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

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

https://karlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/electroacoustic-works🕸🕸

I just finished listening to Bohor from this box set and it is so much more immediate and immersive than the two other versions I've heard (EMF and Recollection GRM). Those sound distant and tinny by comparison. Looking forward to hearing the rest of the set.

Yes. My bandcamp download came with a PDF of the LP set booklet.

Yes. My bandcamp download came with a PDF of the LP set booklet.

I was going to Paris for a few days next week and someone has just pointed out this is happening while I'm there:

https://philharmoniedeparis.fr/fr/activite/exposition/24162-revolutions-xenakis

Huzzah!

I’m in Paris when Radio France is doing their weekend Xenakis festival. Have tickets to the two orchestral concerts of the series cause no American orchestra ever does.

Also seeing Kurtag’s Fin de Partie at the Opera Garnier.

Yes, it's the centenary of the big guy's birth this year... not that you'd ever hear about that in the UK of course.

Wow!

Went to the Oresteia at Oslo City Hall last week; my second time attending this work in this city, the first being iirc in the 90s with the master attending.

1) Generally good stuff under the baton of Christian Eggen, who really should get some sort of international recognition for his relentless work in the space between repertoire curiosity and tradition;

2)the scary Eumenide parts could do with being a bit louder and scarier for my taste;

3) the Kassandra – and this is by some distance my least favourite part of the work per se – totally smashed it, surpassing every recording and/or youtube rehearsal thingy I've heard. Seth Carico, I've now googled her name as being. Damn. Going outside afterwards, I heard random audience members holler Kassandra-like lines into the night, not kidding.

btw: I fell off the main course of this thread at least a couple of times for various personal reasons, last around the middle of 2021 it seems. The thread is an astonishing trove of reactions, knowledge, lore, musings, etc. There is no doubt I'll pick up the entire project at some time and pretend I was there with you. Sincere thanks, Sund4r; missing pom.

Oh it was my pleasure, glad you enjoyed it. The live experience sounds great. I finally got around to buying the Apex 2CD set with the Ensemble Intercontemporain on disc 1 (Phlegra, Jalons, etc) and all the harpsichord pieces by Chojnacka on disc 2. Love having all those harpsichord pieces in one place - a great listen.