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1. La Legende d'Eer, for 8-channel tape 47:02
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1. Hibiki Hana Ma, for 8-channel tape 17:44
2. Polytope de Cluny, for 8-channel tape 24:26
Iannis Xenakis - Electronics
AMG:"Iannis Xenakis, while known as a composer, worked in his early years in Paris as an engineer and design assistant to the renowned architect, Le Corbusier. Once his independent career was launched, by 1960, he continued to dabble in architectural design, most often in combination with multimedia presentations. The first took place in 1967 at the World Expo in Montreal, and the most ambitious 'spectacle' occurred in 1978 in celebration of the inauguration of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. For this occasion, Xenakis designed a large, tent-like structure, Le Diatope, which was installed on the court outside the imposing Centre Pompidou edifice. The shape, created with the aim of providing the largest possible interior space that would also be acoustically useful (the sphere, the obvious geometric solution, is not ideal for sounds, at least according to Xenakis), draws upon the same hyperbolic paraboloids Xenakis used in his design for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 World Fair (carried out under the auspices of Le Corbusier).
Unusually, the composer wrote a lengthy essay for the program book of La Légende d'Eer, and also included a set of texts he considered relevant to the music. While the piece is not intended to be programmatic, these texts complement the vast scope and sustained expressive intensity of the music. The excerpts are taken from sources ranging from Plato's Republic (where the title is taken from) to Pascal's Pensées to a description of a supernova in Scientific American. The cosmic significance of these words, most often describing the overwhelming awesomeness of the universe, or some aspect of it, complement the sounds very well.
The music, which unfolds seamlessly over 45 minutes, begins with high, whistling sighs, evoking shooting stars, perhaps, but also resembling the nighttime shrilling of cicadas, so ubiquitous in the Mediterranean region where Xenakis has spent his summers. In its original form, La Légende d'Eer is a multi-channel work, with overlapping textures being diffused from different locations within the Diatope's architectural shell. The music proceeds through a sequence of textural 'zones,' with one type of sonority dominating in each, though always, after the opening, layered with a number of other textures, carrying on from the previous section or in preparation for the next. The density of these sounds is at times overwhelming, and the experience of listening to it, together with the flashing lights and laser designs that were unfolding at the same time, must have been memorable, even mind-blowing! The piece returns at the end to sounds reminiscent of the opening, the high, fluting tones fading off into the cosmos, echoing out toward the supernovas, no doubt. La Légende d'Eer is, without any doubt, an extraordinary, ambitious work, and it remains one of the masterpieces of the electroacoustic genre.
The differences between Gerard Pape's 2004 remix of Iannis Xenakis' La Légende d'Eer (1977-1978) and the composer's own rendition are complicated and subtle, so a fair assessment requires a side-by-side comparison. Pape's remastered version is more penetrating and deeper in dimensions, and the conspicuous separation of tracks seems like an improvement; perhaps if this disc is played on high-end audio or DVD equipment, it might be more convincing, but on a standard CD player, the issue is almost moot. Once one is fully acclimatized to the electro-acoustic environment, though, and caught up in the churning soundscape and darting points of sound, Pape's refurbished surround-sound mix seems to lose points on artistic merit. While far less defined in track separation, Xenakis' stereo mix is correspondingly more mysterious and haunting in its slightly veiled timbres and indistinct edges. For example, the pure glassiness of Xenakis' opening, the delicacy of the reiterated pitches, and the apparent fragility of the textures are missing in Pape's boosted and brazen beginning. Pape reveals more of the latent harmonics and seems to have enriched the piece by drawing them out; but Xenakis shapes the sonorities to subtler, more poetic ends, and creates a truer sense of sculpted sound by leaving some things barely within hearing.
In 1972, fresh from his success at the 1971 Shiraz Festival in Iran, where the multimedia presentation of Persepolis created a powerful impression, Iannis Xenakis was commissioned to produce another multimedia 'polytope,' as he termed his work. This one was also intended for an ancient site, this time in the heart of Paris. The Baths of Cluny, near the Sorbonne, were built by the Romans, and the palace above them has become a prime example of medieval architecture. The idea of installing lights and sounds right in the vaults of the baths was designed to help Parisians connect with their past, particularly in light of the violent rejection of the past as manifested in the student protests and other social upheavals in the period from 1968 on. This project succeeded beyond the organizers wildest dreams. The Polytope de Cluny opened in October 1972 as part of that year's Festival d'Automne. The 'spectacle' consisted of a 24-minute eight-channel tape containing electroacoustic music, several hundred flashbulbs placed on scaffolding throughout the underground chambers and able to be individually triggered to create vivid patterns of light, and three lasers of different colors that could be projected throughout the vault by means of a network of adjustable mirrors. The technical accomplishment of coordinating all of these elements was enormous, and Xenakis ended up using a computer (remember, this is 1972, and computers were not at all common or easy to program) to oversee all of the operations. After the premiere, the performances ran daily for a period of 16 months, and well over 200,000 people made the pilgrimage to the baths of Cluny to participate. While there may have been an experiential crossover with the psychedelic multimedia events of popular culture at that time, this was an event of an entirely different bent. The music, which is what we are primarily left with, is a 24-minute piece of layered electroacoustic sounds. The density of sound is slightly lower than others of Xenakis's electroacoustic pieces, such as Persepolis or Bohor, but there are still layers of rich, noisy sounds. Percussive sonorities are given prominence, notably a ceramic, wind-chime texture, and an African mbira, or thumb piano. Xenakis also included, for the first time, computer-generated sounds, which he created himself using probability functions. These sonorities are very noisy, and occasionally sound like brass instruments, though certainly not as played by humans. Late in the piece, there is a magical moment when the music suddenly thins out to leave just a repeated note being plucked on the mbira. Amidst the onslaught of dense visual and sonic events, this gesture gives the listener the opportunity to focus on the richness of an individual sound, to turn inward for a moment, after riding a long wave of overlapping layers of complex sonorities. Perhaps it is at that moment that one would recall the historic setting and tune in to the cultural resonances so characteristic of Paris, with its combination of the new and the old."
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