|
ahinton
|
 |
« Reply #60 on: 22:03:26, 09-06-2007 » |
|
So can we perhaps get back to Xenakis, and let SG set up his little playpen somewhere else?
"Yes, indeed" to the former and "if only" to the latter... Self-quotation seems to have been a lifelong activity of his, not just between say the piano parts of different pieces, but also between pieces in completely different media, as in the orchestral piece Jonchaies, some of which comes very close to passages in the electronic piece La légende d'Eer. Xenakis often claimed that when he began work he tried to start "from nothing", and while one can easily see this in the context of his work as a whole, somehow the flow of "new ideas" seems to me to have taken lace at a different rate from that of the production of actual new compositions - sometimes one work will initiate several new lines of development, while at others a single line of development will stretch over several works. I'm sure there'd be a lot more to say about this.
This is a very interesting aspect of Xenakis's art that, arguably more than almost any other, reveals a link with the past, the obvious absence of which in so many other aspects of his work marks him out as one of the past century's most genuinely original musical minds; aspects of memory are important constituents in this kind of recycling (or perhaps more appropriately precycling) activity, to be sure, but in this he seems almost to be assuming (albeit very subconsciously) the mantle of Liszt, who is probably as notable as any great composer for discovering, over the years, many and varied uses and contexts for material rather than determining that every one of his ideas be piece-specific. Elgar, in a rather different way, arguably came close to a similar kind of phenomenon by habitually entering ideas into his sketch-book for which he had no conceivable context at the time that they occurred. I confess that I had never previously anticipated a situation in which it might be remotely credible to mention Elgar and Xenakis in the same paragraph... Best, Alistair |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Colin Holter
|
|
« Reply #61 on: 22:57:57, 09-06-2007 » |
|
What about Ligeti, whose "Lamento motif" (among others) appears throughout his late work? One major difference between Ligeti and Xenakis in this respect, however, is that it's fairly clear how we're supposed to feel about the Lamento motif when we hear it (i.e., we're supposed to lament something), whereas Xenakis' idioms are more totemic - we know they're important because we hear them in more than one piece, but they don't have the same rhetorical obviousness of affect.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Schnak
Posts: 2
|
|
« Reply #63 on: 00:29:45, 11-07-2007 » |
|
New to the boards but have followed this post with some interest...
Presumably you are all familiar with Jonchaies? I've got the Tamayo recording which I find very powerful indeed, although quite how this score would be realised in any other way is beyond me.
Does anyone know of any other recordings?
Ta
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
oliver sudden
|
|
« Reply #64 on: 14:58:46, 11-07-2007 » |
|
Hello Schnak and welcome!  There's a recording on col legno (WWE 1CD 20504) with the Nouvel Orchestra Philharmonique conducted by Gilbert Amy. The disc also has Ata with Gielen, N'Shima with Richard Safir, Metastaseis with Rosbaud, Ioolkos with Kwamé Ryan and a quite inadmissible incomplete Charisma. If you're curious I should have a bit of time later on to do a quick comparison with Tamayo... |
|
|
|
« Last Edit: 15:03:42, 11-07-2007 by oliver sudden »
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
stuart macrae
|
|
« Reply #65 on: 15:57:33, 11-07-2007 » |
|
Hello Schnak, The first version I heard was the Amy recording Ollie mentioned above, and as I listened to it rather a lot, I got quite used to it before the Tamayo version came out. I think the Amy one was recorded live - it's a really vibrant performance and has a wonderfully exciting interpretation of the ululations in the horn parts (I think) in the middle. That Col Legno CD is very worthwhile getting, as the performances of Ata and N'Shima are also fantastic. However the Tamayo recording of Jonchaies is now my favourite, as the exceptional clarity of the lines and rhythms doesn't in any way compromise the excitement, and seems to me to be an outstanding achievement. (I still miss all that whoo-whoo-ing in the horns though...)  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
richard barrett
Guest
|
|
« Reply #66 on: 16:17:39, 11-07-2007 » |
|
There are two other recordings which predate Amy and Tamayo: one with Tabachnik, which has never come out on CD, not such a disaster in the case of Jonchaies but extremely disappointing in that the LP also contained the only commercial recording so far of Cendrées, and another with the Leicestershire Schools' Symphony Orchestra (!) conducted by Peter Fletcher. For my ears Tamayo's recording is the best so far: energetic, detailed and well-recorded (I suspect that it took over some of the rehearsal time allotted to the other items on the CD, since it sounds to me a much more powerful performance than the others).
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
oliver sudden
|
|
« Reply #67 on: 16:35:29, 11-07-2007 » |
|
Cripes!  I just went to my shelves for a flip through my Xenakis holdings and after shifting a couple of discs around heard a faint rolling noise. Pulled out all the Xenakis and had a grope around on the shelf (it being above eye level). It seems my la légende d'eer CD had rolled out of the hopelessly inadequate cardboard sleeve Montaigne chose to provide for it. If I hadn't spotted it then it might have disappeared for ever (or at least for an unacceptably high proportion of forever). Those Montaigne cheapie sleeves are bowlocks. When they're not scratching the discs or applying glue to them (I had this happen with the Ardittis' Berg disc) they're rolling them gently into the inner darkness. Excuse me. Back to normal programming. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
keqrops
Posts: 10
|
|
« Reply #68 on: 17:09:12, 11-07-2007 » |
|
Fortunately, Montaigne seem to be going back to proper boxes. (I had to spend about two hours removing glue from the Arditti Xenakis set....not a pretty sight though it was ultimately successful.)
