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

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

Keqrops sounds really huge (in the recording by Woodward, Roger; Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra; Abbado, Claudio). Massive dynamic range and a dazzling solo piano cadenza; strong sense of rhythm and a well-earned conclusion.

Akea (Arditti Quartet/Claude Heffler) was nice; some similar ideas but obv on a smaller scale. The way the piano is juxtaposed with the ensemble seems comparable, broadly. I was going to describe what seemed like a major motif in the piano part as stark, then started reading Harley and saw that he says the first word that comes to mind wrt the whole piece is "stark".

À l'ile de Gorée: listened to the recording on Erato by Elisabeth Chojnacka; Xenakis Ensemble; Huub Kerstens. This one's really enjoyable. Rhythm seems like a focus and we regularly get what seem like polyrhythmic grooves. The amplified harpsichord is juxtaposed against the ensemble, sometimes with simultaneous rhythmic streams, sometimes in call and response. A nice solo passage near the end.

Harley:

À l’île de Gorée is scored for harpsichord solo (to be played, once again, by Elisabeth Chojnacka) and a mixed ensemble of twelve players. Compared to the piano concerto, the music is light and transparent—almost classical (or Baroque, to be more accurate). This in spite of the title’s political references: Gorea, off of Senegal, was a clearinghouse for the slave trade, and Xenakis makes explicit the connection between this historical situation and the “black heros and victims of apartheid in South Africa, last bastion of a hysterical racism” (Xenakis 1988b). Unlike Nuits (1968), a piece with an explicitly political dedication in some measure reflected in the keening and wailing of the voices, À l’île de Gorée would appear to be a gesture of support whose content is independent of its contribution to the cause.

While Chojnacka was already a familiar member of the small (but growing) cadre of musicians dedicated to the music of Xenakis, this is the first (and only, as it turns out) score written for the Dutch group named after the composer. The Xenakis Ensemble was formed in 1981, primarily for performances at the Middelburg Festival Nieuwe Muziek in the Netherlands, where Xenakis Xenakis was a frequent guest. Over the years the ensemble has performed over forty of his chamber works.8

While classical in its restraint, À l’île de Gorée is far from traditional in its construction. While there are certain recurring pitch structures that provide recognizable points of harmonic orientation, the unfolding of the material and the cross-referencing of episodes create a complex, beguiling structure. What is especially noteworthy is the way certain elements are carried forward while new ones are introduced, or else are recalled after a brief departure, making for overlapping and interlocking entities that hinder clear identification of formal sections. This process of construction speaks to the composer’s increasingly nonlinear sense of form in which multilayered networks between different materials reach across the temporal structure. Nonetheless, for the sake of orientation, it is possible to divide the form into nine sections of varying lengths and degrees of distinctiveness.

The opening immediately proclaims the timbral transparency of the music, in sharp contrast to Keqrops. A five-note, midregister octatonic cluster is sounded by the harpsichord and echoed by the strings and muted brass. The chord is repeated numerous times, at first according to a regular rhythmic pattern, and thereafter at more irregular intervals. The ensemble sonority is varied by the addition of a highpitched entity, alternating between an unusual harmonic in the violins and an unstable double sonority in the piccolo. As the opening sounds resonate, the harpsichord adds melodic notes in the gaps among the chords, first presenting octave Ds around the cluster, then creating short melodic fragments using these and the octatonic pitches. The suspended, expectant state of the music is carefully sustained for close to a minute, with the harpsichord eventually adding chromatic neighbor-tones to its melodic material. At m. 5, the piccolo shifts to a lower multiphonic in the flute and the bassoon intones a portentous descending line that prepares a dramatic crescendo built from the by now familiar cluster chord, here expanded by the addition of a low tremolo in the double bass and the noisy timbre of the overblown bassoon.

