CCMIX Paris: Xenakis, UPIC, Continuum (review)

This recording requires an active imagination on the part of the listener. The sounds presented make reference to a host of extramusical associations that must be imagined: visually startling scores, hidden narratives, and spatialization effects, as well as the relationship between the live performer and pre-recorded sound. This two-CD set is a historical compilation of works either by Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001), inspired by him, or else composed on the UPIC computer music system that he designed. The recording begins with Xenakis's aggressive Mycenae Alpha (1978), but is on the whole an inviting and accessible compilation, including works by Nicola Cisternino, Julio Estrada, Gerard Pape, Jean-Claude Risset, Curtis Roads, Brigitte Robindoré, Takehito Shimazu, and Daniel Teruggi. Les Ateliers UPIC, recently renamed CCMIX (Centre de création musicale Iannis Xenakis), is a computer music studio on the outskirts of Paris where most of these works were composed.

The UPIC system enables the composer to create a graphic score whose every free motion of the pen (or computer mouse) results in an analogous sound. With the UPIC system, the basic compositional unit is no longer the note, but rather an arc that travels from pitch A to pitch B. The polyphonic potential here is enormous, as a UPIC score can contain up to 64 simultaneous arcs. The UPIC/CCMIX studio, established by Xenakis in 1985 and directed by Gerard Pape since 1991, is a veritable United Nations in terms of the composers who have worked there, and these discs well reflect its international flavor. This is the first compilation to emerge from this important center, and it has therefore been long awaited.

Xenakis is represented by two works on this disc, both written for his sound-and-light Polytope "spectacles": Polytope de Cluny (1972), written for presentation in the Roman baths of Cluny in the St. Germain district of Paris; and Mycenae Alpha, written for presentation in Xenakis's native Greece. A sound-only stereo presentation of these works, without the laser lights or full spatialization effects, is like a black-and-white photo of a sunset. Nevertheless, Xenakis's strong personality and meticulous technique shine through in these sturdy works. Xenakis was a student of Olivier Messiaen, and Mycenae Alpha, the first piece composed on the UPIC system, was performed in Paris as part of the celebrations honoring Messiaen in his 70th year. The title of this work, which sounds like the name of some astronomical constellation or galaxy, simply refers to the city (Mycenae) where the work was premiered.

Polytope de Cluny, the longest work on the CD (25 minutes), predates the establishment of the UPIC system and was composed using eight-track magnetic tape, with seven tracks used for the sound, and one used for the light control signals. In this piece, the composer builds up the musical texture strand by strand, with each line clearly distinguishable by timbre (wind chimes, low thunder, muffled bells, etc.), allowing the listener to follow the sound as it moves around the performance space in tandem with a dazzling light show. Gradually the musical texture is thickened so that by the end of the piece, all the strands merge into a single wash of sound. The Polytopes and the UPIC system are both ultimately derived from Xenakis's work in the 1950s with architect Le Cor-busier, conductor Hermann Scherchen and composers Messiaen and Edgard Varèse, all of whom envisioned a future utopian art-form combining sound with visual images through the use of electronic means. (Alexander Scriabin and Richard Wagner are further ancestors in the history of this utopian vision—minus the electronics.)

Jean-Claude Risset (b. 1938) is rightly considered one of the pioneers of computer music. His Little Boy and Mutations, written at Bell Labs in the late 1960s, were among the first in the...