again and again).

>What's the story behind the 2019 remastered version on The Wire Recordings that is on Spotify?

That's unlistenable! Clearly remastered from vinyl, clicks left in, sawed off. The modern temptation when mastering drone music that mostly lacks transient peaks is to slam it.

The Erato / Nonesuch LPs include the mix number in the title, while later CDs usually fail to indicate - https://www.discogs.com/Xenakis-Bohor-I-Diamorphoses-II-Orient-Occident-III-Concret-P-H-II/release/12646028

'Bohor I' usually starts with the underlying drone mixed just as loud as the scrapes. The EMF CD I think is just a radically EQ'd version of 'Bohor I' with a less extreme volume curve at the end. The Recollections GRM vinyl is closer to 'Bohor I'. I am taking a wild guess by saying this, but the version which starts by fading in the scraping by itself, and adds the drone around seven minutes in -- might in actuality be 'Bohor II'. I'll leave that to the experts

CD releases of every electronic work after Persepolis is where it really starts getting crazy. So many radically different versions by other composers & engineers. I have the original eight channel multitrack for Persepolis, and you can imagine how utterly raw each channel's sounds are -- there's no pre-printed volume curves or fades between sections, the structure & conducting all comes in the mixdown. The tape is the score & the playback is the performance

Ha, I did make it all the way through but it was startling how unpleasant it was compared to the 97 CD.

I've got the EMF CD, which I bought in New York a couple of months after 9/11.

ok I was totally wrong. 'Bohor II' was the official title of the tape component for the multimedia work 'Polytope de Cluny'. Every commercial release of that tape has been under the title 'Polytope de Cluny', and all subsequent releases of 'Bohor' omit the numeral, I suppose to keep things less confusing

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01789708/file/Iannis%20Xenakis,%20La%20musique%20électroacoustique%3A%20The%20elctroacoustic%20Music.pdf

Why Bohor? - Charles Turner (CUNY Graduate Center, USA)

the following article on the different versions of 'Legende d'eer' is fascinating too

going through the Recollections GRM mix of 'Bohor' now & also found a less-badly-remastered version of the less-drony 'Bohor' sund4r found - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DODVNHukY0I

Oh geez, emil.y, if this Wire remastering of Concret PH is what you listened to, the CD version is not nearly as harsh.

Heh, a morsel of gossip from the article preceding the Turner one: <i>Bohor</i> was dedicated to Pierre Schaeffer, who was asked if he liked it: "I detest <i>Bohor</i>, which Xenakis was so kind as to dedicate to me. I could tell it to his face, because he is one of the few with whom that is possible."

He is quoted in the liner notes to the CD as saying "Bohor was, for the worst (I mean for the best!), the wood fire of his beginnings. No longer the crackling embers of Concret PH, it was an enormous series of explosions, an onslaught of stabs with a lancet in the ear at the highest level on a potentiometer."

Anyway, that Youtube clip that Milton shared is much nicer than the remaster on Spotify and actually a v pleasant listen.

Found out I had a rip of the EMF disc in the file system vaults, and yeah, that is quite different.

Also, all the STs have been really clicking for me today, and have never really done so before. A bunch of repetitions must have helped a lot, even though they haven't been very focused. "Ooh there is that little tune again!" :-D

Oh, EMF = Electronic Music Foundation. Yeah, that's the same disc I have.

Liked ST/10 better on second listen.

The last few days ended up being extremely hectic and I forgot about this! Let's do a lighter week. This should be about 28m of music:

Week 4

Polla ta dhina (Sophocles: Antigone), children’s vv, wind, perc, 1962
Morsima-Amorsima, pf, vn, vc, db, 1956–62
Akrata, 16 wind, 1964–5

Well, on first listen, Polla ta dhina shows that Xenakis is still delivering surprises in the fourth week. Will say more soon.

Iirc Morsima-Amorsima is from the generation* of last week's ST works, and there was also another one called Amorsima-Morsima which may have been discarded or renamed? Will check.

*) heh in two senses

Akrata: This is the one from this week that I knew before, from the Ensemble Music 2 album. Good to revisit it, listening more closely and reading up a bit. James Harley's AMG summary is good: https://www.allmusic.com/composition/akrata-for-8-winds-8-brass-mc0002449168 and "8 winds and 8 brass" is more accurate than "16 winds". I like winds a lot and enjoy this one, though it doesn't have quite the intensity of a lot of Xenakis. As Harley notes, a lot of it consists of rapid flutter-tongued staccato single notes passed around between different instruments, in a klangfarbenmelodie sort of way. The sounds come together in passages of greater density or more sustained sound. A bit like a study in articulation, sustain, and timbre. Also one where Xenakis uses space and silence a lot. A bit of an eerie quality.

Morsima-Amorsima: I liked this one a lot, probably because chamber music is my thing. Just listened to the Callithumpian Consort recording on Spotify and the UNT College of Music recording here: https://youtu.be/_SyJrZFWWb0. Based on this, as anatol notes, it was created with the same program that was used to compose ST/10, following a stochastic plan by the composer, according to which the algorithm defined the time of entry, articulation, instrument, pitch, 'slope' of glissando, duration, and dynamic level of the individual sounds: http://brahms.ircam.fr/works/work/12838/ . I like the space and sounds, the way the percussive piano is juxtaposed with all the string articulations, esp the glissandi.

Listened to M/A half-distractedly on walk yesterday; impression I think was that it felt less busy and episodic, more rounded as a whole than the other STs, but must hear again obviously.

I've been digging this thread even though I've mostly been quietly lurking and listening. Morsima-Amorsima and Akrata are both pretty great methinks. Especially the latter. I feel like the former may have benefited from *watching* those same Texans Sund4r linked to, passing the notes around, early in the week.

Polla ta dhina remains completely unfamiliar...

Binge-catching up.

Of the three works in the ST series, 48 made the biggest impression. The quieter and dronier sections were somewhat unexpected, giving a sense of purpose to what otherwise strikes me as a rather aimless compositional exercice despite its typically intriguing theoretical underpinnings. At the other, more compact end of the spectrum, ST/4 is notable for serving an undiluted version of the stochastic formula, and I do begrudgingly admire it as a single-minded, forbidding object that sounds nothing like a string quartet ca. 1962. As for 10, its greater timbral variety is deployed with insufficient finesse (Boulez this is not) and it also lacks the austere aura of the string quartet adaptation.

The very title of Bohor is surprising, as Arthurian legend is not a narrative backdrop I spontaneously associate with Xenakis. Bohor (also spelled Bohort, or Bors in English) accompanies Percival and Galahad on the quest for the Holy Grail and is granted a glimpse into its mysteries as a reward for his humility and chastity. Xenakis was reportedly drawn to Bohor's 'severity' as well as to the name itself (which in French sounds a bit like 'bow-ore', the 'h' being silent). No pun intended, of course: there is nothing even remotely boring about this piece, whose sheer physicality is indeed awe-inspiring, to echo Sund4r's assessment, although I still have no idea – not that it matters! – what the exact connection is between the Laotian mouth organ, Iraqi and Hindu jewelry, and the Knights of the Round Table.

Polla ta dhina is an Antigone setting. The children's choir recites Sophocles's text ('Wonders abound in this world yet no wonder is greater than man…') in a nearly static monotone while the orchestra explores a full range of alternately drone-bound and aggressively accented gestures, as though a second (instrumental) chorus were wordlessly doubling and responding to the first. Suitably dramatic.

Morsima-Amorsima: it sounds less immediately distinctive than the other works in these two batches, which is to say it comes closer to generic 1960s international post-Webernism despite being cut from the same cloth as ST/10, but I don't mean to throw shade by saying this. On the contrary, I think this is one of his best pieces from this period, as it really brings out a meditative sense of empty space I didn't at all get from ST/10 or its even more cramped string quartet reduction. It's also worth noting that an abstract stochastic composition is here rebranded, per the title, as an exploration of Fate (synonymous with Death) and non-Fate (Life, presumably).

I've never been a huge fan of all-wind ensembles, but Akrata's austerity compels. It reminds me, as so often with Xenakis's music, that 'classical' as a descriptor refers to antiquity first and foremost. Its utter rejection of any semblance of ornamentation brings to mind Galina Ustvolskaya's music.

Oh, and I came across an Amazon review that includes the following sentence: 'I have fond memories of having sex to Akrata on one occasion with another college student many years ago.'

Week 5

Atrées, fl, cl, b cl, hn, tpt, trbn, 2 perc, vn, vc, 1962
Eonta, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, pf, 1963–4
Nomos alpha, vc, 1965–6

I guess he was focusing more on chamber and solo music in the mid-60s?

I realized that I own another recording of Akrata, by Dufallo/Festival Chamber Ensemble, on Sony's 10-CD Masterworks of the 20th Century set. Listening to it now, what stands out is that the piece does benefit from the clarity and dynamic range in this recording.

Definitely feels stark and chilling.

Nomos alpha might have been the first Xenakis to pique my interest. Via some pre-millennial Realplayer transmission. LOL. (Unless it was Kottos. One of the cello pieces on the Arditti Quartet/Claude Helffer thing from the '90s anyway.) Which inspired a purchase and lots of listens. So he was very much a chamber/solo dude in my mind for a while.

I saw "Eonta" perfomed once. Awesome.

I listened to Rohan de Saram's recording of Nomos alpha twice on Naxos before reading anything about it. Certainly a lot more sparse than what we've heard earlier, which seems to reflect an overall tendency in Xenakis's writing as we get further into the 60s, perhaps because there was nowhere else to go. I also feel like it's more expressive in rhetoric, despite being built largely around timbre, articulation, and dynamics. Phrasing seems very clear.

I really like Rohan de Saram's studio take, although I haven't revisited it for the purposes of this thread yet.

There's a live rendition of his you can watch on YT, although it's sadly truncated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIGDMMN1lQI

It's nice to be able to see some of that expressivity in addition to hearing it.

Huh, so in the Atrées that I find on Spotify (on a 2-CD album with Simonovich et al), the movements are in the order 1-3-5-2-4. And it's not just a tagging error, judging from the parts that are on nkoda. Is the order supposed to be mutable in this one? error? whim?

From James Harley's Xenakis: His Life in Music:

With the exception of Morsima-Amorsima, the other scores (ST/48 and Atrées) also contain reorderings of sections, no doubt for a variety of reasons. Atrées, the piece most freely adapted by the composer from the original data, challenges most dramatically the need to respect the output of the program. Xenakis divides the form into five movements, and allows them to be played in any order. The notion of a mobile form, of course, had already been put forward by John Cage and Earle Brown, and applied by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez, among other European composers.

order follows the original EMI vinyl release

that's the 2CD set I have, though I tagged each track with the original album art: https://www.discogs.com/Iannis-Xenakis-Atr%C3%A9es-Morsima-Amorsima-ST-4-Nomos-Alpha/release/1279483

actual performance youtubes (as well as the ones displaying the architectural scores) are really helping me dig into the acoustic / orchestral works, many of which bounce off of me in a way I never experienced with the electronic works. ST series really clicking

first disc of this, mainly focusing on the Erato vinyl, was my go to comp for the next run of pieces: https://www.discogs.com/Iannis-Xenakis-Iannis-Xenakis/release/1445107

Ah, thanks ppl!

Wow, just listened to Eonta, the recording on Mode Records' Vol. 11: Works With Piano, found on NML. That's a fantastic cacophony; the dialogue between the brass and the frenetic piano with pedal down is really effective and it comes to a satisfying conclusion.

Acc to this, Atrées was again written with the same Fortran stochastic programme that was used for ST/10, although some liberties were taken: https://www.iannis-xenakis.org/fxe/catalog/genres/oeuvre_24.html . Instrumentation is interesting. The title is I think a reference to the Greek myth of Atreus, who, uh, seems to have killed his half-brother with his brother, then killed his nephews and fed them to his brother when he found out his brother was sleeping with his wife, and then raised the incestuous son of his brother and his niece, who eventually killed him?

Putting on the Simonovich-conducted recording on Spotify now. I'm enjoying how the various articulations (glissandi, flutter-tongue, ringing tuned percussion, col legno, etc) layer and overlap across the soundstage in this recording.

Hm, well, that was not bad as a quasi-ambient listen but it seems to be going in the opposite direction from "Nomos alpha" with regards to expressivity. Obviously, mobile form precludes the expression of any linear narrative.

Spacious and pointillistic, Atrées is easy on the ears. The sole commercially available recording (from 1967) doesn't quite do the piece justice, however. Maybe I've been spoiled by the technically perfect playing of subsequent generations of classical musicians, but something about the tone seems off. It's too audibly… human.

Eonta is timbrally unique, even bizarre, and lives up to its title, which means 'beings' – a vague metaphysical designation that can suggest just about anything, really, from the monstrous to the nondescript and back. These 'beings' (the instruments themselves?) alternatively collide and overlap, but they also seem perfectly willing to ignore each other and simply go about their respective ways, at least until the denouement. As a general rule, however, the piano seems to be locked in a physical struggle of titanic proportions, while the brass section, which tends to be treated as a unified block, is more hieratic in its utterances, echoing Akrata. This one's a highlight.

Nomos alpha's self-conscious use of extended techniques makes for a remarkably colourful solo cello piece, and its ability to sustain forward momentum from start to finish despite the material's fragmentary nature is highly impressive. As ever, my understanding of the rules/laws ('nomos') that underlie Xenakis's compositional process is borderline nonexistent, but the audible result is indeed expressive. Nor, come to think of it, is Nomos alpha a stranger to the Romantic tradition of bravura solo pieces.

Just catching up a bit now. Parts of Bohor had me thinking Sunn O))) could do an interesting "cover," low menacing guitar chords and one of their friends slapping around some broken wind chimes.

All right, we've got two vocal works up this week, including the large music drama Oresteïa (which I do recall listening to raptly as an undergrad).

Week 6

Hiketides: les suppliates d’Eschyle, 50 female vv, 10 insts/orch, 1964
Oresteïa (incid music/concert work, Aeschylus), chorus, 12 insts, 1965–6

Maybe I've been spoiled by the technically perfect playing of subsequent generations of classical musicians

I am doing my part to resist this trend btw.

Ah, I saw the Oresteïa in Oslo in 1994 with the composer in attendance! Specific memories are limited after more than a quarter century(!?!), but I do remember it being pretty awesome.

Dunno whether this will work outside Norway, but from 20:30 here are a few minutes from a rehearsal for that performance, plus composer speaking:
https://tv.nrk.no/serie/ultimafestivalen/1994/FKUM49000494/avspiller

Ramones inspired count-in there.

Listening now, I do remember the massed Acme-type sirens/whistles being downright scary, as befits the Eumenides.

