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

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)

Interesting. Did they leave off Kraanerg because it contains an instrumental component?

Btw, general Xenakis discussion is completely welcome here.

Keren: about 6m of solo trombone. Different for X and nice, with lyrical modal melodic passages (Harley says drawing on pelog scales) as well as timbral exploration, with multiphonics (produced by playing and singing at the same time) and flutter-tongue effects. Actually cool that X chose not to emphasize glissandi too much in a piece for an instrument so well suited to them.

Ata: a lot going on here; some massive sounds with dense clusters and blocks of orchestral colour. Texture seems to be a primary concern, with the strings often juxtaposed against brass and winds, sometimes we get one group (with e.g. more intricate rhythmic movement in strings or block chords in quarter notes in brass/winds), sometimes we get multiple groups at once with different rhythmic and melodic streams taking place simultaneously, sometimes the whole orchestra comes together. Some spectacular moments.

XAS: this one I knew before since I'd actually studied it when writing a never-played sax quartet 15 years ago. Haven't listened to it in a long time and it's good to revisit it for casual listening. It's pretty atypical: not so concerned with timbral effects, glissandi, or dense blurred masses of sound; more like a study in ensemble texture and register with an approach to pitch and rhythm that recalls the early 20th century a bit. I like it a lot - a lot of energy and variety.

I listened to Tracées a few times. It was nice but didn't make an especially strong impression after all the orchestral music we've listened to.

Kassandra was actually a then-new movement that was added to the Oreisteïa so it's already been discussed above when we listened to that piece.

It appears that as the 80s progressed, Xenakis heeded the advice of the MA prof who advised me to write shorter pieces if I wanted radio play. And so we begin

Week 30

A r. (Hommage à Ravel), pf, 1987
Taurhiphanie, 2-track, UPIC, 1987;
Waarg, pic, ob, cl, bn, hn, tpt, trbn, tuba, str qnt, 1988
Voyage absolu des Unari vers Andromède, 2-track, UPIC; Osaka, 1 April 1989
Tuorakemsu, 1990

À r. (Hommage à Ravel): a 2m miniature commissioned for the anniversary of Ravel's death, this mainly contrasts passages of fast scalar runs with dense, sustained chords attacked strongly. It's structured into what seem like linear phrases where chords often function cadentially after a fast melodic run. I was thinking of describing some of the material as jazzy, then thought that might be too surface-level and inexact, then saw that Harley described the chord voicings the same way. Nice minor piece.

Taurhiphanie is a pretty enjoyable 11m of noise that flows really well, with a lot of shaping in terms of frequency band filtering and movement across the soundstage. This apparently comes from the computer-generated audio part to a bizarre project:

A few weeks before the premiere of à r. in Montpellier, Xenakis was down in the south of France for another premiere, this time in the historic Provençal town of Arles. He had been invited to present a multimedia event in the Roman arena commonly used for bullfights. It was a condition of the commission that the main attraction of the event, aside from the music, would be the presence in the ring of live bulls and some of the famous white horses of the nearby Camargue region. The animals would create dynamic stochastic patterns to complement both the patterns of lights projected down into the ring and, of course, the music.

For this spectacle, Xenakis included some of his percussion music—Idmen B (1985), Pléïades (1978), and Psappha (1976)—performed by the twelve players of Les Percussions de Strasbourg and Les Pléïades stationed high up around the seating area of the arena. In addition, he created an electroacoustic work, Taurhiphanie. To inaugurate a new version of the Unite Polygogique Informatique de CEMAMu (UPIC) computer system, by this time capable of producing sounds in real time, he and his team of technicians from the Centre d’Etudes Mathématiques et Automatique Musicales planned to broadcast the snorts and bellows of the bulls via radio microphones attached to the animals, and then, from a command post in a tower above the center of the ring, “interact” with those sounds using the UPIC. Unfortunately, technical difficulties were impossible to overcome, so the bulls were not amplified, and a taped version of the electronic sounds was presented in conjunction with some live, improvised interjections on the computer system. Some of the sounds for the tape were generated from samples of the bull sounds gathered earlier.

