Sinkah in the Voice

My things: (a) I am for some reason shocked and baffled by the image of Mark driving a car. (b) I am glad to see someone talk about this sort of thing and actually admit that impenetrability is its function, as opposed to the usual higher-minded-than-thou line that says "no it's beautiful as pure sound and you are just too uptight and normal to understand that." (c) Evidently I fall into the "lame sour-grapesing" category (though the presence of Ataxerxes is possibly the one thing that could make great crackly clanging seem appropriate to me).

When I met the man in '96, Mr. Xenakis claimed that his compositional processes were tied entirely to the meanings he wished to evoke with his pieces. That they weren't abstract in any way, but tied to rather traditional/romantic notions of what music should be/can evoke/etc. He talked a lot of the pre-Socratics. In retrospect, after hearing him say that, the aim of his music seems a lot less impenetrable to me (although yeah it's still pretty dense as a listening experience).

Also, believe it or not, for Xenakis the process, while the vehicle that drives the composition, wasn't as important as the composition itself (kinda a restatement of my first paragraph there). NOBODY gets that right when discussing, not even Sinkah in his otherwise not so bad review (I esp. liked how he brought up the context of the Shah commissioning the piece, although let's face it - just 'cause Xenakis fought the Nazis didn't make him a complete Leftist Hero as many on the Left would like to paint him as).

(Obviously I recognize that there are many many exceptions to that statement, and I don't listen to enough of this sort of thing to make that argument with much confidence. But it's nonetheless what keeps me from delving into it much more.)

This review is like a condensed version of mark's positions in various ilm threads. Cute!

when i read the review in the wire (the writer predictably likes it and never quotes any of the really bad sleeve notes, at least from the bits mark quotes) of the same set I was a bit cynical of the remixes CD. I have persepolis as a one CD set that i bought a few months ago (it was released last year) and why would anyone want to remix this...well, why the fuck would you. Besides its a scam, kind of like when 4 AD did the pixies comp and removed all the original recs and then a few months later reissued them. just another scam to get more money from us all.

You said: "Xenakis claimed that his compositional processes were tied entirely to the meanings he wished to evoke with his pieces. That they weren't abstract in any way, but tied to rather traditional/romantic notions of what music should be/can evoke/etc."

I said: "My problem with this cadre claiming their works as pure-sound evocations etc. etc."

You said: "See, I don't think Xenakis made that claim at all."

I was reading that first bit of yours as an assertion that Xenakis did make that claim, but I guess I'm misunderstanding. Could you elaborate a bit? I think I'm missing something tied to the "processes" bit -- with the rest of it I just read "they weren't abstract" and the double use of the word "evoke" and assumed you meant purely sonically evocative.

yeah I liked that. when i listen to this 'stuff' I know a bit abt the processes because i have read a coluple of articles here and there but i don't think its that relevant. if i didn't know, i'd still love it. Part of the appeal is that it is so damn fucking strange and i don't know quite where the sound comes from.

the thing abt this music is: I don't know what he's trying to say and there are no hidden meanings and yet yet yet booklets from legend d'er for instance have these texts that were supposed to have inspired the work (plato, an article on astrology from scientific american, etc). but i like it.

I thought this piece was great, but am just itching to edit it.

The words in the opening paragraph are easy to understand, it's just that the V.V. review page software can't cope (or do I mean deal?) with Sinkah - long subclause explaining what a "Sinkah" might be in the context of this post and how this relates to everything else - punctuation: Punctuation.

;-)

"for Xenakis the process, while the vehicle that drives the composition, wasn't as important as the composition itself" : isn't this an implication of what i was arguing? (i didn't explicitly say it, i agree)