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Music of Sound and Light: Xenakis's Polytopes Author(S): Maria Anna Harley Source: Leonardo, Vol Music of Sound and Light: Xenakis's Polytopes Author(s): Maria Anna Harley Source: Leonardo, Vol. 31, No. 1 (1998), pp. 55-65 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576549 Accessed: 02/11/2008 10:07 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Leonardo. http://www.jstor.org HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Music of Sound and Light: Xenakis's Polytopes Maria Anna Harley ABSTRACT Thisarticle explores the au- diovisualinstallations of Greek composerand architect lannis Xenakis,focusing on the works IN A MUSICAL UNIVERSE electroacoustic composition by hecalls "polytopes." The term Varese and a visual Le thecomplexity And when I lookedup at the infinite sky, the universecontem- display by polytopecaptures Corbusier. The lan- ofthe spatial designs and mul- mefrom its emptyand bottomlessorbit ... the universe's prophetic plated and technical novelties of tiplespaces of these unusual edifice garnished with a thousand suns, like a cavern en- guage works,which have Poemecontinued the tradition of light-and-sound sconcedin eternallight, wheresuns shine like miner'slanterns oftenused thousands of lights Universal (also hundredsof and milkyways like silver veins. Expositions and loudspeakers. known as World Expositions or Xenakis'spolytopes are examined Jean-Paul Richter [1] EXPOs), which were as intheir aesthetic and cultural con- designed of this celebrations of human domi- text;the discussion origi- nalform of artin- These words introduced the of Le (1979), an avant-garde spectacle Diatope nance over nature. The Exposi- cludesa surveyof itsforms, Xenakis that an archi- audiovisual work by Iannis incorporated tions' spirit of ascendancy over functionsand reception. music and a tectural shell, electroacoustic mobile-light display. natural powers has been appar- cosmic are not uncommon Similar evocations of phenomena ent in their presentations of the in the writings of this Greek composer and architect, who once most recent scientific inventions music as to described the process of composing analogous and architectural projects of their times, including such land- of across navigating a "cosmic vessel sailing in the space sound, marks as the Crystal Palace in London (1851) and the Tour sonic constellations and galaxies" and explained human intel- d'Eiffel in Paris (1889). In Brussels in 1958, the immense ligence in the language of astrophysics [2]. Xenakis the archi- Atomium (a model of the atom) symbolized the newly discov- tect believed that the evolution of had reached a cos- humanity ered power of nuclear energy. For EXPO '58, Xenakis-then mic new forms of such as his "cosmic stage requiring dwellings, working as an architect for Le Corbusier-was given the job intended to the city,"an unrealized project "bring population of designing a pavilion to display the technological achieve- and of the stars" in contact with the vast spaces of the sky [3]. ments of the Philips Corporation from 1956 to 1958 [8]. The marked the of this new Xenakis the composer beginning young artist was also asked to compose a brief piece of cosmic era" in human invent- "planetary and development by musiqueconcrete to provide an introduction to the electronic art that he called the ing a new form of multimedia "polytope" poem by Varese and Le Corbusier. The result was the elec- [4], from the Greek polys (many, numerous) and topos (place, troacoustic miniature ConcretPH, which filled the curved The is based on the idea of space, territory, location). polytope spaces of the Pavilion with the "organic life and chemical a great space consisting of many smaller elements, a domain of flavour" of the sounds of burning charcoal [9]. The title of that be articulated sound and spatial complexity may by light this piece refers to key elements of the Pavilion's architec- in movement. According to Xenakis, the polytope "experi- ture: the material of reinforced concrete and the basic shapes with novel of sound and It's an ments ways using light. attempt of hyperbolic paraboloids. In Musique. Architecture,Xenakis to develop a new form of art with light and sound" [5]. described the Pavilion as "a dawn" of a new architecture that was "at- Xenakis explains that in creating this art form he was to be based on the bending rather than the shifting of tracted by the idea of repeating on a lower level what Nature carries out on a grand scale. The notion of Nature covers not 1. Xenakis's sketch