Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

The Musical Timespace

24

Metastasis

0'00-2'54 Beginning:

A single sound emerges, growing in gliding motion, first upwards,

then downwards, dividing itself into a high and a low stream, and

expanding to a vibrating space filled with sound.

2'55-8'03 Middle Section:

A polyphony of melodic fragments unfolds (2'55-4'02), changing to a

polyphony of points, sound masses and lines of different timbres and

intensities (4'03-7'55), ending in a brief gliding movement (7'55-8'03).

8'06-8'55 Final section:

Gliding sound emerges in the high and low registers, moving towards

the middle register, and finally meeting in one sound.

In the middle section, Xenakis employs a fragmentary serial technique,

from which he shortly thereafter dissociated himself. The most important

musical innovations of this work are found in the first and last sections.

This is an outline of the musical events and processes in the beginning of

Metastasis:

Metastasis, beginning

0'00-l'32:

An initial tone appears; continuous gliding movement in strings, inter-

spersed with attacks of wooden percussion, spreads out fan-like

upwards and downwards, reaching a climax in a mass of sound, con-

sisting of a high and a low part (1'00-1'19), during which percussion

and plucked string attacks are heard. At 1'20 the sound masses are set

in intensified vibration by tremolo; sudden breakoff at 1'32.

1'32-2'26:

Tinkling metal percussion breaks the brief silence, 1'37 followed by

sheets of string tremolo, changing suddenly in loudness several times.

1'42 Deep trombones emerge, salient when the strings are soft,

gradually intensifying their sound in sliding movement. 2'02 Loud

trumpets enter, playing noisy flutter-tongue tones, 2'09 followed by

penetrating sounds of horns. After a climax of noise 2'10-2'18, the

brass instruments disappear, leaving the strings.

2'26-T54:

Transparent string sound glides up to a high flageolet register and

down to a low register; in the middle register a tone is sustained.

2 – States, Events and Transformations

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During this first part of Metastasis, an extensive soundspace is expanded,

approaching the high and low limits of perceptible pitch. The attention of

the listener is stimulated by percussive attacks and sudden changes in

loudness. Contrasts between attacked and sustained sound yield impress-

ions of musical foreground and background. Variation of timbres and

sound movement activates and maintains the listener's awareness. The

use of tremolo enhances perceptual intensity.

In Metastasis, the listening mind is opened to the experience of a contin-

uous, multidimensional soundspace. Hearing and following sound ap-

pearing, changing and disappearing, the listener perceives a space of

musical states, events and transformations.

In the preface of the score,

Xenakis explains the title Metastasis as "dialectic transformation",

and states some new ideas introduced by this work:

(1) The normal orchestra is totally divisi: 61 instrumentalists play 61

different parts, thus introducing the mass conception in music

(music built with a large number of sound events).

(2) Systematic use of individual glissandi throughout the whole

mass of orchestral strings; glissandi whose gradients are calcu-

lated individually. These glissandi create sound spaces in contin-

uous evolution, comparable to ruled surfaces and volumes. It

was precisely these glissandi which led the composer several

years later to the architectural conception of the Philips pavilion

at the 1958 Brussels Exposition, on behalf of Le Corbusier.

(Xenakis, score note)

The composition of Metastasis is closely related to Xenakis' work as an

engineer and architect. After arriving as a fugitive in Paris in 1947,

Xenakis, who had achieved his diploma in engineering in Greece, had the

opportunity of being employed by the renowned architect Le Corbusier, a

relationship that lasted from 1947 to 1960.

In the beginning of the 1950's, the work of Xenakis had changed from

engineering calculations to architectural design, and owing to his

exchange of ideas with Le Corbusier, he discovered that the problems of

contemporary architecture were akin to the problems he was trying to

solve in music. The professional occupation with forms, volumes, surfaces

and proportions in architecture led to the idea of creating a space of sound

in motion by designing surfaces of glissando movements in graphic form.

This graph was subsequently transcribed in ordinary score notation.

Fig 2.1 shows the graphic design of measures 309-314, which constitute the

brief gliding sound movement at the end of the middle section, 7'55-8'03 in

the recording. The score notation of these measures is reproduced as Ex. II-II.