Xenakis: Three choral pieces

Day 298

Xenakis: Three choral pieces

A Colone

Nuits

Knephas

New London Choir

James Wood

After a couple of weeks catching up with some gaps in my coverage of earlier music I want to turn to some late 20th and early 21st century music - particularly some of the more challenging and difficult composers.

We did study a bit of Xenakis at university. I remember the lecturer talking about his use of Stochastic techniques - I didn’t understand it at the time and I don’t think that I do now!. We also had some performances of his music. I recall the cellist (I think is was Rohan de Saram) attacking his instrument with such vigour in Nomas Alpha that is seemed that the cello would disintegrate at any moment.

I don’t think that I have heard any Xenakis since to I came to these three choral pieces with an open mind. A Colone is an austere ritualistic piece for voices with trumpet trombone and double bass. It very much belonged to the world of late Stravinsky. But the other two pieces were anything but restrained. Xenakis uses the voices instrumentally and makes extraordinary demands on the singers - how they managed to sing this music is beyond my comprehension. Some of it was pretty hard to take but there were some moments here which were fascinating and which made a real impact. There was a real musical intelligence behind this wild and anarchic sounding music.