I do not remember whether we followed this bit from the score:

200 small metal flags should be distributed to the audience, at the end of the work. They wave them joyfully, uniting with the spirit of the choruses.

Hiketides: les suppliates d’Eschyle, 50 female vv, 10 insts/orch, 1964

I notice that the iannis-xenakis.org site does not list any version with chorus, only one for brass and strings, which appears to be the one I find on Spotify with Tamayo and the Luxembourg PO (as Hiketides Suite). It does appear to have existed though, with the chorus also playing a multitude of percussion as in the Oresteïa, judging from e.g. this PDF article.

Sund4r, did you see Noël Akchoté has arrangements of parts of Oresteïa for guitar on Spotify? I put them on the playlist (they're short).

Yeah, I've listened to his Xenakis album before. Iirc, they are extremely loose out jazz reinterpretations?

I listened to that recording of Hiketides Suite twice this morning while doing breakfast, before reading anything about it. It's a bracing racket. Good variety in texture, density, and dynamics, and a satisfying conclusion, but I didn't pick out the form, really.

Just listened to the Sakkas/Gualda/Ensemble de Basse-Normandie/Weddle recording of Oresteïa. I was apprehensive about going into this without being able to understand the text but the music is energetic and engaging enough without it. Great percussion and trademark glissandi. Vocals are at times broadly reminiscent of Beijing opera?

Actually found it exhilarating

It is!

The Hiketides Suite and not picking out the form: could possibly have to do with its suite-ness? At the very least, the 50-strong chorus isn't there, and it may have been excerpted/modified in other ways as well, for all I know? One reaction I had, not necessarily very related, was that I felt I recognized types of elements from quite a few of the past works that we've been through already, but I've only really listened once so far.

OK, I did not know this story:

The origins of Iannis Xenakis’ Oresteïa are almost more remarkable than the music itself, a truly bizarre “only in the USA” sort of story. Sometime in the 1960s the town of Ypsilanti, Michigan discovered that its name was not derived from some Native American language, but rather from Greek. Filled with pride at its newfound ethnic association, the town decided to hold a Greek festival capped by performances of The Birds and Oresteïa in a Greek-style amphitheater constructed on the local university baseball field. They hired an authentic Greek director and also agreed to engage the services of an authentic Greek composer to write the incidental score. Xenakis, in turn, fired with enthusiasm for the project, wrote more than an hour and a half of music for the production, which by all accounts was a huge success. In order to salvage the work for concert performance, Xenakis later prepared a cantata lasting around 50 minutes, adding in the mid-1980s the movement “Kassandra”

https://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-8023/

OK, wow, so both parts in "Kassandra" are sung by the bass, singing in his falsetto to do Kassandra's part.

Programme notes from the 08 Miller Theatre performance were v helpful: https://fr.scribd.com/document/211150822/Xena-k-is-Oresteia-Notes

Wow, that's quite the origin story. I'm amazed it took them that long to tease out the Greek connection.

The Hiketides suite does feel like a medley/potpourri of Xenakis's various idioms up to this point. While I similarly struggled to make out its overall form (not a first tbh), it was a solid listening experience. A highlight: one of the quieter, more atmospheric sections (5:45-8:29, more or less, in the LPO/Tamayo recording) with some, dare I say, late Romantic mournful intonations coming from the brass above a substratum of quivering strings, distantly recalling Ives's The Unanswered Question. The folk melody that follows is uncharacteristically pretty as well.

Oresteïa: this is a big one, of course, as befits its model. Too bad there's no available recording of the final 1992 version, with an appended section titled 'La déesse Athéna', which reportedly echoes 'Kassandra', itself an addition from 1987 that requires the baritone to engage in some heavy duty ventriloquy against an all-percussive backdrop. The result is flat-out bizarre and once again foregrounds Xenakis's ability to re-estrange the classics, and I must say I'm quite fascinated by the decision to ascribe the Greek chorus to a soloist in a context where an actual choir is readily available. Without 'La déesse Athéna' to balance it out as the suite draws to a close, however, its inclusion feels almost outlandish and drives home the contrast between Xenakis's later compositional language – which has its detractors – and his earlier works. I myself ultimately prefer the more hieratic segments for choir due to their anchoring in Eastern Orthodox chant, nicely stressing the continuity between Ancient Greece and its subsequent avatars. The Erinyes's swarming fury before they are euphemized into Eumenides is also impressively handled. Interestingly, the ending is anything but serene despite Athena's clear-cut verdict, which is meant to appease the antagonists.

Week 7

Terretektorh, 1966
Polytope (de Montréal), 4 orch groups, 1967 (I think there's a recording?)
Medea (incid music, Seneca), male vv, orch, 1967

https://www.discogs.com/Iannis-Xenakis-Medea-Syrmos-Polytope/release/1668175

'Polytope' also on Editions RZ 2cd comp

Forgot it was conducted by Marius Constant! Who wrote the theme to The Twilight Zone

Around the same time this came out, which I remember has a few crazy moments - https://www.discogs.com/Marius-Constant-Eloge-De-La-Folie/release/1481688

Weird to think of anything even remotely avant-garde resonating within the Montreal Casino, a tacky capitalist temple if ever there was one. Except, of course, it housed Expo 67 at the time and was home to the French and Quebec pavilions.

Ah, OK, great. Do you know of an accessible digital streaming version? I couldn't find it on Spotify, Youtube, Naxos Music Library, or iTunes; only the later electronic work Polytope de Cluny.xp

Huh, I didn’t know that about Constant. I’m only familiar with his conducting. And as one of countless Romanian expats from that generation who settled in France.

MP3 of Polytope (h/t Milton): https://we.tl/t-QZnBs35uWj

Well, that's a heck of a noise.

Without having read up on it, it sounds like dense shimmering clusters in the different orchestras with some Shepard-tone-like string glissandi and thundering percussion moving across the soundstage that clears for a quieter section and then builds back up to the final crash. One of the more revelatory pieces so far for me.

Just listened to Terrektorh (Tamayo/Hague recording). Seems like Xenakis made a full return to huge orchestral sound masses in this period. The sweeping intensity comes across viscerally on the recording. Must be spectacular live.

Hm, does anyone know of a recording (or video of the play) of Medea? :(

The Hyperion/James Wood recording is to be found on YouTube from where I sit?

Check yr inbox.

xp

Oh wow, thanks to both of you. Somehow I didn't find that video.

I was able to read a few pages of Xenakis: His Life in Music by James Harley on Google Books; a thing with Terretektorh was that the 88 musicians (also furnished with various percussion etc as in a few other works we've just been through) were arranged in concentric circles around the conductor, and the audience amongst the musicians, so what you would hear would depend strongly on where you were seated (apparently, camp stools were stipulated to facilitate moving around).

Actually, that books seems to have been given open-access release:

https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/24050/1006082.pdf?sequence=1

I also got it for zero dollars for my Kindle on the US Amazon site.

Btw I'd like to say that I really enjoy the pace set for this project. It's very doable to catch up after being busy elsewhere, and there is time to dig deeper into single works when desired, but it also moves along enough to give a sense of development and avoid a feel of stagnancy.

Thanks, glad you're enjoying it - and thanks for the book! Harley is an excellent composer in his own right.

Terretektorh kicks off with a Scelsi string drone and maintains its sense of single-mindedness throughout despite a progressively expanded timbral palette, which includes siren-whistles that somehow avoid sounding carnivalesque. The spatial distribution is, alas, lost on me (and, I suspect, you) but I can imagine the effect of scattering musicians among audience members being quite striking in a live environment (pre-covid, at least). This one’s definitely a keeper.

Polytope (de Montréal): yet another piece where the musicians – four orchestras, no less – are dispersed, blurring the line between listener and performer. It begins with a brassy rumble that repeatedly punctuates the thick symphonic texture, while the winds echo remote, nearly unrecognizable folk melodies, foreshadowing Ștefan Niculescu’s later works. The aural gruel is then broken down into more discrete instrumental elements, of which the percussion strikes me as the most memorable. It subsequently builds back up to a sustained collective pitch, yet without the intensity of its commanding beginning. Hardly the greatest of Xenakis’s scores, but still worthwhile.

Medea is a Seneca setting, which I found quite surprising at first, since Xenakis isn’t exactly known for his interest in Latin literature. Sure enough, he ‘hesitated’ upon receiving the commission: ‘I knew Seneca as a pseudo-philosopher, an imperial courtier, and above all a Roman who sought, like all the Romans of that period, to emulate the ancient Greek masterpieces.’ The deliberate emphasis on ‘barbarity’, to quote him yet again, is very much audible in Medea: the chanting (an all-male choir – a somewhat odd choice given the subject matter) is aggressively monotonous, almost barked, and the score occasionally calls for banging stones on top of the deliberately brutal writing for conventional instruments, so the quest for archaicness is quite extreme here. It’s a powerful work, but I don’t think I was in the right mood for it this morning.

I really need to go back to Terretektorh and Medea after reading a bit more but...

Week 8

Kraanerg (ballet), orch, tape, 1968

We will come back to Nomos gamma next week since Kraanerg is 75 minutes!

And was composed for the opening of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in 1969, which I somehow didn't know or had forgotten until starting this project.

... how did people dance to this? Will need to try to find video after this.

Ha, OK, reading Harley on Kraanerg, the original choreography didn't go over v well with critics (although a second version was attempted in the 80s by a different choreographer and seems to have got better reviews). Fascinating to read about how eager the NAC was to open with an avant-garde modernist work in 69, and to show off their then-state-of-the-art sound system.

It's a pretty huge sound for 75 minutes, with these jarring silences. The tape consists of processed orchestral sounds that travel across the soundstage and exist in an interesting sort of dialogue with the chamber orchestra. The instrumental writing recalls Akrata at times, especially with the staccato single notes that open the whole work.

"Processed instrumental sounds" = parts sound like noise

Are you reading Harley's 150+ page monograph on Kraanerg? Either way, I'm glad it exists.

I've never heard the Callithumpian Consort's recording with Stephen Drury at the helm, which is apparently the most detailed in terms of soundstage (figures, since it's also the most recent), so I think I'll go with that one when the time comes.

That's the one I listened to. And, no, I just read the few pages on Kraanerg from the book that is an overview of Xenakis that anatol linked earlier. The other one might be worth reading! Tbh, I had only known Harley as a composer and hadn't realized (or had forgotten) that he had written musicological books on Xenakis. It probably did come up at some point.

Maybe a legit candidate for best living Canadian composer?

I'm not familiar with his music at all. Which of his works would you recommend to a neophyte?

Tbh, I was going less by commercial releases and more by things I've seen live or heard in seminar but the Neue Bilder disc by New Music Concerts/Robert Aitken is a solid collection of his instrumental work. I'm putting on the Like a Ragged Flock album now (for flute [Ellen Waterman] and electronics).

Cool, thanks, I've added it to my list.

I've got "Kraanerg", Sinfonieorchester Basel, sounds kind of muffled to me.

The Drury recording is the first 'with restored analog tape' according to Mode, so you may want to try that one.

Well, yes, I got this one cheap secondhand, the previous owner probably got rid of it for that very reason.

the original Marius Constant 'Kraanerg' on Erato is definitely incredible - http://inconstantsol.blogspot.com/2016/08/iannis-xenakis-kraanerg-erato-1968-69.html

haven't heard the one Tom posted, but the 1989 Roger Woodward is also pretty fuzzy. The Drury (and I also suspect the Constant) directly injects the original tape into the mix instead of going for a room recording, so if you've got the Drury or the original you are well set

this is in the lineage of hyper-orchestra concrete where the tape parts are still somewhat recognizably derived from orchestral / acoustic sources (Varèse's original 1954 GRM version of 'Déserts', Berio's 'Differences', the orchestral version of Stockhausen's 'Hymnen', many others) - the blend between the live sounds and the tape part is key. and those previous pieces are more episodic / have more separation between live and tape, Xenakis really goes for the blend, and for duration. and volume, and violence. and I get the impression that the tape part frequently leads the scoring, where the orchestral scoring is following the result of the wild transformations on the tape. Which is where I get seriously on board, he just floors it from here

There's a few minutes of Graeme Murphy's well-received 1988 choreography on YouTube. I think I get how it doesn't drive into either of the opposite ditches of direct coupling to the music on the one hand, or full ignorance of it on the other, but rather runs in parallel using related processes. Staging pays homage to the Vasarely involvement at the premiere too.

looking at Harley's pdf and the youtube lecture he gave on 'Kraanerg' trying to figure out the workflow between tape and score

evidently because it wasn't going to be the kind of music in which a piano reduction was possible, budgeting included a full orchestra studio recording so they could have a tape to rehearse to -- and that's the original 2LP Erato. the tape parts follow the orchestral parts. no idea if the tape parts were derived from the same studio recording sessions. it sure sounds close though. Harley also notes the interdependence of the instrumental writing being the result of him cutting and pasting / transforming elements of contemporary pieces, inverting / reversing / altering tempo -- i.e. things very close to what's being done to the tape

Week 9

Nomos gamma, 1967–8
Nuits, 3 S, 3 A, 3 T, 3 B, 1967–8
Synaphaï, pf, orch, 1969
Anaktoria, cl, bn, hn, str qt, db, 1969

Running late, I'm afraid…

I encourage people to jump in with whatever pieces are up for the current week rather than try to catch up on past weeks, unless there is something you really want to go back to.

I definitely want to go back to Kraneerg, though! Maybe tonight, and with the proviso that I won't have anything even remotely intelligent to add.

Wow the percussion on Nomos gamma. Lots of energy and intensity there. Will come back and listen more carefully but made a definite first impression, even on the surface level.

Nuits is my favourite of the choral works so far. Clear and effective hocketing/call and response between male and female voices; maintains rhythmic energy and some timbral rawness without being harsh.

Belatedly re-listened to Kraanerg anyway. I don't have much to add, but I will say this: it's an admirable work, a brilliant work, an emblematic work, but I'm not sure I enjoy listening to it all that much. Its episodic structure coupled with its titanic length leave me a bit cold by 6th or 7th tape entrance, and I can't help but feel like I'd get more out of it with the accompanying choreography, even though I have little to no appetence for ballet in general. As ever, the theory behind the 'accomplished action' is quite fascinating, and the Ottawa premiere must have been genuinely life-altering back in 1969, yet still I drift off…

Nuits is indeed wonderful and the choral work of his I've listened to the most.

Synaphaï: really enjoying how the frantic piano gets interrupted by blasts of brass but wishing it went on longer, I find

Reading more on Nuits, it's fascinating - it was dedicated to political prisoners, is in part a study of vocal timbre, and was apparently important to participants in the May-June 1968 French protests? Also the way glissandi and quarter-tones are used is really interesting. I like how the barking and wailing breaks into that melodic motif about halfway through.

