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

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.