Search - Iannis Xenakis :: Iannis Xenakis: La Légende d'Eer

An entertaining electronic effort, but if one could only see

Christopher Culver | 11/12/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Iannis Xenakis produced "La legende d'Eer" in 1977 to celebrate the opening of the Pompidou Centre, that temple of the modern arts located on Beauborg Square in Paris. The 46-minute electronic work moves through a number of soundscapes. First there is soft ambience like one of Kaija Saariaho's "musical environments" (e.g. "Cloud Music", on a Petals disc). There is powerful fluttering designed by Xenakis for maximum impact on the ear, sweeping glissandos, sounds compressed down to a whistle and then expanded again. Whatever possibilities electronic means provide, Xenakis has used them. And yet, it's a much more accessible work than one would expect from the violent composer of "Metastasis" and "Nomos Alpha". Knowing that his piece was going to be played for a large Parisian audience, many of whom certainly didn't care about art music, sheer beauty seemed to be his overriding concern.



But reading the booklet, with its description of Xenakis' design for the performance, really made me feel down. As Xenakis was an architect, he came up with a set that would truly complement the music: hundreds of mirrors, coloured lights, lasers. What a glorious experience it must have been to stand in the space and hear the music accompanied by such visuals. Indeed, the texts Xenakis put together to introduce the piece, by Plato (his "Legend of Er" from The Republic), Jean-Paul Richter, Pascal, and an astrophysicist writing on supernovas, mainly describe metaphysical experiences involving heavenly lights, multicoloured and infinite. It's quite remarkable how Xenakis, an atheist like much of the Darmstadt generation, was nonetheless intrigued by the idea of transcendence and the immortality of the soul.



And yet, by just listening to this stereo audio recording, we miss out on the half of what Xenakis intended. That's a real shame. At least if you get Mode DVD, which has the piece in surround sound, you get some of the spatial effects of this eight-track work. Unfortunately, that version lacks Xenakis' texts."

A cosmic voyage, into the maelstrom and back

R. Hutchinson | a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds | 07/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"LA LEGENDE D'EER is the musical component of a multi-media spectacle created by Xenakis in 1978 in Paris. The "Diatope" included architecture (its own building), electronic music, images (a computerized light show with 4 lasers and 400 mirrors), and 5 texts, including the passage from Plato's "Republic" from which the title is taken. These texts in their entirety are included in the liner notes.



While in many ways similar to the earlier PERSEPOLIS from 1971 (see my review), LA LEGENDE D'EER adds elements of structure. The 1971 work (commissioned by the Shah of Iran) had no crescendos or movements -- basically just fascinating textural variation. Now Xenakis adds a beginning, middle and end, opening and ending with sparse, eerie sounds like cikadas and building to a deafening intensity in between. There are seven layered tracks of music and six distinct sections, though they flow together. I am not quite as impressed with certain aspects of the developmental passages that link the beginning to the climax and the climax to the ending as I am with the rest of the work. On the "way up" Xenakis uses an electronic "squiggle" that sounds like a mosquito buzzing, and on the "way down" there is at one point something that sounds like a go-cart.



LA LEGENDE D'EER has since been released in a superb new stereo remix from the original tapes (at the GRM in Paris) on Mode -- see my review."