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Iannis Xenakis - Cendrées

Cendrées, for mixed choir and large orchestra (1973) Chœurs de la Fondation Gulbenkian de Lisbonne Orchestre National de France Michel Tabachnik Cendrées, for choir and orchestra, by lannis Xenakis, was commissioned by the Gulbenkian Foundation, where it was performed for the first time in 1974. The first French performance was in Paris, at the Salle Wagram, on 21 December, 1977. The work is headed by a bucolic epigraph, exceptionally for Xenakis: "Before the autumn, before the summer, before every season, when the sun is like a snow-flake, and when it comes down to meet the earth, all is white and opal; and this at times may be long-lasting. These are no mists, no dews, but cinders." Nonetheless, this is no descriptive work after the manner of Vivaldi or Beethoven, while being perhaps less strictly abstract a canvas than his earlier pieces which were rightly, though vaguely, described as "cosmic" in character. Is this the beginning of Xenakis the landscape-painter? Perhaps, but he still remains difficult to penetrate. Here is none of that gentleness and silence that the epigraph seemed to promise. After the rising glissandi of the violins and the descending ones of the cellos, are quickly superimposed those of the female voices, bringing movement and humanity to the process; then the male voices proffer, with a vulgar brutality, like rough shouts, apostrophes sung to vowel-sounds; the choirs and instruments mingle in an extraordinary "landscape" of timbres, rhythms, cries, and violent punctuations leading to a superb tumult. A curious central episode begins with a solo, then a duet on the flutes, with some very fine microtonal sounds, broadening into a concert of all the woodwind, with acid sonorities and rhythms, bringing in the return of the tumultuous chorus. Various evocative episodes follow one upon the other until the end: astonishing solos, sobs or barking by the two contraltos (one of them a young man), also making use of the very expressive aura of microtonal inflections and accents; light scrapings on the violins over a distant murmur of the horns; sometimes the heavy rain of the strings and further looming walls of fearsome sounds; and finally choruses of breath, whispered like the last whisper of a lonely strand when the sea withdraws (with one last cry), -all this that can scarcely be described, has indeed the relief of an unknown landscape and leaves the impression of a lyricism that is as powerful as it is strange. --John Underwood Art by William Congdon