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

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.