As it turned out, the bulls and horses (present at separate times in the ring) were less than willing participants in the proceedings. No doubt the pounding percussion and amplified electronic sounds were frightening. The animals tended to cower in a huddle at one end of the arena or the other; the stochastic patterns were unfortunately rather pathetic.

The track succeeds on its own, though!

Waarg: this is very enjoyable and different. The first minute and a half or so is like a Klangfarbenmelodie meditation on an E passed around through different wind instruments with dynamic variation; maybe some influence from Scelsi there? I listened to the Asko Ensemble's recording first and honestly didn't get much of the melodic, harmonic, contrapuntal, and rhythmic qualities Harley describes in the remainder - it seemed like a study in timbre and register. Now I'm listening to the recording by Contempoartensemble and Mauro Ceccanti and it seems like a different piece altogether. I absolutely hear the pulse, the chordal material, and the counterpoint. I almost wonder if Asko was doing something rather loose with the score?

Hm, it was the 2011 Asko recording I listened to - but I see now it should be over 17m in that recording acc to AMG and the Naxos version I listened to was 12:43?

It was 12:26, which is actually supposed to be the duration of Anaktoria. I think NML mislabelled Waarg as Romitelli's Mediterraneo on this album, judging by the durations - this definitely sounds different and more comparable to the other recording; it actually takes its time more and feels more deliberate. (We realized way back when that Anaktoria was mislabelled as Waarg and Varese's Octandres was mislabelled as Anaktoria on this album on Spotify - I guess NML made the same mistake?)

An Amazon reviewer compares it to an updated Stravinsky, which makes sense.

As Xenakis is 100 next year can someone please put on a gigantic festival of his work, including performances of the percussion works, his mega spatialised works, the solo & ensemble work that's almost impossible for people to play, and other stuff?

— Fielding Hope (@fieldinghope) July 1, 2021

Voyage absolu des Unari vers Andromède: I've listened a few times now to this video (are there other mixes?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwMUTBd6iog

It's not bad but I'm not feeling that excited by it. The UPIC pieces are timbrally limited compared to the earlier electronic works, mostly seems like filtered noise. Starts with glissando-like sweeps, then we get some heavier lower-band sheets of noise added to the mix, with some increase in density until we get a pulsing beat after the 4m mark (Harley compares it to techno) - I'd actually like to hear more of this or more rhythmic material generally; I think it would give this some more distinctiveness and variety. It doesn't really come back after about 6:30, though. Mostly proceeds via the combination and juxtaposition of layers of these different bands and types of material until it resolves by gradually stripping material away and fading out on a sustained narrower band of frequencies.

Composed for an international festival of paper kites in Japan, apparently. I'm not sure what "Unari" means - seems to be a village in Finland or "roar" in Japanese?

I couldn't find a recording of Tuorakemsu.

Week 31

Kyania, 1990
Knephas (phonemes by Xenakis), SATB (32 minimum), 1990
Dox-Orkh, vn, orch, 1991

Kyania (Tamayo/Luxembourg Phil) is very cool. Originally commissioned by Orchestre Philharmonique de Montpellier for 90 musicians, the brass section is heavily featured. There are a lot of dense homophonic textures, with huge loud orchestral chords but also some call and response passages between sections and registers with a lot of dynamic range. Melody is more of a focus than in a lot of Xenakis's music and there's a late Romantic/post-Romantic character a lot of the time. Harley suggests that the title ("cyan") was likely a reference to the Mediterranean Sea, where X spent his summers. Looked at from that perspective, it's easy to hear the programmatic element. Looking forward to seeing this paired with The Moldau in symphony programmes.

Don't know what week "Jalons" was but the fact that there's little moments that remind me of incidental music from Star Trek (Original Series) is a bit distracting.

I've listened to Knephas several times now and it still hasn't really clicked. The techniques of dividing the notes of a melody line between singers and having each singer sustain their note is very interesting and the composition seems well-crafted; maybe the melodic and dynamic range are just too limited for me atm?

Dox-Orkh: enjoyable; strong sense of dialogue between the solo violinist (Arditti) and the orchestra (Moscow Phil), structured a bit like a call and response where the orchestra mostly plays cluster chords while the violinist works with glissandi and double stops. Works well both for close listening and background listening ime.