Which performance(s) are you listening to? Nuits has been much better served on disc than his other choral works, which testifies to its strengths.

Listening to Nuits with the chart on p. 54 of the Harley book is really helpful.

xp I was listening to the version on As Dreams by the Norwegian Soloists' Choir and just now to a Youtube stream of the Danish National Radio Choir from Pupils of Messiaen.

Anaktoria is decidedly different from everything we've listened to since the first week. I don't hear any extended techniques or timbral or textural investigation - it seems totally built around melodic motives that develop and are layered in counterpoint. There's still an interest in dynamics and density of texture that gives the work a clear shape, of course, but it recalls early 20th century music a bit more than most of what we've been listening to. Would be interested to go back and break down the pitch sets he's using. It's a relatively slight piece but a good one.

FYI I added both versions of Nuits that Sund4r mentioned to the Spotify playlist, if you mention a particular recording of a piece and it's on Spotify I'll add that, otherwise I'm just picking randomly based on if I recognize any of the performers/ensembles/conductors.

Also I'm way behind, so I might jump ahead to the current week instead of going back and listening to a ballet for tape noise? (I'll listen to that eventually, or at least bits of it, to see what it's like)

Yeah, I encourage jumping ahead to the current week (itself almost over!)

I hadn't heard Nomos gamma before. As with its older sibling, Terretektorh, which also calls for the musicians (98 this time) to be scattered throughout the audience, I wish I could experience it in a live setting. The percussion section is definitely the star of the show here, working its polyphonic magic in a manner that foreshadows Pléïades (1978).

Nuits is a tour-de-force and greatly benefits from Xenakis's liberal use of glissandi, which recalls his signature string sound. Much of it comes across as extraordinarily expressive keening, with some more extended vocal techniques thrown in for good measure, very much dans l'air du temps yet no less effective today.

Synaphaï is a harder sell because, on average, Xenakis's piano writing doesn't do much for me, and this piece is no exception. For once, the clatter grates (this is totally my problem, though…).

Anaktoria is indeed more conservative in its idiom, which is interesting in its own right, but I'm not sure he gets that much out of the melodic material here. I find it puzzling that Harley called it 'perhaps his most extreme sonic exploration up to that point' (Xenakis: His Life in Music).

Were you listening to the version on Spotify from the Milano Music Festival, Vol. 2 album? That's what I listened to as well but after reading Harley's description and this, I looked for another recording. Now I'm listening to one from Música Clássica Para Sopros and it's a very different piece. I'm pretty sure the one on the other album is actually Octandres by Varèse but has been mislabelled.

Clarinet multiphonics and on-the-bridge bowings are great on this.

I'm pretty sure the one on the other album is actually Octandres by Varèse but has been mislabelled.

That certainly explains the extreme difference in track durations! Anaktoria is on the Milano Musica album as well, the tracks have been shuffled up, and the correct order is apparently

Phlegra
Octandres
Mediterraneo
Anaktoria
Dhipli Zyia
Waarg

-- so that Anaktoria is actually track 4, the one tagged Waarg.

Thanks, that explains everything.

Off to a slightly late start but:

Week 10
Persephassa, 6 perc, 1969
Hibiki Hana Ma, 12-track, 1969–70

This should be about 42m, so slightly short but we've got some epics coming up.

There is also apparently a version of Persephassa for solo percussion and electronics, which I assume was created later? I'm not actually a big fan of 20th century percussion ensemble stuff (ironically, since I'm a drummer) but this is pretty alright so far. It's almost more melodic than some of his previous works for traditionally pitched instruments.

I'm reading that Hibiki Hana Ma was composed using UPIC in 1970, but then reading that UPIC wasn't invented until 1977. I guess if anybody could have invented time travel, ol' Iannis could have.

There are a lot of interesting and appealing moments in Persephassa but I'm not sure if I'm sold on the composition as a whole. Reading Harley, it was written for the six players to be arranged in a hexagon around the audience, which would have made it very hard to actually co-ordinate all the complex rhythms. Tom, are you able to pick out the rhythmic canons and layered tempi?

Hibiki Hana Ma: listening to the version on the 97 Electronic Music CD. Apparently this was written for the Osaka Exposition in 1970. The liner notes are a little baffling: they say all the sounds are derived from instrumental samples, which is believable, but also that the sound sources are never made unrecognizable, which is less so imo. I enjoy the piece with its timbral and dynamic range and movement across the soundstage, but much of this sounds like various kinds of noise!

here's my 2002 village voice review of the persepolis + 8 remixes cd:
https://www.villagevoice.com/2002/11/05/math-destruction/

wrangles with some ideas abt form, convention and homage per the darmstadt era -- or ruins of same maybe

^ seems an uncharitable perspective on "new music"/"art music," but maybe not entirely baseless-- bringing to mind the essay by Babbitt about how some music was meant to be composed and studied, but not necessarily heard or performed live. (Interesting take considering Persepolis was designed only to be heard "live" in a very particular setting, and also considering some of the performing demands of say Persephassa and its hexagon of performers.)

Good piece, mark. 'Running out of language' is exactly what I want a work of art to do to me, however, so much of what you find off-putting about the Modernist (Romantic neo-sublime) aesthetic (unless I misunderstand you) is the very reason I listen to music – to experience the illusion of being ephemerally freed from language, over and over again. It seems to me that works of art that take the path of least resistance to language better lend themselves to commentary, so critics are quite grateful for such verbal crutches when they arise… but I am not a music critic and part of my enjoyment stems from knowing I don't have to say anything about music at all! (This is the blind spot of these listening series, incidentally – oftentimes I'd rather just listen and remain mute, but that would break the undertaking's spirit of camaraderie.)

the essay by Babbitt about how some music was meant to be composed and studied, but not necessarily heard or performed live

If you mean "The Composer As Specialist" ("Who Cares If You Listen?"), this seems like a misreading. Babbitt's point was that it is fine, and even desirable, for composers of "'serious', 'advanced' contemporary music" to write just for a niche audience of other highly trained specialists since the music requires so much knowledge and training (or at least "experience") and effort to appreciate that it is not meant for the general public, in the same way that academic conferences on theoretical physics are meant for other specialists - but that pursuing this work in an academic niche is necessary in both cases for the sake of the evolution and progress of the discipline. I don't see anything that indicates that he didn't think the music had to be heard or performed - if anything, he advocated the use of electronic means to precisely reproduce the complex compositions better than human performers could (or would) in some cases. As per the quote at the top of the thread, Xenakis's views on the purpose of music and how an audience should relate to it were fundamentally different from Babbitt's, however, and, as we've seen, many of these pieces were written for large public events.

But if Babbitt did write something that advocated for music that lives just on paper, I'd be interested to read that.

(more of a misremembering than a misreading, but yes, that one)

OK, Harley's description of Hibiki-Hana-ma is more useful and makes more sense than the liner notes:

Hibiki-Hana-Ma (“reverberation-flower-interval”) is just under eighteen min- utes in length and was originally composed for twelve tracks, later mixed down to eight for concert diffusion. The music was recorded and assembled at the electronic music studio of Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) in Tokyo. Xenakis had access to an orchestra there, and much of the material comes from orchestral sonorities (typical textures from existing scores with emphasis on strings, particu- larly glissandi and natural harmonics). To this he added the Japanese plucked biwa and some percussion sounds. As in the tape part of Kraanerg, there are varying degrees of studio manipulation of the instrumental sounds, from virtually none to so much that the original sources are unrecognizable. There is a much wider range of sounds presented in Hibiki-Hana-Ma than in the earlier ballet, which is under- standable considering that the tape is the only sound source. The possibility of deploying up to twelve channels enabled Xenakis to build up layers and complex superpositions of sonorities.

The music is put together from blocks of material spliced into the different channels, in a similar process to Kraanerg, extended from three or four layers to twelve. There are many sudden shifts of sonority, density, and intensity, and various + layers are brusquely cut in or out. Major articulation points serve to loosely divide
the piece into four sections. The first, lasting up to the 3'00" mark, is built from a low, booming, undulatory sonority over which orchestral string sounds are layered, primarily built from glissandi of different speeds, directions, and densities. A sweep up to a sustained high-register cluster signals the start of the second section, which introduces a layer of tinkling bells, stochastic clouds of whips and pizzicati, and much else. A sudden drop in dynamic level and number of layers at 6'32" signals a new section, although it features successions of a wide range of sonorities, most of which were heard in the previous section. The orchestral winds are introduced, in both sustained sonorities and glissando textures reminiscent of similar passsages in Nomos gamma and Kraanerg. At 11'07", another sudden drop in intensity/density signals the final section. This is the longest and most sustained of the four, introducing various noise-based sonorities of both the sliding and fixed-band types. These continue to the piece’s end, layered with previously introduced sounds. The impact of hearing this wide range of sonorities, both sustained and percussive, being projected through a large, spatialized sound system would surely have been powerful.
Hibiki-Hana-Ma (“reverberation-flower-interval”) is just under eighteen min- utes in length and was originally composed for twelve tracks, later mixed down to eight for concert diffusion. The music was recorded and assembled at the electronic music studio of Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) in Tokyo. Xenakis had access to an orchestra there, and much of the material comes from orchestral sonorities (typical textures from existing scores with emphasis on strings, particu- larly glissandi and natural harmonics). To this he added the Japanese plucked biwa and some percussion sounds. As in the tape part of Kraanerg, there are varying degrees of studio manipulation of the instrumental sounds, from virtually none to so much that the original sources are unrecognizable. There is a much wider range of sounds presented in Hibiki-Hana-Ma than in the earlier ballet, which is under- standable considering that the tape is the only sound source. The possibility of deploying up to twelve channels enabled Xenakis to build up layers and complex superpositions of sonorities.

The music is put together from blocks of material spliced into the different channels, in a similar process to Kraanerg, extended from three or four layers to
+ twelve. There are many sudden shifts of sonority, density, and intensity, and various + layers are brusquely cut in or out. Major articulation points serve to loosely divide
the piece into four sections. The first, lasting up to the 3'00" mark, is built from a low, booming, undulatory sonority over which orchestral string sounds are layered, primarily built from glissandi of different speeds, directions, and densities. A sweep up to a sustained high-register cluster signals the start of the second section, which introduces a layer of tinkling bells, stochastic clouds of whips and pizzicati, and much else. A sudden drop in dynamic level and number of layers at 6'32" signals a new section, although it features successions of a wide range of sonorities, most of which were heard in the previous section. The orchestral winds are introduced, in both sustained sonorities and glissando textures reminiscent of similar passsages in Nomos gamma and Kraanerg. At 11'07", another sudden drop in intensity/density signals the final section. This is the longest and most sustained of the four, introducing various noise-based sonorities of both the sliding and fixed-band types. These continue to the piece’s end, layered with previously introduced sounds. The impact of hearing this wide range of sonorities, both sustained and percussive, being projected through a large, spatialized sound system would surely have been powerful.

Sorry for the double-paste

As per the quote at the top of the thread, Xenakis's views on the purpose of music and how an audience should relate to it were fundamentally different from Babbitt's

"Without a special training being necessary" seems U&K (so I'm not sure understanding the mathematics behind his compositional method - which I freely admit I don't - is expected of the listener or meant to be integral to the listening experience)

as someone who owns and has ploughed through formalized music (and has a degree in maths and philosophy lol) i think the answer has to be no

except to say it's kind of built into the idea of stochastics that no one can apprehend the many micro-elements individually (and nor do you need to grasp and study the effects on masse)

i mean it's not actual bullshit the wa it sometimes is in stockhausen and la monte young

good review of that crazy Asphodel remix edition of Persepolis. it had an upstart feel coming at a time of peak exhaustion for remix albums -- even though Naut and Karkowski's curation felt great, it had the same whiplash effect most projects like that have. going back to it for the first time in 20 years last week, I was more able to enjoy it as a time capsule, hearing tiny flickers of the source material remade totally in each composer's style, but it still required absolutely all of my attention. (Probably a good thing Volume 2 never panned out, but it was fascinating at least to hear the multitracks when they made the rounds back then)

I've only heard the original Philips vinyl Xenakis mix once, which breaks the piece into two sides and omits a bit of the piece's middle. The Fractal CD's silver cover is modelled on the original Philips vinyl cover, with João Rafael's mix in 2000. I hear the idea of that one was to match the original vinyl release as closely as possible, while staying complete, still hoping to compare (if anyone's got a good transfer of this, help me out)

The Daniel Teruggi mix on Disc 1 of the Asphodel imported the 48k masters at 44.1k, so the Asphodel version is a half-step slow. This is deal-breaking for some, but one of the pleasures of listening to this on vinyl is taking it -16% down.

The Daniel Teige mix on the 2CD Editions RZ comp around the same time is notably different -- slower fade in, mammoth modern reverb, really hovers, totally epic. My favorite for a while, but definitely an interpretation.

The Martin Wurmnest mix on Karlrecords a few years ago really gets precise and vivid with the EQs. The panning & distinction between the layers is more chiseled. Totally great! Rashaad Becker mastered all 56 minutes onto one vinyl disc, but I burned the FLACs from bandcamp.

Ooh that's good stuff, mark, though, of course, in 2020 we all know Xenakis lost an eye fighting the bloody British not the Nazis.

mark, I seem to recall you linking to a typically stimulating piece on so-called ‘extreme’ metal in which you also approach the genre from the problem of verbal congruence, i.e. which descriptors best match the sounds under discussion, how quickly criticism exhausts its designated lexical well, and what this tells us about the music ‘itself’. Have you explored these issues from a broader and more abstract theoretical point of view in any of your other essays? If so, I’d be very curious to read them.

...but...but...isn't <i>Persepolis</i> for later, this is <i>Persephassa</i> week! Ah ok then, good discussion started is well continued, go on plz :)

I'm just here to say that I've been fortunate to experience <i>Persephassa</i> live in hexagon, so to speak. I don't know how they did the coordination of the rhythms, and I cannot speak to the overall composition and organization, but I do know that towards the end, when the drumrolls were circled and bounced around the perimeter and across the diameter like hot speedy fire balloons, the thrill was as visceral and far from cerebral as any I have experienced in music.

