Xenakis- Evryali (1973)

[V0idslime]

I figured out the first 5 notes! huzzah!

[wetuadjlv]

Wow, this really is a great performance of Ervyali! My new favorite. I hope I get to play this someday.

[v3nge]

This sounds more like Avant Garde than classical.

[NevinJarek]

May everyone have an unspeakable Feb 4. Long remembrance of Xenakis.

[dogedokishdaru]

Absolute favorite.

[AntiProUltra]

Interesting stuff. Thx for the upload. I love some of Xenakis's orchestral stuff like Metastasis, Pithprakta, Oresteia etc. Nice to hear something smaller

[scitsalcoryp]

This is the coolest piece of work for a piano...hard to believe it is a composed piece of music...nothing less than sheer brilliance !

[japanesesweet]

i guess the perfromer has a composer like role in this piece as he or she has to decide which notes to miss out. I like it. The first performance I heard of this piece was by Michael Finnissy. I taped it from the Radio.

[eurisko618]

@japanesesweet Well, the piece is fully scored, although executing the notes precisely as scored would seem impossible. You would seem to suggest the work is more aleatoric (chance operations in performance) which it is not.

[TheTimeTraveler100]

This is probably my most favorite composition of Xenakis', Metastasis and Synaphai are fucking terrifying.

[AsherSax]

While I do think that in many accounts it is important for a musician to be able to play his/her entire repertoire, I think that if you're able to create such a complex piece that it boggles even your mind at the sight of it, that should be appreciated as well.

[Athenesword]

Why would somebody write a composition that includes notes that don't even exist, and make it all but impossible to play every single note in the score? It's a mess. And I'm not coming from the perspective of somebody that hates classical music. Some of it I like (and some quite a bit) some I don't.

Is there any possibility this composition was meant for some instrument other than piano and he tried to transpose it? Perhaps he was unable to complete the transition?

Violin, harp maybe? Ideas?

[John11inch]

There are no notes notated (fun alliteration) in this score that are not on the piano; there are simply intervals too large for anyone without freakish hands. They are typically arpeggiated, or in the case of a couple performers, certain pitches in these sections are transposed or simply ignored.

[HandyTheXxxX]

@John11inch Actually, I read that he originally wrote a C#8 in this piece and only later was it removed.

[ZachHale8]

@John11inch That's true, but I'm sure there are people that do. I know that a lot of Rachmaninoff's piano parts have super large intervals that many people can't play without rolling them, but that's because Rachmaninoff had HUGE hands

[Medsas]

why should physical limitations stand in the way of creativity?

[dkolokol]

@Athenesword

>> Why would somebody write a composition that includes notes that don't even exist, and make it all but impossible to play every single note in the score? why not?

>> It's a mess. u call it this way, i call visionary ))

[beaverteeth92]

Does anyone here have the score for this?

[GreggaryPeccary]

Great! But for the first five seconds I was convinced I was listening to Steve Reich

[cleomagoolando]

Nope, this is a composer worth listening to.

[GreggaryPeccary]

Are you disagreeing with me? If so, on what?

[cleomagoolando]

No, just saying that Xenakis is worth listening to, whilst Reich is a schlock-artist who would base an entire work on 1-2 measures worth of ideas. I wasn't disagreeing with you at all. It does sound a little similar to some Reich measures. Thankfully, Xenakis's work goes elsewhere.

[JanaFaukner]

Both Xenakis and Reich are great composers... nevermind, Mahler based the 4th movement of his 9th symphony on two motives, yet that fact did not hinder someone such as Leonard Bernstein from praising it as perhaps the greatest musical artwork off all time. Anyway, core principles of music can always be summed up in a few measures, and minimalism is - usually - based on a reduction of that which surrounds and enriches them.

[charmand79]

Haha.. Define music.. Classic argument type.. I am sure u know that definitions for terms such as music are always ambiguous. So whatever definition I may try it is more likely to be incomplete and not support my previous argument. Therefore, I ll try answering through an example comparing xenakis music to real music..

Search at youtube for (say) Tektronix oscilloscope interference and then do the same for Mycenae Alpha (xenakis most viewed piece). Notice the difference.. Not much..

[charmand79]

I understand this is a very difficult piece to play on a technical basis and the pianist has done a great job..

But why is this called music?? It is just an arbitrary sequence of notes.. Ye ye, ok thats avant garde but it should not be regarded as "music". In the same way as a transparent glass pot filled with sand is not art (influenced by an "art" exhibition i recently had the "pleasure" to watch)

[TheRecluse26]

Sometimes musicians try to expand and push the limits of what is known as "music."

[John11inch]

Define music.

[TheRecluse26]

I'd say the best definition is: "the sounds produced by singers or musical instruments"

Do

[GreggaryPeccary]

Or natural phenomena, electronics, kitchen utensils etc. etc....

Basically: Sound in time (where else?) with a "frame", i.e. someone wills it to be music

[jiolsmolimassunemo]

Music = Organized sound.