I'll second all the comments regarding Tamayo and Jonchaies--a blockbuster performance indeed. I don't really return to the other performances on the disc (I guess I find both music and performances less convincing--as I also do with the rest of the Synaphai disc). Anyone got volume 4? (I've been slowing down my purchasing of late and this one's been on my wishlist for a long time.)
I think both the Col Legno Xenakis discs I have are very valuable--I really like the performance of Ata on the Collage series and think the Aïs on the Col Legno Musica Viva disc is greatly superior to Tamayo's remake (if only because Spyros Sakkas' voice was in much better shape back then).
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
oliver sudden
|
|
« Reply #69 on: 17:24:09, 11-07-2007 » |
|
Anyone got volume 4? (I've been slowing down my purchasing of late and this one's been on my wishlist for a long time.)
I think both the Col Legno Xenakis discs I have are very valuable--I really like the performance of Ata on the Collage series and think the Aïs on the Col Legno Musica Viva disc is greatly superior to Tamayo's remake (if only because Spyros Sakkas' voice was in much better shape back then).
What on earth could he have been doing with his voice?  Volume 4 is very fine and for my money has a better strike rate than the others - Erikhthon is great and the only one I find a bit on the dull side is Akrata. I don't mind Kyania on the Synaphaï disc - I had hardly listened further than Synaphaï before I lent it to a composer who brought it back with a gleam in his eye to ask 'you haven't heard Kyania yet, have you?'. I had to admit I hadn't and he sat me down to subject me to it. I was grateful.  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Schnak
Posts: 2
|
|
« Reply #70 on: 17:36:56, 11-07-2007 » |
|
Thanks everyone - I'll try and locate some of the other recordings.
With regard to the opening gesture in Jonchaies, does anyone know if Xenakis had seen Hithcock's Psycho? Joking aside, I find that whole introductory string 'choral' section very moving indeed. I think it is something to do with the contemplation (in my mind) of just how many players are involved in making that sound. I would love to hear/see it in a live performance although I can't see any of the British orchestras having the money (or indeed the desire) to put it on...
I read somewhere that this was influenced by traditional Greek/Byzantine modes and have seen it refered to elsewhere as a folk tune. (??) I'll try and dig out those sources, but in the meantime does anyone have anything further to say on that? Particularly in terms of Xenakis' compositional trajectory before and after 1977. Does this 'new' interest in 'borrowed' material (if that is what it is) signal a break/distancing with prior occupations, or had this occured before??
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Evan Johnson
|
|
« Reply #71 on: 17:40:29, 11-07-2007 » |
|
Cripes! Those Montaigne cheapie sleeves are bowlocks. When they're not scratching the discs or applying glue to them (I had this happen with the Ardittis' Berg disc) they're rolling them gently into the inner darkness. I prefer them to the old Kairos black-cardboard ones, more than one of which left a stubborn deposit of itself on the surface of the enclosed disc. (The only one I couldn't remove was on the Hosokawa release, which, if I had to choose one to sacrifice to those particular gods, well, it wouldn't be at the bottom of the list) |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
oliver sudden
|
|
« Reply #72 on: 17:44:30, 11-07-2007 » |
|
(The only one I couldn't remove was on the Hosokawa release, which, if I had to choose one to sacrifice to those particular gods, well, it wouldn't be at the bottom of the list)
Careful, someone from an ensemble represented on said disc might be reading this... (then again he might not have any time for Hosokawa either) Winter and Winter are also specialists in CD-destroying cases. Schnak - I suspect it was mainly Bernard Herrmann who found inspiration in certain 20th-century classics (although probably not Xenakis) rather than the other way round... |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Evan Johnson
|
|
« Reply #73 on: 17:51:16, 11-07-2007 » |
|
(The only one I couldn't remove was on the Hosokawa release, which, if I had to choose one to sacrifice to those particular gods, well, it wouldn't be at the bottom of the list)
Careful, someone from an ensemble represented on said disc might be reading this... (then again he might not have any time for Hosokawa either) Yes, indeed they might, although I don't see them in the little black-and-white photo with everyone in the jumpsuits, though I do see several people I recognize who as far as I know will not have seen the above snarky comment unless it is relayed to them. However, that all is neither here nor there, since the ensemble performances on that disc are quite marvelous indeed. Therein does not lie the source of the non-absoluteness of my disappointment to have little flecks of black cardboard on the surface of the disc that my CD player is willing to overlook only when it is in a particularly generous mood. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
oliver sudden
|
|
« Reply #74 on: 18:00:20, 11-07-2007 » |
|
Are you suggesting it might lie herein?  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