Like that hoary Elgar quote of "I've got a tune that'll knock'em flat" for the hope & glory thing, I cannot listen to the end here without imagining Xenakis rubbing his hands going "hah this will put the ph3ar of Zeus into'em". I don't get much of this feeling from any recording I've tried, though. If it is played, go, I guess is my message.

aaargh tag fail #2419

yes sorry i posted out of order, i felt the things i was discussing in that review maybe applied to earlier works and also i knew i wd likely be busy when it reached the actual proper moment and miss it entirely

pom the two pieces are nearly 20 years apart and honestly i didn't notice or think of overlap until you pointed it out: it's absolutely a general topic i care about and plan to write more about -- but strangelyi haven't till now thought abt organising pieces under this specific heading, other things i wrote may well go in this column, i will give it a good think

Thanks, mark. It leaped out at me because it's a topic that plays well with my own critical/theoretical hobbyhorses. No pressure, obv., but if you do come back to this theme, do let me know!

Just a note that we'll pick this up next week after the holidays. My listening is largely occupied with the virtual Kalakendra Carnatic festival and catching up 2020 releases rn.

Perfect, thanks.

And we're back in the new year:

Week 11

Antikhthon (ballet), 1971
Aroura, 12 str, 1971
Charisma, cl, vc, 1971
Mikka, vn, 1971

I really have no idea how to talk about this music but Mikka is great. thought I knew it but had it confused with one of the cello pieces- this solo/chamber stuff is definitely my way in, I feel it a lot better than the big ensemble stuff which I will need to let grow on me (seems to be the other way round for some people)

Before I tackle the latest batch, I just wanted to say that I liked Persephassa better than I expected (not huge on all-percussion ensembles more often than not), and that Hibiki-Hana-Ma is wonderful both in terms of its electro-acoustic integration and its use of the biwa. Speaking of which…

https://ase-hujiko.tumblr.com/post/118838964334#

Love it!

I'm quarantined in my room outside of work hours, so I will probably be able to catch up over the next ten days. I'll start with the current batch and either work backwards or listen to multiple recordings of things-- there are at least two recordings on Spotify of the original Mikka (not Mikka S, which I imagine is different), for example.

I just listened to Mikka (Irvine Arditti recording) and Charisma (Alain Damiens/Pierre Strauch) twice each. They're both interesting. Mikka seems like a study in wide glissandi and sustained straight tones throughout the range (in register, dynamics, and timbre) of the violin. The overall shape seems comprehensible, starting quieter, almost like a sigh, emphasizing the lower register, working upwards, building to contrasting dynamic levels and scratch timbres, and ending softly closer to the upper register. I think those are glissandi on artificial harmonics in the latter part? It's effective and pleasingly crafted, affecting in its expressive range. Charisma I had a little harder time with: the 'extreme' sounds on cello and clarinet and the use of silence are definitely interesting, but I didn't quite get the form. I'll come back to it, maybe after reading a bit.

Listened to Aroura twice just now, when distracted. The intense masses of string sound contrasted with stretches of silence definitely make an impact, though, again, I wasn't sure I picked out the form.

I went back and listened to Kraanerg, quite a trip. I kept thinking something was wrong with my headphones. It sounded like recordings of the orchestra that were tape-damaged?

Yeah, orchestra + tape (mostly from processed recordings of the orchestra) iirc.

Listened to Antikthon twice now, while doing things, and read Harley on this week's pieces. I love the opening section with multiphonic clusters in the clarinets, brass clusters, and snare drums, and the fourth section with the string glissandi, although my mind did wander a bit, maybe since, again, the overall form is episodic and doesn't lead itself to an easily apparent narrative or environment ime. It's another case where I imagine the live experience might be much more intense. Mikka is definitely the standout from this week for me. Fascinating to read how it was conceived as an application of a random walk (use in designing a digital waveform) for solo instrumental writing - it makes perfect sense! Also to think about the challenges for the violinist in accurately playing those glissandi when it is harder to aurally ground oneself with reference pitches.

Week 12

Linaia-Agon, hn, trbn, tuba, 1972
Polytope de Cluny, 8-track, lighting, 1972
Eridanos, 8 brass, str orch, 1973

Sorry, I'm not doing a very good job of keeping up with Mr X at the moment. I'll try to catch up pronto.

Before I check out the last three, I did catch up with…

Antikhthon: a wonderful title, that – 'Anti-Earth'. Beyond the Pythagorean reference and the fact that Xenakis conceived it as a piece of abstract music, I can't help but read a bit of Stravinsky into it, since Georges Balanchine is the one who commissioned it for the New York City Ballet. It's nowhere near as tightly structured as a Stravinsky score, however, and, barring a few episodes here and there, it doesn't have enough going for it in terms of uniqueness to make me want to revisit it over his other orchestral works from this period.

Aroura: after 'Anti-Earth', this one reportedly just means 'Earth'. Although its moment-to-moment narrative impetus remains quite elusive, it's far more immediate to my ears: the timbral palette is narrower, which creates a sense of focus, and its rather more liberal use of silence helps punctuate proceedings, even as the 'sentences' themselves are hard to unpack. It all flows quite nicely, though I certainly couldn't tell you why!

Charisma: that cello entrance is metal af! What follows is a play of alternatively aggressive and airy sustained notes for both instruments – it's quite suggestive over its 4:30 duration. I like this miniature a lot.

Mikka: an all-glissando, all-elastic piece for solo violin. Even if I didn't know (as I now do) that it's meant to mimic a 'random walk', there's something very figurative and appealing about it from the get-go. This is a memorable piece, for sure, and Irvine Arditti unsurprisingly nails it.

I listened to two recordings of Linaia-Agon today. Before reading, it seemed far more loose and improvisatory than anything else so far and, after reading Harley, I gather that it is exactly this: a Stockhausen-inspired attempt at integrating improvisation, structured as some sort of game between the musicians. He doesn't spend that much time on it so I look forward to reading more. Wasn't sure I fully got my head around it.

Little time right now bcz of sudden stressful personal stuff, but had a whack through this week's; the Polytope I would like to gnaw more on at a later date possibly but certainly not now; the two acoustic ones felt unexpectedly... peaceful and inviting or something? Thoroughly enjoyed having them in my ear while not in the best of spaces, which I'm not sure I could say about a majority of the earlier stuff (not a diss).

Eridanos: It seems like we've lost the really clear, obvious dramatic forms of the earlier Xenakis but yes, I also find this one pleasant and inviting, even 'soft' in a way. There's still a lot of drama and intensity but I don't find it harsh and I can get lost in the sound-world, even when I'm not following an obvious form. Harley's comments are helpful:

This score pits the brass against the strings (there are no woodwinds or percussion), treating them more or less on equal terms (the strings play no glissandi at all, which is unusual). Rather than construct an architectural form from contrasting sonic entities, Xenakis looked to harmonic structures for his building blocks. Inspired by the structure of DNA chains, four elements (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and phosphorus) are represented by intervallic sets, divided between the brass (carbon, phosphorus) and the strings (hydrogen, oxygen). The form consists of statements (blocks of rhythmicized textures) of these elements, the overlapping succession of intervallic sets building up a structure rather in the manner of the genetic chain. These harmonic fields are subject to permutation, and are sometimes shared between brass and strings.

On occasion, between statements of the elements, episodic material is heard, built primarily from timbral and dynamic variations of a single pitch (which changes each time). There are also three moments in which the strings create an unusual sonority by bowing on the body of the instruments. These episodes serve as a foil to the ongoing dialogue, providing respite from the high density of musical information being projected and acting as connecting tissue between larger groupings of the intervallic blocks. The harmonic sets are built from quarter tones, necessitating

accuracy in performance and reception in order to distinguish between them. This intervallic intricacy is mitigated by the simplicity of the rhythms, limited to multiples of the basic sixteenth-note pulse with no layering of different tempi or subdivisions. While Eridanos is something of an anomaly in Xenakis’s output, it nonetheless points to a return to considerations of pitch organization. In the works leading up to this point, Xenakis had been more concerned with other aspects of the music, particularly on the architectural level. Through the 1970s, and manifestly in Eridanos, he became more and more preoccupied with developing more allencompassing, or at least more prominent, structures involving pitch.

Thoroughly enjoyed having them in my ear while not in the best of spaces, which I'm not sure I could say about a majority of the earlier stuff (not a diss).

Same here. Linaia-Agon in particular feels like a nice change of pace after the bold din of his previous works, and I dare say he does a better job with these quieter moods than I expected. (Also, is it just me or is the title a bit misleading?)

Eridanos feels busier and more characteristic despite the absence of glissandi. I would have preferred a bit more gestalt.

As for the Polytope de Cluny, parts of it have a bit of a 'fourth world' vibe to them thanks to the mbira, which is not an instrument I expected here given the installation's setting (the Musée de Cluny showcases artifacts from the Middle Ages and it was built on the remnants of third century Gallo-Roman baths).

Just listened to Polytope de Cluny. Although it's ofc different, I also found it relatively gentle and pleasant, with am ambient quality. Really enjoyed the sounds and textures. The mbira almost tickles the ear over the washes of noise. Apparently, it was the first piece in France to use digital synthesis?

That's probably my favourite of this week.

Week 13

Erikhthon, pf, orch, 1974
Cendrées, chorus, orch, 1973–4
Evryali, pf, 1973

"Evyrali" is awesome.

Evryali there's a halo hanging from the corner of my girlfriend's four-post bed

Listening to Aki Takahashi's performance now, I'm so used to hearing her Feldman performances that I guess I wasn't expecting this level of almost mania.

There's a lot of cascading up and down the keyboard, sometimes I suspect each hand in a different direction. This motion seems coherent, in a way, despite no clear tonal center or traditional harmonic structure, if only because the change to repeated chord clusters or a swirling monophony or dead silence feels abrupt, almost shocking.

I'm trying to balance "sounding smart" with "knowing what the heck I'm talking about," so please bear that in mind. I'm not a musician (I'm a drummer) so I'm probably using the language incorrectly.

Does anyone have a Spotify link to Cendrées to add to the playlist?

On to Cendrées now on YouTube, the version with the description in English (Chœurs de la Fondation Gulbenkian de Lisbonne / Orchestre National de France / Michel Tabachnik). I can appreciate Xenakis' dedication to the art of the glissando, but I wonder if he ever felt pigeonholed? Pressured to write glissandi anytime he was composing for strings? Do you think people stopped him on the street and begged him to do a glissando for them?

He moved away from glissandi in the Week 12 pieces!

I listened to Cendrées twice now, following the score the second time, and this is revelatory, almost exhausting (and exhaustive in the range of techniques and sonorities it integrates). I think I'm still processing it all.

From (brief) loosely structured quasi-improvisatory passages (often with expressive, emotional directions) to all the rigorously notated complex tuplets, sustained vocal drones vs barked or guttural sounds ("of rage"), masses of orchestral and choral sound vs the delicate quarter-tone flute solo and duet vs 'clouds of phantom sound', massed glissandi vs staccato bursts, the piece kind of does it all, sounds beautiful, and remains compelling the whole way through, without ever being predictable.

Tom, your description of Evryali makes perfect sense and is really not a world away from Harley's:

One of the most striking aspects of Evryali is the rhythmic drive that propels the music at a relentlessly steady pace (the sixteenth-note pulse is set at 480 MM). The music is not metric, but most passages are built upon this pulse, the exceptions being two appearances of a more rhythmically diffuse, cloudlike texture, and the three measured silences.8 Otherwise, the music is made up of three sonic entities: “waves,” arborescences, and fixed-range rhythmic passages. The waves and arborescences are closely related, in that wavelike contours form the primary outlines of the arborescent passages. The difference is that the waves are monophonic entities, whereas the arborescences are polyphonic. The sketches confirm the importance of graphic design, with the dendritic shapes of these contours being sketched on graph paper rather than plotted on score paper. From his earliest works, Xenakis often sketched musical ideas on graph paper, linking graphic designs with compositional and/or instrumentational concerns. Here, for example, he would have had to keep in mind, when tracing his arborescences, that the two hands and ten fingers of the pianist can only reach so far. In fact, Xenakis overlooked this limitation on a number of occasions, and even includes a high C#, beyond the range of any piano, in the penultimate passage of arborescences.9

As with Aroura and Eridanos, it is difficult to perceive large-scale divisions in Evryali. The alternation and layering of the different textures proceed by means of shorter and longer passages. The silences are, by their placement, treated as independent entities, resonating in a special way the extraordinary rhythmic energy of the music. Harmonically, the set intervallic structure of the static, rhythmically defined passages contrasts with the more fluid waves and arborescences that tend to proceed chromatically. There does not appear to be any overriding principle or sieve linking the numerous manifestations of the fixed-rhythm entity; each is built from a different intervallic configuration, the density ranging from three to eight pitches.10 Sieves appear to have been applied to the generation of rhythmic patterns, but the layering of these structures makes precise determination or comparison of their content virtually impossible. There is no concern on the composer’s part that these sieves be identified. In very general terms, they exhibit statistical similarities by containing values limited to just a few multiples of the basic unit of pulse.

I first listened to Kayako Matsunaga's approx 6 minute-long recording twice and felt like it went right over my head. Now I'm listening to Takahashi's 10-minute recording and it's making much more sense to me - maybe the pacing just works better for my slow brain but I definitely feel the driving pulse here and catch the melodic motives.

Confession: although I know I came across it in grad school and I think even had to read a paper about it, I don't actually know what a "sieve" is in this context. (Also, I couldn't explain Shepard tones very well if I had a gun to my head.) I will look it up soon enough since it seems pretty important in X's work, esp in this period.

Diving into Erikhthon now

I listened while sorting laundry, and not that analytically, but found it compelling - I'm not even really sure how he achieved that cold slate-grey wash of orchestral sonority and the energetic, almost manic piano serves as a striking juxtaposition; basically seems to work as a brain-smearing concerto, closing with a blast of brass.

Without looking it up, I think "sieve" may mean a kind of conceptual filter that excludes a certain subset of e.g. pitches, just as an actual physical sieve excludes particles larger than a given size (or only includes them, if you consider what's left in the sieve rather than what passes through it).

A classical examples is the "sieve of Eratosthenes", an ancient Greek algorithm for finding the set of prime numbers: First write down all the numbers 2, 3, 4, etc on a long strip of paper. Now, find the first number on the list; this is 2, which is prime. Cross out all multiples of 2 except for 2 itself, i.e. cross out 4, 6, 8, 10 etc. The current first number on the list is 3, which is prime. Cross out all multiples of 3 except for 3 itself, i.e. 6, 9, 12, 15 etc. The number 4 has been stricken out, so the current first number on the list is 5, which is prime. Cross out etc etc etc, and you end up with a long strip of paper containing all prime numbers and no non-prime numbers.