At the end of m. 8 the ensemble drops out, making room for a brief solo passage, building from a declamatory opening into fast, sweeping runs, colored briefly by similar fragments in the woodwinds and strings. Abruptly, this cadenza-like material is cut off, making way for the next section. With the interlocking ostinati in the brass and harpsichord along with the jaunty bass pattern in the bassoon (built on a perfect fifth), this passage sounds like that of a neoclassical Igor Stravinsky. As the music carries on, each instrument gradually breaks out of its ostinato pattern into wider-ranging, melodic material. There is a shift to the woodwinds at m. 28, their melodies proliferating out from a unison A4. Throughout this section, there is also a harmonic move to the familiar Serment pitch sieve. By the time the woodwinds enter the range of the sieve containing the distinctive pelog sound (major thirds and minor seconds), the listener is in no doubt as to the sieve’s identity.

An interesting transition occurs at that point, leading to the third section. After the brief woodwind passage the harpsichord enters on its own, carrying on the layered melodic material from before, but then abruptly shifting into a new rhythmic passage built from chords not derived from the ongoing sieve. A return of the woodwinds seems to negate the new material, but the harpsichord enters again, and after another brief melodic fragment, it switches definitively to the new material. The music is filled out with a high chord in the strings, an unusual, sustained sonority in the woodwinds built from multiphonics (reminiscent of the opening chord, with the piccolo/flute split tones), and rhythmic ostinato material in the brass. This carries through to m. 42, when the full ensemble joins the brass in a rhythmic punctuation of the soloist’s ongoing ostinato activity (the pitch content content being held static while the rhythms are varied and elaborated).

At mm. 45–46, there is a brief respite from the predominantly rhythmic activity, with the full ensemble playing a legato descending line while the soloist takes a break, each instrument moving in parallel along a new pitch sieve. The previous material returns, this time with the whole ensemble joining the harpsichord-brass ostinato patterns. There are a number of variations, most notably the pitting of the ensemble against various subsets such as the harpsichord alone, keyboard with brass, and so forth. Another melodic passage is inserted at mm. 57–58, this time split into three layers: woodwinds, brass, and strings. The diverging scalar contours are delineated by the use of different sieves and polyrhythms. A third melodic entity is introduced at m. 59 (returning at m. 62 to finish the section), this time granting each player linear independence and blurring the rhythmic drive with geometric (stochastic) notation.

At m. 63 the harpsichord jumps back in with chordal, rhythmic material, punctuated by the winds, but there are significant differences in the texture. The harpsichord opens out from the four chords of the previous section to a much larger collection more widely dispersed (although there is still a great deal of repetition). It also plays in polyrhythmic relationship to the winds, widening the scope of the rhythmic patterns. The strings, from mm. 63 to 69, unfurl a slow, ascending glissando, splitting into two as the higher strings remain at the point of ascension while the cello and double bass descend. In addition, the high woodwinds pass off a repeated-note riff between themselves, this sonority giving particular emphasis to an open fifth, A5–E6. This diad is then passed on to the strings at m. 76, after brief emphasis of a midrange cluster in the full ensemble. This cluster returns at m. 80 to close the section. There follows a brief episode for the harpsichord, playing a bluesy ostinato pattern supported by sustained strings on the A-E dyad. After six measures, the strings drop out and the soloist begins to break out of the dance-like rhythms with fast scales. As the brass enter with low punches and the high woodwinds with an articulated cluster, the harpsichord finishes off with a fast descending passage, followed by the woodwinds. Another brief episode follows on, as the woodwinds land on a low, sustained cluster. The harpsichord contributes a couple of runs and trills, touching off a flurry of runs in the full ensemble, first layered and then synchronized.

In the sixth section the fast ensemble runs are replaced by a new ostinato-type music in the harpsichord, using a new sieve and holding the range to within the span of a four-note chord in the right hand and a five-note chord in the left. The rhythms are diffuse to begin with, but over the course of the passage they become more defined, with chordal accents gradually displacing the melodic ornamentation. Occasional fast runs break out of this texture, and these are echoed at m. 106 by the strings and at m. 113 by the woodwinds. The overall sonority is filled out by intermittent glissandi in the strings and by the unstable sustained sonority in the woodwinds from section three. A final moment of sustained woodwinds and strings leads to the next section.