Orchestral works from the year punk broke:

Week 32

Krinòïdi, 1991
Roáï, 1991
Troorkh, trbn, orch, 1991

Krinoïdi is pretty interesting. The strings, winds, and brass dialogue with and play against each other for 10m (in the Tamayo recording). Some familiar use of orchestral clusters but now that melody and motive have solidly become much more important in X's music, I think I have to finally properly understand how the pitch sieves work and how they're being used to really grasp the stuff on a more analytical level.

Returning to Krinoïdi this morning, it was clicking more on an affective level, listening to the tension between the different levels of activity in different voices and different sections - passages where the strings shift to standing back and sustaining dense chords while we get complex rhythmic motives from brass or winds are especially nice. Nice flow and drama

Roaï grabbed me more immediately - foreboding; would work great as a horror film soundtrack!

Jalons was Week 28 btw. Maybe I could ask my wife about the Star Trek thing.

Troorkh is cool, quite different from Keren in terms of how the trombone is handled - he does make much more use of glissandi here; also a lot of use of the trombone's lovely highest register. Dialogue between the soloist and orchestral is strong and varied, with a lot of back and forth with the orchestral trombones. It's again more built around melody, motive, and rhythm than timbral exploration or stochastic density, and reminiscent at times of early 20th century atonal music. Because the form is so complex and not clearly narrative, my attention drifts a bit at times, but it's pleasant.

Waarg! He does have the best titles ever.

Practically everything but orchestral music this week:

Week 33

Tetora, str qt, 1990
GENDY3, 2-track, Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis, 1991
Pu wijnuej we fyp (A. Rimbaud), children’s choir, 1992
Paille in the wind, vc, pf, 1992

Just listened to the Arditti recording of Tetora and I loved it right away. It's more traditionally structured - introduces motivic/thematic material at the outset, then develops it. Just very strong writing, with effective dramatic movement between homophonic/homorhythmic passages and tight call-and-response dialogue between the violins vs viola & cello, with some really crunchy dyads, esp in the violins.

Paille in the wind: pretty sure I've listened to this before but I listened several times now, first to the Arne Deforce/Dean Vanderwalle recording, then to Rohan de Saram/Aki Takahashi. It's a short and sparse piece but gripping and effective and easy to grasp right away. Begins with sparse piano clusters with the pedal down, spreading out across the range of the keyboard; then the cello enters in its low register, again mostly playing slow quarter notes with no vibrato over piano resonance, starting softly and building into a dramatic crescendo; the pianist punctuates the cello line, takes over briefly, then the cello returns in a higher register, eventually working its way back down with just a couple of piano punctuations.

Harley on Tetora, much more in depth than what I wrote above:

It is appropriate, though certainly arbitrary, to close another phase of Xenakis’s output with a string quartet. As Tetras (1983) epitomizes many of the concerns leading into the 1980s, Tetora incorporates a number of characteristics found in the music leading into the 1990s.22 Compared to the earlier quartet, this one is much simplified in terms of texture: the tempo and pace of events is slower, pitch-based melodic contours are more prominent, the intervallic qualities of the sieves strongly color the expression of the music, and chordal passages are organized in a tightly controlled though unpredictable manner.

Tetora means “four” (in the ancient Dorian dialect), as does Tetras, but there is in fact much less homogeneity in the later piece. The quartet is often divided into two duos, distinguished by register, and there are numerous solo, or soloaccompanied, passages as well. There are no glissandi, no grinding noises or other effects, no trills, tremolandi, or microtones, and very little use of polyrhythms. The music is structured according to the predominance of melodic or harmonic/ rhythmic material. There is a great deal of fluidity within these domains, and a fair amount of convergence or juxtaposition as well.