Cendrées is exhilarating and overwhelming. It saddens me to discover that there's no readily available commercial recording of it in 2021. Of all the works I hadn't heard before hopping onto this thread, this may well be the most impressive so far. Its maximalism feels like a summary of almost every tool at Xenakis's disposal up to this point yet it doesn't sound contrived in the least. It's not a compendium of stock gestures, it just works.

I'm less sold on Erikhthon, which is as high on energy as it gets, pitting the usual backdrop of string glissandi against a heroically assertive piano part, but without too little going on to sustain my interest throughout.

Evryali ('far-roaming') is the first of his solo piano pieces that I genuinely enjoy. The intro comes across as a quasi nod to US minimalism before it breaks down and reassembles itself into a series of almost Beethovenian developments that sound more pianistically idiomatic than anything else he'd written up to that point. I agree that a broader tempo greatly serves the work btw.

Week 14

Noomena, 1974
Gmeeoorh, org, 1974
Polytope de Cluny, 8-track, lighting, 1972

*with too little

xp

Sorry! Polytope de Cluny was in Wk 12, duh.

This is the real
Week 14

Noomena, 1974
Gmeeoorh, org, 1974
Empreintes, 1975

Does anyone know if Polytope II was recorded?

Could it just be an alternate title for Polytope de Cluny?

From the original (Oxford Music) list:

Polytope de Cluny, 8-track, lighting, 1972; Paris, 17 Oct 1972
Polytope II, tape, lighting, 1974; Paris, 1974

but idk if it's just another name for the Paris mix/staging of similar material??

Gmeeoorh: Just listened to Christoph Maria Moosmann's recording, which I already owned, twice. It's a long piece but really intense and exhilarating when I follow it. He virtually achieved the dynamic range and density of sound mass of his famous orchestral works on a solo instrument (which had to be played by two people - one person handling all the stop changes that provide all the timbral variety!).

Harley:

The long opening passage of arborescences, lasting close to five minutes, is articulated by a number of points where the arborescences stop, either in sustained clusters or held pitches (the first, mm. 39–42, is enlivened by irregular trills in both hands and the pedals), or in silence, allowing the sonority to resonate as it dies away. The sustained sonorities point the way to the second section, shorter by half, made up of massive clusters achieved by laying boards upon the manuals and pedals in order to open as many pipes as possible. The effect of these powerful sonorities is awesome. It is also extremely rich dynamically, through the ongoing stop changes. The arboresences return, hesitatingly at first, gradually building up momentum to carry through the longest span of the piece, which lasts around six minutes. After the silences that break up the beginning phrases, there is just one moment, at mm. 149–51, where the music comes to rest on a sustained sonority in the pedals. The arboresences fall off to a similar passage in the pedals, and then that breaks off in order to prepare the stops for the next section.

There follow two contrasting passages, the first being a sustained harmonic sonority in which different pitches enter, then drop out, creating an evolving, but registrally and timbrally restricted, texture. After a break, a more active though still narrow-ranged passage enters to fill in a high span of pitches with staccato figures over a quietly sustained sonority in the pedals. These two passages, lasting four minutes, lead back to a final short passage of involved, linear polyphony, concluding with a return to the immense clusters of the second section.

His definition of "arborescences" btw:

proliferations of lines created from a generative phrase or contour

There's an explanation of sieves in there too but I think I'm too short on mental space to follow it right now. I'll try to find X's original book.

Sorry for the late heads up, but FYI: Helsinki realization of La Légende d'Eer is streaming online in 20 minutes' time (3 PM GMT) as part of the Musica Nova festival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlgvRu73Ces

Interesting. I might be able to catch some of that.

Noomena: I listened to the Luxembourg Phil/Tamayo recording twice just now. It didn't make as strong of an initial impression as many of the other works. Somehow I heard it first as relatively undifferentiated then came back and listened to how he features, juxtaposes, and contrasts the different sections of the orchestra, which I think are being used with dense enough chromatic harmonies and sweeping glissandi that they turn into masses of colour, although we get some atonal melody lines at the beginning. It is interesting to hear how glissandi are handled differently in strings vs brass vs winds. We end with the whole orchestra in a giant block of sound with the strings keeping a pulse in furious accented bowings. (There's a 12-note chord here, it seems). This passage is presented briefly and economically - it arrives, makes its conclusive statement and then ends. At first it felt abrupt; on returning to it, it just seems concise.

Jvc, how was it?

Empreintes: Listened the the Luxembourg Phil/Tamayo recording three times now. It's quite different from the other works and I can see why Harley connects it to Scelsi and spectralism. It's largely built around a sustained G with a lot of subtle variation in timbre, articulation, rhythm, and dynamics; it then gets elaborated on with soft glissandi and clusters but for most of the recording, the sustained pitch is present. V effective moment after the 5m mark when the G becomes softer and the 'arborescences', the cluster sonorities and glissandi, take over, eventually completely. Then we get aggressive homorhythmic attacks in the strings, later echoed in the brass after sweeping long tones that pass through the sections, seemingly across the soundstage as well. Brass and winds both get featured with these more mf sections of staccato bursts that fade the piece out. The overall form works more like a narrative or journey from A to B than as something with conclusive unity, perhaps?

Sund4r, I found it quite engaging, an interesting and perhaps more immersive aspect was that the performance was recorded with a binaural microphone, so that the deluge of sounds was quite successfully spatially distributed in headphones. I need to compare this with my only recorded copy, Karl records' LP of La légende, but my initial impression was that the performance was very "digital", Hecker's Sun Pandämonium came to mind.

Here's one-minute clip from rehearsals: https://areena.yle.fi/1-50753985

I cursorily listened to the last batch and enjoyed Empreintes the most due to its audible spectralist bent and relative concision. Gmeeoorh is fascinating as the organ is not an instrument I associate with Xenakis, and I like it when he casts himself against type, but the work's nearly 20-minute running time does it no favours. Noomena seemed somewhat formulaic and left the least positive impression. That I haven't really been in the mood for Xenakis-esque sounds lately doesn't help…

I thought I'd wait a week to give people a chance to catch up after the ILM polls.

That sounds v cool, jvc. I listened to a small portion of it but couldn't stay - the sound definitely seemed good.

Let's do a light couple of weeks, since I think there's a lot of overlap between the constituency for this thread and the metal poll. I'll keep it just under 45m this week.

Week 15
N’shima, 2 Mez/A, 2 hn, 2 trbn, vc, 1975
Phlegra, 11 insts, 1975

That's about 31m, actually.

Good call, thanks.

I listened to both pieces this morning.

Phlegra: Harley describes this as "organic", which seems right. I'm not sure how much it's the composition, how much it's the Ensemble Intercontemporain/Tabachnik performance I listened to on Naxos, or both, but I got a real 'live' feel of musicians in dialogue and interaction with each other, like the energy and feel of a good improvisation was captured in notated form. A lot of call-and-response sorts of passages, as one also finds in Boulez's Le marteau sans maître, for example, but with parts coming together in unisons or clusters and then pulling apart. The use of heterophony seems a little uncharacteristic. The quarter-tone relationships add to the conversational quality, I find. A lot of variation in instrumental timbre on sustained or repeated pitches. A piece I think I could come back to a lot.

N'shima: I listened to this video, curious about the OOP - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNd81WWYgYE
It's actually described pretty well at the link. The melodic lines were derived from computer-generated curves based on Brownian motion, apparently. The two singers sing/declaim in a very rough, raw, affecting style, influenced by Mediterranean folk music, using Hebrew syllables. The brass instruments respond and accompany in a sparse, stark way. There's some humour in the sul pont glissandi on the cello. Definitely interesting and expressive.

Had a leisurely walk with both Spotify recordings of Phlegra just now, and my somewhat superficial thoughts were along the lines of "this is probably the closest I've heard in this project to anything that could be called a divertimento" -- which while different, is I guess not entirely incompatible with Sund4r's reaction.

I really like N'shima--thanks for the heads-up! I just bought an mp3 of a different performance of it released in 1992:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBhNNnnwyq4
https://www.discogs.com/Various-20-Ans-De-Musique-Contemporaine-Metz-6/release/12858271

Phlegra seems the most human composition in a long time. That may just be my interpretation, but it does seem like it comes the closest to acknowledging classical forms of the lot of these pieces so far. It's not tonal, but it's not tone clusters. It's not really abrasive, just a little jumbled to the classical ear.

I did like the singing in N'shima, also, it does kind of sound like turn of the century field recordings of Balkan folk music.

Also Craig I think that's the recording of N'shima I put on the Spotify playlist, although with a much worse cover:

https://resources.tidal.com/images/4eeb76a3/c60b/4b4b/9e21/3c8b0e077186/640x640.jpg

^ Totally! Yup, the file I bought has that cover
(an add'l unexpected surprise that I also just bought from that set was Pianophonie [1978] for piano, electronic transformation and orchestra by Kazimierz Serocki)

Tom summed up my feelings exactly. Both pieces engage with folk music more audibly than most everything sinceZyia, yet they do so without a shred of backward-looking nostalgia. I'll be revisiting these two for sure, especially Phlegra.

Week 16

Psappha, perc, 1975
Theraps, db, 1975–6
Epeï, eng hn, cl, tpt, 2 trbn, db, 1976

I see Epei is on YouTube but I can't find it on Spotify. I guess the word means "so what?" in ancient Greek, I'm curious to see if it's influenced by Miles Davis.

I just listened to Gert Mortensen's recording of Psappha from the 1990 BIS disc on Naxos Music Library and, wow, I guess the mid-70s is when Xenakis mellowed out? It's virtuosic and complex but a lot of passages here have a steady, comparatively easy-to-follow beat, even a groove. The folk/traditional influences are again apparent. I thought of Carnatic rhythms at times, although idk if that was an actual influence. The percussion timbres are also generally pleasant. (Apparently there are six groups of instruments for the one player, three of metal and three of wood and skin, with up to 15 instruments played at once.) It's still a long way from lo-fi beats to study to ofc and the beat is pulled away at moments before we ultimately build up to really intense pounding.

"Pleasant" is too mild: I find the sounds and variety thereof really viscerally pleasing, at least in this recording.

We’re not quite done yet but if I had to venture a crude ranking based on everything I’ve heard over the years I’d go with: middle > early > late.

Re "mellowed", "pleasant" etc: on my hunt for extant recordings of Epeï*, I was amused at the words of an Amazon reviewer:

a strange little limp piece, the most flaccid thing Xenakis ever wrote

*) it is sometimes possible to dig up badly tagged versions of hard-to-find works on Spotify by going via performers, album titles etc; no luck here though

And talking of Spotify and tagging: the Håkon Thelin recording of Theraps isn't as unreasonably slow compared to other recordings as it appears by its track length of 16:21. It is the last track of the album; Theraps actually ends at about 12:10 and is followed by a hidden track: POING playing a cover version of "Mr. Krinkle" by Primus.

This is how Theraps is described in the liner notes to Frank Reinecke's recording:

There now follows a descent into the nethermost regions in Theraps by IANNIS XENAKIS, a work traditionally regarded as unplayable. Xenakis flings the soloist into an almost impenetrable thicket of notes, far beyond his technical capabilities and as perilous as barbed wire. Poised at and beyond the borderline of the humanly feasible, Theraps, as suggested by the meaning of this ancient Greek word, has a ‘servient’ function in that it casts player and listener alike under its spell. Indulgent relaxation is out of the question: “We live more intensively,” Xenakis explains, “when we have to cope with hosts of problems.” Theraps is designed for one thing above all: precise listening – to microtonal gradations, two-voice up-and-down glissando peregrinations, sustained natural intervals, and queazily distorted double harmonics. The piece jumps abruptly between these elements. Though the parameters of rhythm, melody, and harmony are addressed as well, Xenakis has wrested them from familiar patterns and plunged them into gargantuan archaic formations. Audacity and panic are never very far apart in this piece

This seems about right. The overall form isn't obvious but it remains gripping and engaging in a visceral way and never harsh to my ear. The sustained 'queasy' double harmonics (I think that's what I'm hearing) are most striking to me, in that I might have possibly even guessed they were coming from extended techniques on some kind of wind instrument.

Well, Épéï is definitely different and shows the mellowing. I listened to it here since it's not on Naxos or Spotify:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGgAf_6Y7JQ

It doesn't seem to have been influenced by Miles Davis (and Harley says the title means "since" - in Greek?) but if someone had told me that it was Xenakis's homage to modal jazz, I would have believed them. Again, we have regular pulse and it's built around a very clear, obvious three-note motive treated in canon with a second part that almost seems heterophonic (the instruments vary single pitches but then we get a bit of melody too). It proceeds to flow in an organic way, similar to Psappha. There's a lot of Scelsi-style variation of timbre and dynamics on a narrow range of continued pitches and everyone comes together on a huge unison at the end.

Harley's breakdown:

The music is very much built upon continuous textural transformations. Timbre, too, or instrumental color, is treated in a continuous fashion, proceeding from homogeneity rather than contrast, restricting the differences between the instruments rather than emphasizing them. The long opening section proceeds without interruption for close to four minutes, almost one quarter of the piece’s duration. The muted trumpet states a three-note motive, shadowed by the clarinet playing legato an octave lower, and proceeds to vary it slightly with each repetition. The other instruments surround this strange canonic variation with sustained notes in the same register, varied in all manner of ways. After this lengthy, incrementally evolving passage, there are two short, contrasting sections. The first proceeds without break into a narrowband glissando sonority, with all instruments outlining slowly undulating, independent contours, the blocklike dynamic changes moving twice from pp to fff. A short break leads to the second section, in which a uniform pulse, articulating six-note clusters that vary slightly with each new beat, gradually moves out of phase and then back in again. The next section, which carries through pretty much to the end, though in less continuous fashion than earlier, begins with a sustained pitch, A4, doubled in the trumpet and cor anglais. This pitch is varied through octave doublings, dynamic and rhythmic variations, and by increasingly wide-ranging glissandi. The sonority is strongly reminiscent of the work of Giacinti Scelsi, although the sporadic flurries of notes away from (and back to) the central pitch add an energy that is proper to Xenakis. At m. 111, there is a sharp interruption, a succession of fff clusters in all the instruments but the cor anglais. The music then starts up again as before, with little or no sign that this event had any impact on the material. The textural variations otherwise unfold gradually, carrying on right up to the closing passage. A short break signals the end, which bursts into a short statement of layered pulsations, each instrument moving back and forth between two neighboring pitches at a different rate. This gives way gradually to trills in all the instruments, then a rather dramatic heralding of a single pitch, E, spread across five octaves.

Btw, the piece was commissioned by la Société de musique contemporaine du Québec and premiered in Montreal.

I haven't listened to the latest batch yet, but so far I am pleasantly surprised by the sheer amount of Xenakis pieces that were commissioned by Canadian institutions and/or premiered in Canada.

