CD Details
Synopsis
Album DescriptionIn 1971, former Iranian dictator Muhammad Reza Shah hosted a lavish and highly choreographed event amidst the ruins of the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in order to celebrate the 2500th anniversary of Iran's founding by Cyrus The Great. This commemoration of modern Iran's beginnings was part of the Shah's own struggle with the country's increasingly politicized Shi'ite Muslim clerics, led by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, to secularize Iran. Declaring himself to be heir to Cyrus' legacy, the Shah presided over a cast of 6,200 vintage Persian costume-wearing vassals in an outlandish ceremony affirming the Shah's own interpretation of Iranian history, one which paid little deference to Islam. The third annual Shiraz arts festival was held that same year at Persepolis. In keeping with the 2500th national anniversary celebrations, the Shah commissioned Greek composer and computer music pioneer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) to write a piece of music exalting ancient Persia's aristocratic pre-Islamic religious culture. Selecting Xenakis to author such a work could not have been more symbolically appropriate. A central figure in the development of computer composition, this half-blind former architect, WWII resistance fighter and associate of Le Corbusier evolved a new approach to music, most notably one that employed mathematical probability functions as a compositional methodology. Titled 'Persepolis', in honor of the location in which it was to be performed, Xenakis composed a fifty-six minute, eight-track tape piece of musique concréte for the occasion. A noisy, apocalyptic-sounding piece distinguished by rising waves of intensity, Persepolis' debut must have been quite an experience for those lucky enough to be in attendance. Persepolis takes on an even greater significance when listened to as a musical work whose purpose was to serve a failed secularist ideology overtaken less than a decade later by a fundamentalist Islamic revolution. In light of the events that have consumed the world since September 11th 2001, the notion that a radical composer would align himself with a political figure like the Shah shows how very few places such a brilliant artist could go to receive support for their work. Creative modernism is left with choosing between authoritarianism and religion. Hence the inclusion of a second disc of remixes in this edition of Persepolis. Disc 2 of this recording contains ten remixes of Persepolis by an international cast of avant-garde musicians, transforming Xenakis' original work in entirely distinct contexts, imbuing it with compellingly new meanings. Otomo Yoshihide, Merzbow, Ryoji Ikeda, and Construction Kit contribute Japanese readings, while Spanish artist Francisco Lopez, Polish musician Zbigniew Karkowski and German Ulf Langheinrich bring the so-called noise from Europe. Americans antimatter and Laminar round the global aspect of this collection out by providing their own compelling takes on the original. Despite their distinctiveness, what unites all of these remixes is a shared sense that all great works of art can transcend the contexts in which they were first conceived in order to explore, and perhaps fulfill their greater purpose.
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CD Reviews
Electronic music masterwork from 1971 R. Hutchinson | a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds | 01/26/2004 (5 out of 5 stars) "PERSEPOLIS is an hour of electronic music, composed for an outdoor performance in the ruins of the ancient Persian city of the same name. Organized by the Shah of Iran in 1971, this event featured 59 speakers in and around the audience, lasers and spotlights evoking the Zoroastrian belief that light is eternal life, and bonfires on surrounding hillsides. Quite a spectacle! I won't go on in this vein as the liner notes describing this history are already generously excerpted on the site.
Unfortunately there is much less information about the music itself. Apparently a truncated version of the original recording was released on vinyl in the 1970s. This Asphodel version, called the "GRM mix" (for the Institute National Acoustique -- Groupe Recherche de Musique) is apparently a much more recent mix of the original tapes, but I have not been able to find the specific dates. The liner notes say only that the mixing and engineering was done in Paris by Daniel Teruggi "under the consultation of Iannis Xenakis."
According to James Harley, a former student of Xenakis, the music is created "...from the layering and variation of 11 basic textures. These range from strange-sounding clarinet multiphonics to glassy string harmonics to grating metallic sounds and distorted wind effects ... one or another of these entities tends to dominate, and is usually heard in at least a couple of layers simultaneously, often juxtaposed with single layers of one or two other textures at the same time." It is a continuous flux of these electronic textures -- there is no large-scale structure to the piece, no breaks, or movements, or notable crescendos of any kind. PERSEPOLIS is evocative of cosmic energies -- the Zoroastrian contest between Light and Darkness. I find it to be endlessly fascinating -- there is more than enough complexity to sustain interest and repeated listening.
We get a bonus second disc from Asphodel, which includes 9 remixes of the original Xenakis work. These are a mixed bag, ranging from "glitch" pieces that I cannot stand to a few creative and compelling extensions of the original vision. Zbigniew Karkowski's contribution in particular is excellent -- Karkowski was a "curator" of the project, so presumably he gathered the remixes. Even if you find you don't like any of the remixes at all, you still get the entire Xenakis work for the price of a single disc.
Between 1971 and 1977 Xenakis further developed his vision and craft. LA LEGENDE D'EER, which like PERSEPOLIS was commissioned for multi-media performance, this time for the June 1978 opening of the Pompidou Center in Paris, is another spectacular 8-channel tape work. The 1977 work adds a macro-structure, building from sparse sounds to loud noise and then subsiding back to sparseness. For anyone who enjoys PERSEPOLIS it is well worth hearing.
There is only one book on Xenakis in English at the moment, by James Harley, who studied with X in Paris, and it's well worth checking out. One book is scarcely enough. Xenakis was a prolific genius, and I'd like to know more about his youthful participation in the Communist resistance to Italian fascism, so I hope the information gap will be closed in the near future.
I consider Xenakis to be one of THE THREE BEST LATE 20th CENTURY COMPOSERS, along with Elliott Carter and Gyorgy Ligeti (see my list). And see my list XENAKIS: A LISTENER'S GUIDE for more reviews and recommendations."
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