A lyrical, rather plaintive three-part brass phrase is heard, built from the pitches of the opening chord. It is followed by a chordal statement of this pitch set in the winds and harpsichord, gradually pulling apart into a contrapuntal texture, though still banded to a range of one octave. A sudden expansion of the register and a gathering of the instruments back into rhythmic synchronization leads to a return of the complex layers of ostinato material of the fourth section. The woodwinds, brass, strings, and harpsichord propel four layers of interlocking accents and disjunct chords through irregular patterns of repetition. The tempo gradually slows, somewhat in the manner of Keqrops, until a final fermata gives way to silence. The closing section is reserved for harpsichord alone (again like Keqrops), and consists of a mixture of the opening chordal sonority and wider-ranging two-part melodic material drawn from the Serment sieve.

The dominant feature of À l’île de Gorée is the rhythmic ostinato, in all its various guises. The driving pulse and tone of the harpsichord lend the music a Baroque air, at least to an extent. What is especially fascinating about the music is the way in which the other elements intervene, casting different lights on the material. The alternation and superposition of pitch sieves adds an additional layer of comprehensibility, with restricted, or recognizable, pitch collections occurring at key points. Xenakis’s sense of timbral balance is, as usual, remarkable, with the harpsichord being shown in all its clarity and rhythmic precision. The fragile nature of the woodwind multiphonics, not common in Xenakis’s music, complements very well the rich, though dynamically restrained, spectral content of the harpsichord. These sonorities would return in his next ensemble work, Jalons, completed later that same year.

I do find it noteworthy that the clarity of form that I found so appealing in the early Xenakis was largely lost as we went through the 70s. The forms become much more complex and less obvious. Just listened to Jalons for the second time. There are some great sounds here (distorted low sounds at the bottom of the registers of low brass and strings, as well as multiphonics in the top of the piccolo's register) and some interesting rhythmic and melodic material; one particularly interesting passage with a fast scalar line repeated canonically. The overall form is less clear in its narrative than in the earlier works, though, and I miss that quality a bit. Still, nice.

1987 was a productive year for the man.

Week 29
Keren, trbn, 1986
Ata, 1987
Tracées, 1987
Kassandra (Aeschylus), Bar + 20str psalterion, perc, 1987
XAS, sax qt, 1987

A brief interruption...just got emailed about this.

IANNIS XENAKIS’ 100th anniversary ELECTROACOUSTIC WORKS box sets (LP/CD) + download

Karlrecords is excited to announce a 5LP/5CD box set celebrating the 100th anniversary of Iannis Xenakis (on May 29th, 2022), one of the most influential 20th century avantgarde composers. As with La Légende d’Eer and Persepolis before, the tracks have been newly mixed by longtime zeitkratzer sound engineer Martin Wurmnest and mastered by Rashad Becker and now reveal their full sonic range and dynamics.

„This is the definitive Persepolis“ stated The Wire (May 2018, issue 411) and this will be true for the new sets as well.

Scheduled for release as part of the Perihel series curated by Reinhold Friedl in January 2022 and flanked by several performances across Europe in the Xenakis jubilee year (details tba), while preorder starts early December.

Formats:
# 5x 180gram LP incl. 4c insert and download code + booklet
# 5x Digipack CD + booklet
# Digital download

Listen to „Mycenae Alpha“:
soundcloud.com/karlrecords/iannis-xenakis-mycenae-alpha

Tracklist

I: EARLY WORKS
Diamorphoses (1957)
Concret PH (1958)
Orient Occident (1961)
Bohor (1962)

II: LES POLYTOPES I
Hibiki Hana-Ma (1969)
Mycenae Alpha (1978)
Polytope de Cluny (1972)

III: LES POLYTOPES II
Persepolis (1972)

IV: LES POLYTOPES III
La Légende d’Eer (1978)

V: LATE WORKS
Tauriphanie (1987-88)
Voyage Absolu Des Unari Vers Andromède (1989)
Gendy 3 (1991)
S.709 (1992)