"Epei" for "since" is Greek, yes. IIRC it works a bit like in English, in that it have the force of both "after" and "because".

*can have

Another light week for the last week of metal poll; 1976 was about solo and chamber music for X, it seems:

Week 17

Retours-Windungen, 12 vc, 1976
Dmaathen, ob, perc, 1976
Khoaï, hpd, 1976

The first one seems absent from Spotify, except for a later 8-cello version, which from a quick sampling sounds pretty representative of the 1976 one.

Dmaathen is a fun listen! It may not be entirely coincidental that i) I love oboe and ii) I was seven years old in 1976, and this somewhat reminds me of some of the more far-out soundtrack work to children's TV (at least on Scandinavian state broadcasting) at that time.

Whoa, Chojnacka's Khoaï almost feels like some kind of manic 2003 glitchtronica project!

Late to the party, with little to add, but of the previous three, I enjoyed Theraps the most, and heard it as a double-bass expansion of the single-minded concept at play in Mikka. Epeï is quite cool as well, similar in some ways to the heterophonic idiom Ștefan Niculescu was pursuing around the same time. Psappha was pleasant enough, but it's not the most memorable of his works for percussion imo despite having been recorded numerous times.

I listened to the recording of Retours-Windungen by the cellists of the Berlin Phil on NML and also watched a clip on YT of Nomos playing it in a French museum, with the cellists in a circle around the audience. Without reading about it, it's a very nicely crafted short piece in a kind of ternary form. The first section might actually suggest the influence of minimalism. There's a steady repeated pulse and the harmony is surprisingly clear, simple, and largely (I think) diatonic at first, with a lot of major thirds iirc. Dense clusters build up, though, and we move into a B section that is more typically Xenakis, with a lot of timbral effects (col legno?) and glissandi, and no literally stated beat. This builds back into more rhythmic material but much more aggressively so than in the first section, and in gnarly clusters.

Listening for a second time to Dmaathen (Christian Hommel/Johannes Fischer). At the outset, you'd be forgiven for not believing it's Xenakis. It's a folky tune with a beat! But then we get long held multiphonics on the oboe and complex, less regular rhythms in the percussion. The percussion actually becomes more of the focus, with a wide timbral and dynamic range, although it drops out at times and I begin to focus more on the oboe multiphonics at that point. Quite a dynamic range in the oboe as well. About 4:40, the rhythm becomes regular and the oboe part is more melodic again for a while before we return to long multiphonic effects; more of an emphasis on tuned mallet percussion here. It sounds like there may be water bowls around 6:30?? We move back and forth between more melodic passages and more timbrally-oriented material, while the percussion part moves between being silent, being an accompanist, and being overpowering. It's almost dizzying.

Whoa, Chojnacka's Khoaï almost feels like some kind of manic 2003 glitchtronica project!

I'm listening to Jukka Tiensuu's recording. I've heard this piece before but not in ages and yeah, the above is accurate. Quite intense and energetic. There are recurring motives and phrase structure; in a way, it's also reminiscent of a hyperdrive version of Baroque counterpoint.

Week 18

Mikka ‘S’, vn, 1976
Jonchaies, 1977
A Colone (Sophocles), male/female vv (20 minimum), 5 hn, 3 trbn, 6 vc, 4 db, 1977

Whoa, Chojnacka's Khoaï almost feels like some kind of manic 2003 glitchtronica project!

― anatol_merklich, Monday, March 1, 2021 4:54 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

YES. The harpsichord is my favorite keyboard instrument, so Khoaï and all the Xenakis/Chojnacka collabs are IT for me. Ligeti's harpsichord pieces (Passacaglia Ungherese, Hungarian Rock, and Continuum) scratch a similar itch but are definitely less far-out

Mikka 'S': Listened to Irvine Arditti's recording a few times. The idea of the continuous glissando from Mikka is still there but for most of the piece, there are two voices on the single bowed instrument, sometimes with separate glissandi in both, sometimes with a pedal (often on open strings, from what I gather) in one. In the last section, we lose the counterpoint and the gliss is punctuated with aggressive bow attacks. The very end of the piece has felt abrupt every time. Fascinating, regardless.

Jonchaies: this is fantastic, a real tour de force. (Listening to Tamayo/Luxembourg Phil). He worked his increasing comfort with melody and pulse into a massive orchestral piece that brings back the grandiose sonic aspirations of his early pieces.

Harley:

Jonchaies (“rushes, reeds”) calls for an orchestra of gigantic proportions: 109 musicians, including quadruple winds (with six clarinets and six horns), six percussionists, and an extra large string section. Parts of the piece are volcanic, with thickly layered, pounding pulsations, or wailing clusters of brass. Other parts, however, are surprisingly delicate, even lyrical. The long opening section for strings alone (with a few discrete intrusions by the bass drum and temple blocks) is, without a doubt, one of the most melodically expressive passages in all of Xenakis’s output. After a dramatic launch, a glissando rocketing up to the high register to fall back slightly to a sustained B6, a modal melody unfolds. As it wends its way slowly down to the mid-low register and then back up again, the melody splits off into six voices, each following more or less the same contour by some degree of delay. The resulting texture is at the same time quasi-imitative and quasi-heterophonic. Each of the six voices is assigned a roughly equal complement of string instruments split into three layers, one bowing the notes normally, the second bowing them and adding a glissando, and the third (not always present) plucking the notes. The resultant additive sonority sounds like an Indonesian gamelan, enhanced by the intervallic structure of the pitch sieve used...

... The opening melody zeroes in right away on the intervallic structure Xenakis was attracted to in the Javanese gamelan. The major third is surrounded above and below by a semitone, outlining the interlocking fourths he mentions. The unfolding of the melody proceeds primarily by a steplike motion (from one pitch of the sieve to the next) or by jumping over one note to the next. The difference in sonority between this melodic structure and the chantlike melodies in the choral works written just prior is striking. In those, the contours appear to be freely composed, guided by the prosody of the text and a knowledge of Greek tetrachordal organization. The restricted range allows the flow of the language to proceed in a relatively natural(istic) way. In Jonchaies, and many subsequent scores, the intervallic structure of the sieve, which often remains fixed throughout a section or piece, creates a certain identity or “timbre.” The periodic nature of the sieve creates uniformity throughout the full range of the material, though its nonoctaviating structure (where the interrallic pattern does not repeat at the octave) structure has the effect of weakening the tonal implications of the leading tones to create a more mysterious, compelling expression. With six rhythmically independent lines carrying on together, the string sound is certainly complex, but the strong identity of the intervallic structure of the underlying sieve produces a clarity that would otherwise be missing.

The remaining sections of Jonchaies are quite different from the opening passage, but no less powerful. The second part is the most substantiated (at five minutes, being a full minute longer than the opening), and it is built from layers of rhythmic pulsations involving the full orchestra. Each layer moves chromatically along a slowly undulating, independently conceived, contour. The driving pulse is occasionally fractured by certain layers shifting to a different tempo. The orchestration is noteworthy for its dynamic mixtures of instruments, the timbral components of each layer shifting as lines enter and drop out.

The third, relatively brief, section turns the spotlight back onto the strings, supported by sustained clusters in the winds and rolls on the low drums. The strings repeat a sharply defined gesture four times, varying the proportions with each. A strongly articulated ascending passage, in which each of the five families of strings proceed along independent rhythmic and melodic trajectories, is succeeded by a static passage of chordal pulsations, this time synchronized, leading into a glissando passage that falls back down again, each group proceeding independently as before. A conceptual link to the earlier sections is found in the wavelike contours of the material, with each passage offering a different musical perspective on the title, conjuring winds blowing through a field of rushes.

This rather enclosed section is succeeded by a narrowly banded texture featuring the brass, each instrument playing articulated glissandi. The emphasis shifts from horns to trumpets and trombones (from the more rounded sonority of the conical tubing to the more pointed sonority of the cylindrical brass). A “still point” is reached at m. 182, where the trombones sustain a chord through a fermata. The sound fills out again as all of the brass reenter, followed by the woodwinds, percussion, and finally the strings, as the concluding section begins. This final portion, quite substantial at something over three minutes, is by far the most complex. As many as seven layers of independent sonic entities are deployed at the same time. Overall, the music is filtered upwards beginning with the ripping glissandi of the horns, and finally concluding with the high chirps of the piccolos, xylophone, and marimba.

I have a better idea of what sieves are after reading some of this: http://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/15753/1/11.2-Dimitris-Exarchos-&-Daniel-Jones.pdf

Jonchaies is incredible, yes – top 5, possibly top 3 Xenakis for me.

I'll try to catch back up tonight, the metal poll rollout had me busy most of last week. Spotify is as updated as I could get it, unless someone has a bead on A Colone or Retours-Windungen.

I bought the New London Chamber Choir/Critical Band/James Woods album Xenakis: Choral Music on iTunes since I couldn't find a streaming version of "À Colone" anywhere. It doesn't seem like the most exciting of his works. The singers mostly chant/declaim in ancient Greek (from Sophocles's Oedipus at Colonus apparently) with occasional brass punctuations. There is a brief melodic instrumental introduction. The liner notes describe that this was Xenakis's effort to recreate speech patterns of the fifth century BC. I don't dislike it but I feel like I might get more out of it if I knew the language or had studied the text? At least the next track on the album is the mind-warping "Nuits".

Do people want a week to catch up after the metal poll?

I didn't dare ask, but that would be great, yeah.

No problem, also gives me time to listen to more of the metal albums (and do a little listening before Rundgren ballots are due!).

Thanks!

Listening to Khoaï now, it really is a trip. Is this solo harpsichord? Some of these sounds don't seem like they could have existed in the 17th century, but I guess theoretically they could have if anyone had thought to play them. Sounds like video game music, if you play really weird video games.

According to this article:

The continuous and very quick change of registers is possible only with modern harpsichords where registration can be made using pedals. If the piece is performed on a historical copy the player will be forced to ignore a great deal of these indications.

Harley also notes that Elisabeth Chojnacka, for whom the piece was written, incorporated "amplification as an essential element of her instrument".

Ah. I noticed some seemingly impossible timbre changes at one point near the middle, too, I wonder if that was a modern innovation. FWIW I didn't even know they were still making harpsichords until maybe a few months ago.

What I didn't know was that there was a modern harpsichord developed in the 20th century, heavily influenced by the piano (and perhaps the organ??) which apparently fell somewhat out of favour with the HIP trend in the late 20th century: these have 4', 8', and 16' registers controlled by pedals, and which can also be partially engaged to allow for some timbral variety. (You can find excerpts of the score for Khoaï that have staves for these different registers.) Seems they also have other differences like wound steel strings, metal casing, hard leather plectra, and more powerful soundboards (and possibility of amplification). There's some info near the bottom of this; the author is clearly not a fan: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-the-harpsichord/history-and-construction-of-the-harpsichord/3A52A2F5D80CF9382932EF6E1024EA02/core-reader

Based on the fact that it made Khoaï possible, I think I'm a fan.

Haha yeah there's a little 'editorial' in that tone. "Deficient sound," etc. I have a hard time understanding people who think you can't (shouldn't?) improve on technology in 400 years.

I'm not sure he's right about the early 20th c modern harpsichord being used widely by pop/rock artists. I think this is the instrument that was used in 60s pop; it seems much more stripped-down, without the pedals etc, just with a guitar pickup: http://collections.nmc.ca/objects/205/baldwin-electric-harpsichord?ctx=cedc754f-cd3e-4924-980f-7da04725a0e2&idx=8

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/PleyelGrandModeleDeConcert.JPG/600px-PleyelGrandModeleDeConcert.JPG

vs

http://collections.nmc.ca/internal/media/dispatcher/741/preview

If any rock bands did in fact use the kind of modern harpsichord that was played by Chojnacka and Landowska, I def want to hear it, though.

Getting OT but Tori Amos? This definitely doesn't look (or really sound) like the Baldwin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vi-hnpvMt0

And getting back on topic, here's our listening for this week. Between 45-50m this week; a mix of small ensembles, solo, and tape music. I'm leaving La légende d'Éer for next week, since it is 46m on its own.

Week 19

À Hélène, Mez, female vv, 2 cl, 1977
Akanthos, 9 insts, 1977
Kottos, vc, 1977
Ikhoor, str trio, 1978
Mycenae alpha, 2-track, UPIC, 1978

Just in for a nod in agreement to Jonchaies being a monster. I already knew that, of course... because it was in pom's period polls not too long ago, where glowing talk about it made me check it out. :)

Happy to hear it. :)

I've fallen behind but I'll try to catch up in the coming days.

So have I tbh. 21st Century Guitar took up my whole week.

So, based on one listen while putting together breakfast and dealing with the sound of construction, À Hélène seems like another declamation, although with what I think of as more conventional choral vocal timbres (at least in this recording) and with a bit more to it melodically - nothing very disjunct or dissonant but no strong sense of development or dynamic range. I'm listening to a version by members of the Danish Natl Radio Choir on NML. Are there clarinets in other recordings? This is just voices.

Akanthos otoh seems really gripping and emotional. I was listening to the recording by Tony Arnold and ICE from this album: https://moderecords.com/catalog/261xenakis/ . It flows really organically, the wordless vocal is really expressive, and the instrumental responses are evocative and dramatic. Very effective blend of X's timbral and dynamic explorations with melody and pulse.

I listened to Rohan De Saram's recording of Kottos from the Arditti album. It's pretty cool. Seems to juxtapose deep scratch tones (on-the-bridge bowing acc to Harley - just checked), glissandi (with art. harmonics), and long bowed pitches, then develop each of these ideas with greater activity, again keeping a good pulse near the end.

I stuck with the same album for the string trio Ikhoor. This is a satisfyingly constructed and energetic piece that again juxtaposes and reconciles a couple of ideas. It starts with quick rhythmic hocketing between the three players, over which glissandi begin to emerge, which become a focus of the B section. Some ostinato material also appears here. We then return to the rhythmic back-and-forth but using something closer to the ostinato material now, before we get to longer sustained harmonics, which again become rhythmic.

Mycenae alpha: all right, no mellowing here. This is a nicely raw and bracing slice of noise with effective stereo movement. What sounds like a flanging effect at times. The comparative simplicity of the 2-track construction actually means that it translates v well to headphone listening. Reading a bit from here, it seems that the UPIC system was an early system for transforming graphic composition into sound, where the composer would draw on a tablet w axes for pitch and time: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02986061/document . You can see some of his preparatory sketches here: https://fr.calameo.com/read/0043738738c59884d6fd2?page=1

Superficially catching up…

Retours-Windungen: watched the Ensemble Nomos's performance on YT and it was quite placid and pleasant despite its forward momentum. I am not at all surprised that it was written for the 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic, who don't appear to have recorded it, however.