The melodic material can be subdivided into six categories: (1) solo; (2) twopart (or more) counterpoint; (3) resonated, where individual notes of the solo melody are sustained by the other instruments; (4) distributed, where each note of the melody is played by a different instrument—hocket-like; (5) chorale, where one line is prominent, but is supported by parallel-moving chords; and (6) accompanied (by harmonic or ostinato material). The opening passage of Tetora (mm. 1–21) is entirely melodic in orientation, but the structure, in terms of changing sub-entities, is quite intricate. The melody itself proceeds very smoothly, with the one major shift of register (going into m. 9) being linked to the switch from first violin to second. This dichotomy between a relatively stable line and a rapid succession of textural variation carries through much of the melodic material, creating a sense of formal fluidity and continuous development that contrasts with the block-like structure of many other compositions.

The harmonic material can be distinguished by the degree of rhythmic synchronization, ranging from tutti chords to two-part structures (usually pitting the violins against the viola and cello) and four-part ones in which each instrument plays double stops, often within a layered ostinato setting. Registral contiguity is another important factor in characterizing the harmonic material. The first such passage, for example, taking over from the melodic material at the end of m. 21, is very disjunct, the tutti chords jumping up and down by as much as two octaves. By contrast, the next chordal passage, coming after a short melodic interlude at mm. 25–26, is highly contiguous (again featuring a synchronized rhythmic structure). With such progressions, the harmonic entity starts to merge with the melodic “chorale” entity, the distinction generally being that the main impetus for the passage is either linear or vertical.

While Tetora proceeds as an alternation between melodic and harmonic passages, the variety of rhythmic structures generally associated with the chordal material gradually begins to dominate the music. The final extended passage of melodic material occurs at mm. 86–100, carrying the music to the 11'00" mark of its over-sixteen-minute duration.23 This section features two-part counterpoint, shifting from first violin and viola to viola and cello, with high, punctuating chords being added at m. 91.

At m. 101 each instrument plays an irregular cycle of double-stops according to an independent rhythmic structure, including polyrhythms. Given the very slow tempo, the aim is to create a floating rhythmic counterpoint rather than layered tempi. At m. 109, the players are synchronized for a brief passage of tutti chords before sliding back into nebulous contrapuntal material. At m. 115, however, the quartet comes together in a clearly structured, two-part texture built from multiples of the basic sixteenth-note pulse. In this section, the violins are more active than the lower pair, but the two parts interlock to create an ongoing pulse (shifting from 16th-notes to 8ths at m. 116, and thereafter the rhythmic pattern is somewhat more irregular). The whole passage is divided into segments, and each pair draws upon a set of chords for each segment, usually four for the violins and three for the lower duo (the viola and cello play an ostinato on one chord in the first segment at mm. 115–16). These segments are distinguished by changes in the pitch sieve from which the chords are drawn, or rather, by transpositions of a single sieve. The underlying unity of the passage is difficult to hear, but the sense of harmonic progression, segment by segment, is quite apparent. Finally, at m. 128, this material leads directly into the final passage.

This section is similar in construction to the previous one, being built from irregular progressions of a limited set of chords for the two duos, this time six for the violins and five for the viola and cello. The pairs are brought together rhythmically, though, and the pattern of durations is derived from a sieve (see fig. 30). Xenakis treats this sieve simply, repeating the cycle of durations and then reversing it. The addition of a 3+1–1–1 segment in between the second and third statements of the set allows for a palindrome to be created as well, something not readily perceivable by the listener but which lends a certain elegance to the structure. While this passage is decidedly harmonic rather than melodic, it should be noted that the chords of the upper pair are contained within narrow range (and are narrowly voiced), resulting in quite a smooth progression. The clustered sonority precludes the projection of a clear line, but a certain melodic sense is conveyed nonetheless.

The attention to structural details, as evidenced in this final passage as well as in the intricate succession of melodic textures in the opening section, are what makes Tetora a worthy successor to Tetras. While the earlier quartet is far more dazzling, this one contains a lyricism that is remarkably strong, as well as an obvious obvious affinity for the sonorities of the string quartet. Even if the music is shorn of many of the elements that made the earlier score so compelling, the formal depth and sureness of tone make this a substantial addition to the quartet repertoire. It has the added distinction of being within the realm of performance possibility for many more groups than the Arditti String Quartet. And this concern for wider accessibility is a major factor in the stylistic changes Xenakis’s music underwent through the 1980s.