Is that fair? I'd say that covers about everything from Bach to John Cage. Even the aleatoric works had some form of organization, even if they were only guidelines at times.

[salveregina01]

Actually it is impossible to define the term music in a way that is not completely arbitrary and include all of its forms. If we exclude 20th century music and purely rhythmic music, then music can be adequetely defined by the terms 'mode' and 'metre'. The definition 'organised sounds' could in reality refer to any sound, everything that exists has some principle of organisation at some level.

[morvensky]

I think a proper definition would be "sound with an aesthetic purpose"

[adrianmh1919]

@salveregina01 But one could potentially find meters and modes in any sound structure that isn't necessarily music. The point of the whole 'organized sound' definition is that it implies "organized by another human being". CHOICE is everything. Even if (as John Cage demonstrated in a variety of ways) one chooses to allow the aleatory to have a primary role.

[victoriaxellen]

@John11inch

I usually define music as sounds arranged according to parameters of pitch and duration, of course, this doesn't cover all modern " music", but I think for the sake of clarity its better to define a lot of modern composition as sonic experimentation rather than music. Composers like Penderecki take the results of such experiments and make music proper. Of course these definitions don't have any bearing on the quality of the results, just my take on it.

[aslanbc]

@John11inch Music is organized sound.

[Hero0fSilence]

@aslanbc Thats vague. Organized in which way? By who? The sound of spoons and forks falling is a series of sounds organized by gravity. They wont sound randomly, only as gravity can place the objects. Wouldnt that mean that every sound is organized? What about, Music is sound organized with the purpose of listening? That way we are exemt of calling cats musicians for accidentally breaking cups.

[RestlessWicked]

@Hero0fSilence

Take the "industrial" music genre. Those artists quite often use "noise" from industrial machinery (hence the name), the rattling of a train on the tracks or the sound of heartbeat or whatever typically unpleasant (or amusical) sounds and manage to find the harmony and music hidden inside the noise. (Ministry and Cabaret Voltaire for example) In other words: take the cat's cup and the falling spoons'n'forks and you have the basicsfor a song, if mixed properly. (title: cat-spork)

[aslanbc]

@Hero0fSilence That is silly; if a cat knocks over a glass and smashes it, there is no individual who consciously organized the sounds that resulted from that event.

[aslanbc]

@Hero0fSilence You can not name one piece of music that does not fall under the description of: Organized Sound. Organized by whom? The composer. How? Any way he/she feels. The composer can decide what objects they want to produce the desired sounds, whether the sounds will be created acoustically or electronically synthesized... The composers can decide how accurately they want to organize parameters such as pitch, loudness, timbre, duration, texture, etc.

[jiolsmolimassunemo]

Ah but it's not arbitrary at all. It only sounds that way to inexperienced listeners.

[EuriskoLontano]

Reading the score, one might wonder about at least a tiny bit of arbitrary-ness. The full arm blasts require strength, arm-size, and superhuman perfection when pounding the piano to smithereens toward the end. :-) Just my opinion. I know all I.X. piano works from studying the scores and recordings, but don't understand how they can be played. Then again, I only had about 5 years of piano, decades ago. My loss.

[jiolsmolimassunemo]

Well I have only cursorily studied Evryali, but I can say that Xenakis composed it without any regard for the limits of human anatomy, and it is definitely physically impossible to play everything in the score as written with only two hands. I'm not necessarily saying there is nothing arbitrary in the work either, just that there is at least some method to the madness that is Evryali.

[Hero0fSilence]

@charmand79 The glass pot can be a metaphor. That can be art. If you were more sensitive you would have discerned something, or projected an analogy. Art evocates only if you can interpret it. Dont interpret all the visual arts in function of the classic sculptor's taste for beauty or meaning. And dont listen to xenakis as if there should be a ritornello or a diatonic harmony.

[greatcthulu]

Holy mother of God @_@

[syr1811]

Beautiful and spare and powerful and I like it. Agree with Luke below that it's exquisitely light and almost airy, but kind of like cutting the air with a razor sharp switchblade. Thanks for re-sharing, John. I'm no expert, but I know what I like.

[MMesh89]

This is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE. Whoever could play this, is an alien. Or have at least 2 independent brains.

[dsteffey77]

@MMesh89

That is how Xenakis wrote music. It is god damn hard to play and it pushes the performer to his/her very limits. It is something to be respected and you will never understand that until you really try to learn one of his pieces. It will change your entire perspective on music, performance, composition, and life in general.

[tasoeurenshort]

I met Claude Helfer and it's one of my greatest honor. Evryali is infernal to pratice!

[Lukecash12]

The phrasing is very spaced out and it sounds almost airy it's so exquisitely light sometimes. Nice and staccatto. Add that to some rich bass and it looks like a mighty fine sandwich...

[formalized]

Well, actually, this is Claude Helffer's recording. Thank you so much for uploading it, much appreciated!