Dmaathen: an unexpected pairing, and since I, like anatol_merklich, also love the oboe, I am quite taken with this piece's archaisms. In fact I prefer it to his works for solo percussion.

Khoaï: this is way more metal than 99% of avant-metal fare, and I'm here for it (listened to Jukka Tiensuu's recording).

Mikka ‘S’: I know this one from the Arditti two-fer and I still enjoy its deceptive single-mindedness a great deal.

Jonchaies: spectacular, possibly the peak of his orchestral output as far as I'm concerned. Per Nørgård's Terrains vagues, a belated offshoot of Jonchaies, is also worth looking into if you're a fan.

A Colone: Xenakis in his Ancient Greek ceremonial mode, and too text-oriented to speak to this non-Greek speaker.

À Hélène: along similar lines, although I much prefer this one, perhaps due to its relative accessibility melody-wise (there was no clarinet on the version I heard btw, by the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart).

Akanthos: more enjoyable still, in no small part thanks to Tony Arnold's performance and because this piece comes across as a synthesis of the ancient and the modern rather than a doomed attempt at recreating the former.

Kottos: I get why Nomos alpha's controlled chaos is more revolutionary, but I think I prefer this one for its craftsmanship and overall coherence.

Ikhoor: Harley points out that this one owes much to Jonchaies and exhibits a greater concern for tempo and pulse, which I think suits Xenakis quite well and partly explains why late 70s/early 80s Xenakis may well be my favourite of his avatars.

Mycenae alpha: loses some of the sense of discovery that marked his early electronic works but more than makes up for it in simplicity of execution.

still have to get to most of these. butsince it hasn't come up yet about Jonchaies, it's worth noting: its middle section is basically a straight transcription of the rendered computer music crescendo at the center of Legende d'eer

I know a lot of people who always rate the orchestral works as The Work, and point to his transcriptions of his electronic efforts almost as proof that they were mostly useful as research. But that unbelievable rhythmic shepard's tonepile in the middle, it still does the exact same thing to my brain every time I hear it, it goes all the way in, that piece is still the summit for me. Hearing Jonchaies nailed all these issues for me about what a score is, what's an artifact, what depicts a sound...

Unlike Persepolis there aren't too many mixes of it out there, just make for sure you are not listening to one released on Mode. the 2016 one on Karlrecords from a few years ago does some interesting things with EQs that amp it all up without ruining it. but it's still the original stereo on Auvidis right down to the cosmic liners, which a generous person uploaded: https://www.discogs.com/Iannis-Xenakis-La-L%C3%A9gende-DEer/release/978498

As promised,
Week 20

La legénde d'Eer (Diatope), 4- or 8-track, 1977

Well, this is delightful brain-melting noise so far.

I'm listening to the 2003 Naive release, on NML. It's almost done and it was very satisfying - the overall shape is very clear, there's a lot of sonic variety, and I really enjoy the high tones that begin and end the piece. I gather it's a mix of synthesized and prerecorded sounds?

And we're back with:

Week 21
Anemoessa (phonemic text), SATB (42 minimum), orch, 1979
Dikhthas, vn, pf, 1979
Palimpsest, eng hn, b cl, bn, hn, perc, pf, str qnt, 1979
Aïs, amp Bar, perc, orch, 1980

42m percussion ensemble piece Pleïades will get its own week next week.

Falling behind as usual, but I always catch up in the end, so it's only a matter of time…

Spotify playlist caught up, me not so much. Let me know if there are better recordings, different recordings, any recordings of Anemoessa, etc that I can add. Easy enough to skip around if there are four different interesting versions of one piece.

There are four (!) recordings of Pleiades on Spotify, if anyone already has a favorite, lemme no

(I know I'm the resident percussionist, which makes this request all the more ardent)

Can't go wrong with the Percussions de Strasbourg.

Anemoessa: I listened to this version, credited to "Radio Philharmonic Orchestra; Chorus of the Netherlands Radio; Richard Dufallo. Concertgebouw Amsterdam, 16/06/1979" (?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH0ss-cIigk
It's got great mood and sweeping drama with dense masses of orchestral and choral sound. The choir often just turns into a wash of sound. Harley notes that the material for choir is very similar to the material for orchestra (quarter-tone clusters, glissandi), which makes sense.

Dikthas: I just listened to the Irvine Arditti/Claude Helffler recording of this violin/piano duo twice while spaced out and reading ilx and working on taxes. Seems like a fun dialogue between the two parts, with a lot of variation in texture, dynamics, register, and activity.

Palimpsest: I really like this one. I listened to the recording by Aki Takahashi/Society for New Music/Charles Peltz. Very energetic and complex but still easy enough to follow (as this kind of thing goes). Rhythm seems to be the focus here and there's usually a pulse, against which you have all kinds of layered cross-rhythms, or which break for bracing metrical changes. (Harley says up to four simultaneous tempi just in the opening piano solo!) There are clear motives. The piano, string, wind, and percussion parts are all treated something like distinct entities that are sometimes featured on their own, sometimes juxtaposed against each other, then combined about 10m in into a homophonic chorale-like texture. Harley notes that it is a relatively rare piece that has no microtones; we actually end up in modal territory eventually. Really clear, dramatic, satisfying conclusion.

I listened to Aïs twice last night and enjoyed it quite a bit, the energy and interplay between the baritone singing a three-octave range of material, the orchestra, and the percussion - never really reverting to a traditional voice + accompaniment texture. I feel like Xenakis was mostly having fun with his material in this period.

And as promised, 42 minutes of percussion for this week:

Week 22
Pléïades, 6 perc, 1979

I love Xenakis' more percussive and textural orchestral pieces. The opening to Pithoprakta is exactly the kind of thing I need sometimes, and this piece certainly takes those concepts and explores everything so much further, and it's far more "precise"

Currently listening to the Les Percussions de Strasbourg (DENON recording, 1988) version, but there appears to be one released a couple years ago by DeciBells under Domenico Melchiorre that is six minutes longer. Definitely enjoying the Strasbourg version so far, but very curious to hear other versions now too. Other Xenakis recordings done in the last 10 years really have some amazing recording quality (better mics? mic placement?) that pulls you into the sounds more viscerally, especially when listening on a good setup.

I've listened to three recordings now: Kroumata Percussion Ensemble (1990), Red Fish Blue Fish/Steven Schick (2007), and the Strasbourg (86). Interesting that none of them exactly follow either of the two possible orderings that Harley says X allowed!:

The composer allows for two different orderings of the movements: (1) Claviers—Peaux—Métaux—Mélanges; and (2) Mélanges—Claviers—Métaux—Peaux.

The Strasbourg and RFBF recordings reverse the order of "Claviers" and "Métaux" in (2). Kroumata do it Métaux-Claviers-Mélanges-Peaux (which kind of works!).

The microtonal "sixxen" instruments that were designed for the "Métaux" movement sound really pleasant in the Kroumata recording and it's easy to pick out the different layers - generally, layering parts in different tempi seems to be a core idea of this piece. My favourite is "Claviers", where we start with a melody played in unison that then starts to diverge as the different mallet percussion players start playing it at different tempi - it actually reminded me a bit of Reich. Overall, it's a piece that rewards close listening, I find, while I also think it does some dazzling and spectacular things that I can imagine a general audience latching onto.

Week 23

Komboï, amp hpd, perc, 1981; Chojnacka, Gualda, Metz, 22 Nov 1981
Embellie, va, 1981; G. Renon-McLaughlin, Paris, 1981
Nekuïa (phonemes and text from J.-P. Richter: Siebenkäs and Xenakis: Ecoute), SATB (54 minimum), orch, 1981
Pour les baleines, str, 1982

Welcome to the 1980s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6f8X306XLk

I listened to Komboï yesterday morning, the Chojnacka/Gualda recording. I was listening casually but really liked it - the manic glitch electronica/proto-Aphex Twin qualities in Khoaï mentioned above seem even stronger in this - really interesting and gripping rhythms. Reading Harley now:

The combination of harpsichord and percussion is not at all a common one, but the percussive nature of the keyboard, together with the power it is capable of when amplified, makes it an interesting match for the percussion’s range of sonorities and dynamics. Rather than exploit the aggressive chararacteristics of the instruments, however, Xenakis creates passages of delicacy and beauty, particularly in the combination of harpsichord and vibraphone.

The title, Komboï, means “knots,” in this case of rhythms, timbres, structures, personalities (Xenakis 1982b). There are, as might be expected, a wide range of rhythmic structures and patterns deployed. The opening, for example, launches into a fast, regular pulsation on the bongo. Xenakis sets up an interlocking pattern of accents on top of the ticking drum: the dynamic accents at first follow a durational pattern of 8–3–3; the timbral accents, manifested by punctuations on other drums, follow a more variable pattern of 4–4–long (18, 30,16). The variation of these elements, together with the agogic accent created by the occasional shift of the bongo pulse to triplets, continues through the first section.

Set against this, the harpsichord outlines a pitch sieve by means of rising chordal sequences. This sieve bears little resemblance to the pelog sonorities of Serment or Jonchaies. There are no adjacent intervals of a major third, and there are segments of three whole steps outlining whole-tone tritone segments. The pattern of the six-note chords remains fixed, and the harpsichord continues the passage by fragmenting the rising sequences into increasing disjunct segments. A brief reference to Mists is found at m. 16. An elaborate arborescent flourish in the harpsichord drops down to the low register in preparation for a pause, then the vibraphone signals the second section.

As in the piano solo from the previous year, this long section features stochastic clouds of notes, beginning with the harpsichord (the pitches belong to the same sieve as before), then adding the vibraphone. In his score, Xenakis uses the word crystalline to describe the character of this passage. The timbres of the two instruments fuse in a remarkable way, creating a sound of striking beauty. The density and ambitus of the notes ebb and flow, passing back and forth between the instruments. The two do not share the same pitch sieve, counteracting the timbral synthesis of the instrumental combination. Brief interjections of a repeated chord in the vibraphone (an A major triad with an added B) act as transition to the next section, which continues the combination of harpsichord and vibraphone but in a completely different style.

In a passage toward the end of Dikhthas Xenakis creates a tonal, toccata-like atmosphere by combining two modal segments. Komboï contains a similar section, though the sonority is much closer to gamelan than to Beethoven. A three-note pattern in the harpsichord is juxtaposed against a four-note pattern in the vibraphone, with additional gonglike punctuations from lower notes in both instruments. As in the beginning, Xenakis layers a number of temporal patterns onto the pulsating three-note figure in the harpsichord. While the left hand of the harpsichord creates a triplet pattern, accenting every three notes, the vibraphone articulates a more complex pattern: 3–3–3–3– 3–2/3–3–3–2/3–3–2. The number of repetitions of the triplet follows a 5–3–2 pattern. Interestingly, the ordering of the notes, both in the vibraphone and the harpsichord, repeats, these cycles coinciding with the rhythmic cycle of the vibraphone. Thus, the material is very carefully constructed, setting up a cycle of repetition that, once established, is then subject to permutation.

After well over a minute of this, the harpsichord breaks out with another Mists-like flourish, only to have the vibraphone jump right back in, taking over the harpsichord’s pattern from before. This reversal carries into a more radical variation, a rhythmic layering in which each instrument sees its material broken into two independent tempi. Subsequently, the hitherto static pitch material opens out into layered contours, meandering lower and lower until the section ends with an ascent and final pause, the gamelan sonority ringing on.

A sparser passage follows, built on a fixed sonority of two interlocking chords different from the previous section. They are paired either with the vibraphone or the harpsichord, but the vibraphone soon drops out to switch to woodblocks. Gradually, a regular pulse is built up, the harpsichord playing an irregular pattern of alternations between the two chords. As the woodblocks join the pulse, the harpsichord breaks away, first with another flourish of layered runs and then with a much more sporadic continuation of the two chords. The irregular structure of the harpsichord part leads quite smoothly into a second passage of stochastic flurries, this time in counterpoint to the regular pulse in the woodblocks. A further rhythmic variation is introduced in a short passage for harpsichord as the woodblocks fade out, where two-part layered scalar contours accordion in and out over the range of the keyboards.

The fifth section of Komboï features the harpsichord alone. In an effort to explore the subtle resonances and timbral changes the instrument is capable of, Xenakis asks the player to keep her fingers down on a ten-note chord. The passage consists of pseudo-melodies created by the articulations of these notes one at a time, punctuated by chords of both hands, or one or the other. These are accentuated by the addition of registral changes effected by the pedals. After some two minutes, the music finally breaks away to new pitch material, though still held to the same narrow range. As the percussion enters, the harpsichord shifts—after a break—to a reprise of the two-part, layered running contours, sailing right into another stochastic passage. The final section, the longest at over four minutes, constitutes an extended series of variations on seven chords, set against a whole range of rhythmic and timbral elements in the percussion, most notably a set of ceramic flowerpots. The chords, of variable intervallic content, are first introduced in order, accompanied by an irregular rhythmic structure on the woodblocks and drums. Thereafter, the progression is reordered in an unpredictable fashion, though the seventh chord becomes a kind of anchor, recurring more often than the others. As the percussion shifts to stochastic rhythms, the left- and right-hand components of the chords become separated and start to be treated independently. Finally, as the percussion switches to the flowerpots, the harpsichord repeats the seventh chord in its entirety for twelve beats. The percussion then takes over the pulse and the harpsichord launches into a complex passage in which the chordal components are again reordered and recombined, colored by intricate pedal changes (like the solo passage earlier). With various pauses and fluctuations of density, this material continues to the end, along with the evocative ceramic sonority of the flowerpots.5 The final chord is a composite, created from the left-hand portion of the sixth chord and the right-hand portion of the seventh chord.

At seventeen minutes, Komboï is one of Xenakis’s more substantial chamber works. The sections are laid out on a broad scale, with many “knots” and fluctuations of elements. It is striking just how well the two instruments go together. The plucked metallic sound of the harpsichord blends both with the vibraphone and the ringing tones of the flowerpots (strokes of a vivid sonic imagination). The various types of rhythmic material are familiar from earlier works, but the range of harmonic material is new. There is not just one sieve used, but several, and chords or melodic patterns of limited range are chosen with care.

Coming back to it this morning, this might be one of my favourites.

I haven't picked out all the pitch material but it really does manage to be pretty, varied, and energetic, and I really appreciate what's going on with texture, dynamics, and rhythm.

Going to slowly catch up with everything I missed before the week's through.

If you'll allow a preliminary challop, I think La Légende d'Eer is way too long for its own good.