GENDY3: the sounds here seem much more varied and pleasant than what we were getting from the last couple of UPIC pieces. As Harley notes, there is a surprising amount of consonance and steady, sustained sounds, while we still have a lot of continuous variation. It actually sounds like a more direct ancestor of a lot of experimental synth/noise noodling you can stream on Soundcloud and works similarly as enjoyable music to have on in the background while going about things. I don't really feel that there's enough formal unity or narrative to justify its length as a piece for dedicated active listening but, hey, always good to be able to throw something on while getting through the day.

Pu wijnuej we fyp (A. Rimbaud): the title and text apparently come from anagrams of a Rimbaud poem. It's quite unique for a children's choir piece - not a simple composition, certainly not just the kind of chanting we get in a number of X's choral pieces. A lot of really dense multi-voiced clusters and glissando effects. Some spectacular moments when a single voice expands out into an eleven-part cluster.

A little late to start this week but looks to be interesting:

Week 34

Mosaïques, 1993
Plektó, fl, cl, perc, pf, vn, vc, 1993
Dämmerschein, 1993–4
Koïranoï 1994

Plektó is nice modern chamber music, more built around counterpoint melody, and rhythm, with strong energy. An enjoyable listen all the way through.

I've listened to Dämmerschein several times now. I find it very pleasant. Although it doesn't have quite the same intensity as the earlier orchestral music, the way the large clusters almost rock back and forth is enjoyable. Nice dynamic range.

Haven't found a recording of Mosaïques yet.

I swear I'll get back to this soon. I'm almost done catching up with my 2021 playlist.

Can't find a recording of Koïranoï either?

The hour-long Les Bacchantes d' Euripide seems to still be unrecorded so we're going to focus on a lot of shorter works for

Week 35

Sea-Nymphs (phonemes from W. Shakespeare: The Tempest), SATB (24 minimum), 1994
Ergma, str qt, 1994
Mnamas Xapin Witoldowi Lutoslavskiemu [In Memory of Witold Lutosławski], 2 hn, 2 tpt, 1994
S 709, 2-track Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis, 1994
Ioolkos, 1995
Kaï, fl, cl, bn, tpt, trbn, vn, va, vc, db, 1995

The version of Sea-Nymphs by the BBC singers here is fantastic. I haven't focused much on the text but it's got a lot of energy, textural variation, and what sound like amazing beating effects from (I think?) quarter-tone harmonies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KsRb8CxnWE

Ergma also really enjoyable. I listened to the JACK quartet's recording a couple of times. It just grinds away for eight minutes, consistently slow and loud, with the strings usually playing crunchy clusters together in homorhythm (but not in parallel motion); players are mostly playing double stops of major sevenths or minor ninths. Might appeal to doom metal fans?

À la mémoire de Witold Lutoslawski: I listened to the recording from this album I have had a copy of for a while: https://moderecords.com/catalog/056xenakis/ . I've heard it before ofc but not in a while. It's pretty interesting, really seems to make the most out of three and half minutes, using very dense counterpoint between trumpet-horn pairs. Unlike the other two pieces, dissonance is less of a focus. There are actually a lot of clear, perfect intervals, approached with neighbouring dissonances. Relatively static dynamically and very even and steady in its rhythm, it's somewhat reminiscent of early polyphonic music, which makes sense for a memorial piece.

Ioolkos: just listened to it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNM4_8chRU4

A good, bracing one. Starts out fff and stays there for seven minutes, with counterpoint between the sections of the huge orchestra, generally harmonized in dense clusters. (I might have guessed they were in quarter-tones but Harley says they're chromatic. The extent of the dissonance is probably just coming from the density of the harmony.) I'm enjoying these compact statements.

I think the title is Ioolkos rather than Loolkos but the video is labelled as the latter.

S.709: another dynamic stochastic synthesis piece, seven minutes long. This one doesn't seem to aspire to a clear sectional form or linear narrative development; the sounds are being constantly modulated. There is a lot of variety and activity and it holds my interest but hasn't moved me very deeply beyond that. Incidentally, it is a pleasant, even gentle listen on the Electronic Music CD through my audio interface and monitor speakers but blew my ears out on a YouTube stream on my phone through cheap headphones.