of the external shell of the Pavil- the earth but also the universe"[6]. Fig. Philips only ion (Brussels, 1958). Notice the bending of the surfaces and two tops towering above the structure. THE PHILIPS PAVILION AND LE GESTE ELECTRONIQUE Xenakis's first personal encounter with multimedia extrava- ganzas took place during work on the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 World Exposition in Brussels-the site of Edgar Var&se's and Le Corbusier's Poemeelectronique (Fig. 1) [7]. This unique spectacle consisted of two independently created layers: an Maria Anna Harley (musicologist), Polish Music Reference Center, School of Music, University of Southern California, 840 West 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0851, U.S.A. E-mail: <[email protected]>. ? 1998 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 55-65, 1998 55 surfaces [10]. Indeed, the use of sur- absence of cooperation between the two imaginary paths traced by mobile sound faces of variable curvature, such as pa- authors-Le Corbusier and Varese-and images that emanate from static loud- raboloids and conoids, became his artis- the fact of its double authorship to be speakers and travel around a perfor- tic signature: the surfaces sculpted the the work's essential weakness. He mance space. Schaeffer utilized two sounds in the orchestral work Metastasis thought that this form of art should have types of spatial sound projection with (1953-1955) and provided the architec- a single creator who would unite dispar- multiple loudspeaker systems-static re- tural framework for the Polytope de ate elements by his or her coherent artis- lief and kinematic relief, the latter of which Montreal (1967). tic vision. In 1958, Xenakis described involved mobile sound sources whose At the Brussels exposition, the peaked this concept in an article that became movement was controlled by hand ges- pavilion with smooth walls of reinforced the blueprint for the polytope [14]. This tures of the performers. This way of cre- concrete covered with tiles (Fig. 1) technological art form was to bring to- ating "spatial relief' in music was heard housed a spectacle of sound and images. gether the concept of abstract painting for the first time during a concert of Varese's musical composition (music for with the techniques of cinema, combin- Schaeffer and Pierre Henry on 6 July tape projected from more than 400 ing colored mobile backgrounds, shift- 1951 in Paris, when Symphonie pour un loudspeakers) and Le Corbusier's visual ing spatial configurations and patterns, a homme seul and Orphee 51 were per- display (slides and light show) were per- play of colors and forms, and abstract formed [17]. Xenakis reformulated formed simultaneously, but had been music. According to Xenakis, the pro- these concepts as stereophonie statique created independently of each other. Le cess of musical "abstraction"consists of a (sound emanating from numerous Corbusier had originally intended to shift toward atonality; it also relies on the points dispersed in space) and read fragments of his poems praising appropriation of concrete sounds and stereophonie cinematique (sound whose technological progress and the conquest the creation of electronic sonorities and sources were both multiple and mobile). of "the mathematical universe" as a part their organization into vast sonic ges- Here, Xenakis imagined that by the pre- of the Poeme electronique [11]. Because of tures [15]. In the geste electronique total, cise definition of sound source loca- difficulties coordinating this textual spatial locations as well as pitches, dura- tions, geometric shapes and surfaces layer with the music, however, instead tions, timbres and dynamic levels are in- might be projected into the area of per- he included the poetry excerpts in the herent to the structure. The architec- formance. These geometric sound enti- program book. Rather than adding the tural shell of the performance space ties would arise from the succession and spoken word to the spectacle, he used should assume a new, irregular form al- simultaneity of sound images played visual means to narrate a tale of human lowing for multiple images to be dis- back from loudspeakers located in the frailties and triumphs at the beginning played at the same time in different geo- auditorium. If, for instance, the same of what he called "a new civilization, a metric transformations, criss-crossing sonority was performed in succession new world" [12] made possible by the and permeating each other.
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