I put both the recording Sund4r was listening to, and one by Huang and Wettstein, on the Spotify playlist, partly because it sounds intersting, partly because two of these pieces aren't on Spotify and I figured I could flesh the playlist out.

I listened to Garth Knox's recording of Embellie a couple of times - very cool through-composed work for solo viola; he really exploits the range of the oft-overlooked instrument while writing something pensive and expressive. It begins with a lyrical melody that is developed and treated in counterpoint with good use of double stops, then moves to more similar/parallel motion before the 2m mark, then we move to something like a call and response between a single voice and double stops. A folky melody enters, seemingly against a pedal. Then at the 4m mark, we move to a more active passage of more typical Xenakis string writing, with glissandi and fast virtuosic material spanning the instrument's registers; sounds like we're getting more quarter-tones here? In the last minute or two, he seems to reconcile the different textural and rhythmic ideas while also bringing in more scratch tones and increased glissando effects.

There's a broad overall progression in terms of sound and timbre,

Curious where the title comes from - as I understand, it could mean both "embellished" and "a lull".

Anyone know of a recording of Pour les baleines?

Found one - listened a few times. It's a 2.5m miniature, written for a Greenpeace benefit. Gets through a lot of string techniques, textures, and dynamic levels in its short time - the glissandi mimic whale songs at the end. Nice minor work.

Listened to this (OOP) recording of Nekuïa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_Txie4lAMk
It's fantastic! Has a cinematic quality (in the horror-film sense), with the integration of more typical sound mass and glissando textures with a focus on more melodic material, at times a bit reminiscent of Bartok, sometimes almost post-Wagnerian and sweeping in character. A lot of intense dynamics and percussive sfz attacks.

Week 24

Pour la Paix (Xenakis), SATB, 2 female spkrs, 2 male spkrs, tape (UPIC), 1981, version for SATB (32 minimum)
Serment-Orkos (Hippocrates), SATB (32 minimum), 1981
Pour Maurice, Bar, pf, 1982
Mists, pf, 1981
Lichens, 1983

A bit of everything this week

I listened to Serment-Orkos and Pour Maurice, two short vocal works, this morning. I enjoyed both but don't have a lot to say about them yet. The latter is especially cool, with manic atonal piano and the baritone jumping through registers in vocalise. The former sounds like there may be crunchy quarter-tone clusters in the choral harmonies (perhaps just dense clusters?) but has some relatively clear and simple melodic motifs. Feels like there's a centre on D at times.

I listened to Mists a few times, first Klara Kormendi's recording, then Roger Woodward's, which I vastly preferred. Harley describes the form as tripartite, with a section based on linear 'arborescences', a section based on stochastic clouds of notes, and a final section that alternates passages of these two ideas. The overall energy and dynamic and registral range come across really fluidly in Woodward's playing.

I wasn't real into Komboi, but I've never really warmed to 20th century percussion music for some reason. I guess it's a good thing I didn't try to go to conservatory, or maybe I'd have a different view on it if I was playing it for a living? I haven't made it to Embellie yet, but it's short, so I'll start there this weekend and maybe trawl through the thread for YT links and such for what I've missed.

There's a good chance you wouldn't be playing Xenakis for a living even if you did go to conservatory. :P

But, yeah, formal study can make a difference in your appreciation, although otoh X himself thought his listeners should need no special training.

I was listening to "Pour la Paix" walking home from work today! It's not very good though.

French/French based electroacoustic composers overly fond of spoken word imo.

X is usually not! Where did you find that piece?

Got it from a blog.

I found a couple things on slsk, too-- Pour la Paix and Pour les Baleines. Pour Maurice is on YT, I have that queued up.

Listening now to Embellies, which I really enjoy. It sounds like the player is playing too hard to keep in tune, which I suspect is microtonality, not pure punk rock aggression on the viola.

Lichens is much more exciting than the name implies imho

Pour Maurice using a lot of falsetto. There's also a recording on YouTube of a soprano singing it, which I'm not sure is going to be tolerable, but we'll see.

Actually nothing particularly shrill, if anything it's amusing to hear her bottom out on the low notes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVr7juBq2jg

Tom D OTM about Pour la Paix. Feels like the ending of Evangelion or something, important sounding dialogue I can almost follow sometimes separated by WTF moments. Also, in keeping with my near failure of French II in middle school, I almost wrote "Pour le Paix".

Really enjoying Nekuia. This doesn't seem so much farther out than Shostakovich or Schmidt symphonies. Why isn't this programmed?

Found Pour la paix here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKflilo45tk

It's definitely different from anything else so far in the way it's built around the spoken-word narrative by Xenakis's wife Françoise. Tom, I don't think the text is easy to follow - I used Youtube closed captions the first time I listened closely since, aside from the narrative itself being a bit rarefied and poetic and jumping around a lot in its timeline, the spoken voices are also soft compared to the electronic and choral sounds with which they are juxtaposed, are shifted around on the stereo soundstage, and are sometimes treated with effects. (Youtube captions also had trouble following the text, esp during denser passages.) The story is actually kind of beautiful, though, and the sonic treatment of the text is interesting and has a definite impact, when I come back to it on a second listen after having parsed the narrative. In the end, I just don't see myself coming back often to a piece that is so heavily text-based.

I also found Lichens exciting. A lot of energy, variety, and movement. Starts with just strings. Apparently, there's some kind of micro-heterophony going on where similar lines are being played at different tempo but it's hard to pick out. Feels like we have some clusters and glissandi here. Piece builds up with aggressive percussion and some back-and-forth with winds.

Week 25 (!)

Shaar, str, 1983
Chant des Soleils (Xenakis, after P. du Mans), SATB, children’s choir, 18 brass 6 (hn, 6 tpt, 6 trbn) or multiple, perc, 1983
Khal Perr, brass qnt, 2 perc, 1983
Tetras, str qt, 1983

I wish that Xenakis remix disc had included a version of Pour la Paix that replaced all the text with the narration from "Dead Flag Blues."

On a couple of listens (Tamayo/Luxembourg and an unlabelled recording on Youtube), Shaar seems like a good, enjoyable piece that mostly works the territory Xenakis has established in string pieces so far (clusters, glissandi, density of texture). Khal Perr (recording from Wallace Collection; Miller, John; Wallace, John; Gunton, Simon; Hathaway, Kevin; Terian, Christopher; Haggart, Robin) stands out a bit more, with more of a sense of dialogue between individual voices.

I'm a fan of string quartets but Tetras still hasn't really connected with me, for some reason. I listened to the Arditti and Jack recordings this week. It might actually be the first piece that just hasn't made that much of an impression.

Couldn't find a recording of Chant des soleils on NML, Spotify, Youtube, or iTunes.

Week 26

Thalleïn, pic, ob, cl, bn, hn, pic tpt, trbn, perc, pf, str qnt, 1984
Naama, amp hpd, 1984
Alax, 3 ens of 10 insts (fl, cl, 2 hn, trbn, hp, perc, vn, 2 vc), 1985

I just listened to Chojnacka's recording of Naama. Feels a bit different from the previous solo harpsichord pieces. More percussive stabs of clusters with a clear pulse, contrasted and then combined with passages of softer, less dense motivic material. I really like the sounds he (and she) get out of the harpsichord. Pretty intense and satisfying as a composition.

I'll return and listen more analytically but even just listening casually, the sheer energy and timbral and textural richness and variety of Thalleïn seem gripping. The sonorities are blended really well.

There's a brain-smearing quality.

Here's Chojnacka performing Naama live in 1986. Fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDGOfc--ndU

Wow, very cool. Page turn!

Love the athleticism of that.

Alax is really enjoyable, too, although, again I didn't listen that analytically. Starts out with very high violin harmonics, combines dense massed clusters with some intense percussion, a fascinating passage where brass instruments 'chant' like the voices in some of his choral pieces, some more homophonic chorale-like textures, and even some clear, simple melodic themes that work really well.

Satisfying how it picks up rhythmic energy in the final section and then comes to a clear unified conclusion

Week 27
Idmen A/Idmen B (phonemes from Hesiod: Theogony), SATB (64 minimum), 4/6 perc, 1985
Nyûyô [Setting Sun], shakuhachi, sangen, 2 koto; 1985
Horos, 1986

This is the only recording I could find of Nyûyô. Whoever uploaded it couldn't provide much info on it, even the performers, but it does seem like it matches Harley's description of the piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luUS_rg42AI

It's really beautiful and quite different for Xenakis.

Harley:

Xenakis had long been fascinated with the culture of Japan. His first visit there was in 1961, and he often returned. Early on, he noted the parallels between Noh theater and ancient Greek drama, and was much taken with the “noisy” timbres (and lack of vibrato) of the voices and instruments (Matossian 1986, 146–47). In 1985, when approached to compose for a traditional Japanese ensemble, Xenakis was happy to oblige: “‘I wanted to combine the Eastern tradition with a Western style. It is a challenge, of sorts, and I wanted to take it up’” (Langlois 1996, 7). Nyuyo (“setting sun”) is scored for shakuhachi (traditional bamboo flute) and three plucked string instruments: a sangen and two kotos. Given the composer’s own predilection for unusual timbres, playing techniques, and nonvibrato sonorities, the musical rapprochement was easier than might otherwise have been the case. In addition, the modal nature of Japanese music resembles the pitch-sieve model that Xenakis had developed, even if he has generally drawn a closer connection to the Javanese pelog. The piece draws its material from a single sieve, but in some passages the strong accents, glissandi, and breath sounds have the effect of shifting attention away from pitch to the timbres.

Proceeding in segments, the form of Nyuyo can be distinguished primarily by the alternation between passages featuring the shakuhachi and those that do not. The flute tends to play long held notes, modulated by changes of timbre or articulation. The plucked instruments propel the music with patterns of continuous pulse, sporadically adorned with characteristic sharp attacks, often in a lower or higher register. In the fourth section, the rhythmic flow is disturbed by a sparse texture of unusual sonorities. There are seven sections in this score of some ten minutes’ duration.

Essentially, Nyuyo is quite typical of this composer’s style, albeit using a novel instrumentation. For someone familiar with traditional Japanese music, what would be immediately apparent is the stiffness of the rhythms and ensemble coordination. Japanese music, while sometimes notated, is primarily an aural discipline. In ensemble playing, cues for entrances come from listening to other parts, and there is a built-in fluidity to the flow of time in the music that, while often quite subtle, is highly characteristic (Shonu 1987). Toru Takemitsu, who spent several years studying traditional Japanese music, particularly in conjunction with his large-scale work for gagaku (a large ensemble of traditional instruments), In an Autumn Garden (1973–79), has written, “The metrical system of modern European music is controlled by absolute time that is determined in a physical manner. Variations in tempo brought about by agogics, although plastic in nature, still work within a time scheme that is linear and single-layered. Rhythmic type…in which the length of each beat is different, and the practice according to which… instruments proceed in different time schemes simultaneously, do not have equivalents in Western practice” (Takemitsu 1987, 11–12).

Xenakis would no doubt have studied recordings of Japanese music, and he incorporates a number of idiomatic elements, particularly the attacks, glissando ornaments, and breath sounds of the shakuhachi. The rhythmic structure of the music, though, is typical of his own style, and even simpler than most of his other scores, no doubt to take account of the ensemble’s lack of experience outside of its traditional domain. In 1993, French flutist Cécile Daroux worked with Xenakis on a transcription of Nyuyo for flute and three guitars. The result is very successful, an indication that this peculiarly idiosyncratic mixture of Eastern and Western elements can be applied in both directions.

Horos: just listened for the first time without reading anything. Quite dramatic; at times, feels almost like there's a bit of the rhetoric of post-Romantic orchestral music and there are some clear themes and a clear pulse, although we also get gagaku-like sonorities (from quarter-tone clusters?). The conclusion is lovely.

OK, reading Harley on this one, it's fascinating. It seems to be built in part on an idea of "cellular automata":

A simple cellular automaton consists of a sequence of nodes on a line, each of which may be given a value of 1 or 0. Each node evolves in discrete time steps according to rules concerning the values of its nearest neighbors (see fig. 27). Depending on the configuration of the rules (the behavior of each of the eight neighbor combinations is arbitrary), the automaton will settle onto a homogeneous state (such as “saturated” or “empty”) or will evolve into a self-replicating pattern resembling a fractal.

He refers to one passage where a single note opens up into a much denser pattern. There's a Klangfarbenmelodie idea going on as well, which I noticed much more clearly on second listen - there are patterns of chords where the orchestration changes on each chord; it also sounds to me like pulses repeat on single notes or chords while timbres shift. (From reading, it seems like he was thinking in chordal terms more here than in other pieces; also rhythmic ostinati were important, which is evident.)

There's a score-following video on Youtube. I think I would benefit from close reading/listening with this one.

I am the Idmen (A)
They are the Idmen (B)
I am the walrus

I'm going to try to catch up tonight, or at least listen to this week's stuff. If anyone has a recording of Idmen, let us know.

Haha.

Seems like there are a couple of recordings on Youtube

https://soundcloud.com/n_l_c_c/sets/yannis-xenakis-idmen-a-and

I guess they did Idmen A + B at BBC Proms in 2003?

Yeah I opened my dumb mouth before searching. xpost

Oh, and I found an mp3 of Nyuuyo when I was looking for Pour les Baleines. So I'm already halfway caught up! lol

Listening to Horos now, it definitely feels "post-romantic" in the same way that 40s Messiaen could be called such. Kind of a narrative structure, if not a typical tonal center. Even the group glissandi at 9 minutes in are like the orchestra drawing its breath for the next part of the piece. Although it could also be said that it's percussive in a very 20th c way, with all the staccato notes.

Yeah, Messiaen is a good comparison.

I listened to this version of Idmen A/B twice and really enjoyed the rhythmic drive and energy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBRjjy-w_MY

Would people like a week to get caught up before I jump back into it?

Idmen A + B (as I've found it, a 2003 performance at BBC Proms) is percussion ensemble interspersed with choral stuff. The percussion stuff I actually don't mind, despite not being super interested in 20th c percussion music, and the choral stuff is OK if not great.

I'll be afk for a week so go on without me if you must. It's only an hour per week, I can catch up.

All right, so let's wait a week.

goddamm weeks off for various reasons, but Palimpsest is way fun!

This is the week to get caught up!

And we're back:

Week 28

Keqrops, pf, orch, 1986
Akea, pf, str qt, 1986
A l’Ile de Gorée, amp hpd, pic, ob, cl, bn, hn, tpt, str qnt, 1986
Jalons, pic, ob, b cl, db cl, dbn, hn, tpt, trbn, tuba, hp, str qnt, 1986