Varèse / Xénakis / Le Corbusier – poeme électronique

YouTube footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC3OXai7W9I

From P-Art , to listen to a short sound excerpt from the poeme electronique
http://users.skynet.be/P-ART/PARADISE/JOURNAL/JOURNAL1/journ1.htm

Another way to listen to poeme electronique with Varese’s drawing:

http://www.geocities.com/vaderv_2000/new/poeme.htm

More ways to hear poeme electronique:

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/poeme-electronique/audio/1/
Le Corbusier; Iannis Xenakis; Edgard Varèse
«Poème électronique: Philips Pavilion»
«Poème électronique» is the first, electronic-spatial environment to combine
architecture, film, light and music to a total experience made to functions in time and
space. Under the direction of Le Corbusier, Iannis Xenaki's concept and geometry
designed the World's Fair exhibition space adhering to mathematical functions. Edgard
Varèse composed the both concrete and vocal music which enhanced dynamic, light
and image projections conceived by Le Corbusier. Varèse's work had always sought the
abstract and, in part, visually inspired concepts of form and spatial movements. Among
other elements for «Poème électronique» he used machine noises, transported piano
chords, filtered choir and solo voices, and synthetic tone colorings. With the help of
the advanced technical means made available through the Philips Pavilion, the sounds
of this composition for tape recorder could wander throughout the space on highly
complex routes.
«The Philips Pavilion presented a collage liturgy for twentieth-century humankind,
dependent on electricity instead of daylight and on virtual perspectives in place of
terrestrial views.»
(Source: Marc Treib, Space Calculated in Seconds, Princeton, 1996, p. 3)

Golo Föllmer
(MEDIA ART NET / Medien Kunst Netz)
Source (linked from):
Constructed through 1957 and 1958, destroyed in 1959, the Phillips Pavillion was the ephemeral multi-
media space designed by Xenakis under Le Corbusier. Concieved as the “vessel” for Edgard Varèse’s
composition, Poem Electronique, the building was commissioned by the Phillips company for the1958
Brussels World Fair. The structure featured 425 speakers, which enabled Varèse to compose spatially:
individual sounds from a multi-track tape unit took highly complex routes around the standing
audience of approximately 500 as disconnected imagery was projected in the dark. You can hear
Poème électronique here, though in a decidedly less intense format.
(http://www.lovelymedia.org/?p=116 )

Le Corbusier : Philips Pavilion, Brussels, 1958

Title : Iannis Xenakis: Phillips Pavilion, Poème Electronique,

Edgard Varèse [Brussels 1958]

Source : http://undergroundmusiclibrary.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
[captions for 2 photos]
The Philips Pavilion was more than a building at the fair -- it was a multimedia experience
displaying the technological prowess of the Philips company by combining light, sound, and
color.
Le Corbusier's involvement in the Philips Pavilion is often overestimated. In reality, most of
the designing was carried out by his collaborator Iannis Xenakis (b.1922) a Greek architect
and music composer working in Le Corbusier's office at the time. ]

These photographs taken from a 1958 issue of Philips Technical Review depict the Philips
Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. Located in a small site next to the Dutch section
and away from the center of the fair, the pavilion hosted a futuristic multimedia display
featuring images, colored lighting and music and sounds called the "Poème
Electronique."
Some of the greatest artistic minds of the twentieth century were involved in its creation,
including the architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and the composer Edgard Varèse (1883-
1965). But most importantly, the Philips Pavilion represented an important artistic
phenomenon through its synthesis of architecture, visual media and music.
The purpose of the pavilion was to exhibit the technology of the Philips corporation, a Dutch
electronics company specializing in everything from sound production to fluorescent lighting
to X-ray technology. Philips' aim was obviously promotional, integrating corporate
advertisement into an exhibit much like the pavilions by General Motors and Ford at the
Chicago fair of 1933 and the New York fair of 1939. But rather than having a traditional
pavilion that would display their products for the visitors to browse through, Philips chose to
create an integrated work of modern art that would utilize its wide array of technologies.
Therefore, the Philips pavilion had no exhibits per se; rather it was a kind of exhibit in itself; an
all-encompassing showcase of what the Philips corporation could offer.

For the execution of this unique undertaking, Philips selected the French architect Le
Corbusier, one of the greatest modern designers of the twentieth century. Philips executives
approached him in January 1956 to design, in the words of artistic director Louis Kalff, a
"spatial-color-light-music production" for the Philips corporation (Treib 2). Le Corbusier was by
this time near the end of his career, but also at the height of his powers, as demonstrated by
his recently completed masterpieces including the Unit‚ d'Habitation in Marseilles (1946-52)
and the chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France (1950-54). Philips executives no
doubt expected a first-class design from Le Corbusier, but they also expected him to direct
the entire concept of the Poème Electronique and all of its images and lighting, in addition to
the architecture. In effect, Philips gave Le Corbusier carte blanche to create their pavilion,
insisting only that he utilize the various technological media the company was producing.

Le Corbusier's involvement in the Philips Pavilion is often overestimated. In reality, most of

the designing was carried out by his collaborator Iannis Xenakis (b.1922), a Greek architect
and music composer working in Le Corbusier's office at the time. Xenakis would later become
famous for his use of rigorous mathematical concepts and relationships in his music, but at
this time was not well known. This may be part of the reason that he receives less recognition
for the design than he probably deserves, coupled with Le Corbusier's prestige and public
exaggerations of his own role. Le Corbusier was more concerned with what was going on
inside the pavilion and cared little about its exterior appearance. Even the spectacle inside
was not completely his own, for the music was by Edgard Varèse, a well-known composer at
the time and a pioneer in the field of electronic music and the use of non-instrumental sounds,
exemplified by Ionization (1930-31) and Deserts (1949-54). It was Le Corbusier, however,
who insisted that Varèse be chosen to compose the music, for Philips wanted to enlist the
talents of the more famous but less radical British composer Benjamin Britten. But after
succeeding in his plea, Le Corbusier left Varèse a completely free hand in composing the
music.

Although Xenakis was the principal designer of the Philips Pavilion, the architecture
didoriginate with Le Corbusier's general concepts. These consisted of descriptions of a
"stomach" to contain the Poème Electronique, with a twisted path for entrance and exit and
warped, curving walls on which to project the colors and images. This basic concept was
about as far as Le Corbusier's architectural involvement went. The shape of the building
would be left for Xenakis to determine. The pavilion was to serve as a small auditorium,
where approximately five hundred seated visitors could see the images projected on all the
walls around them, as if it were an irregularly shaped planetarium. His point of departure for
the structure was a series of conjoined hyperbolic parabaloids-curved planes mathematically
generated entirely from straight lines-that would form a tent-like enclosure for the stomach-
shaped floor plan. The sloping walls of the hyperbolic parabaloids would satisfy Le
Corbusier's idea of irregular warped surfaces for the projection of images. The geometric form
also appealed to Le Corbusier's desire for mathematical rationality while the dramatic slopes
and contours of the pavilion related to a more expressionistic idiom.

The execution of the design proved to be problematic. Xenakis' own structural solution
involved a tensile structure of steel cables strung from steel posts at the ends of the "tent" to
form the hyperbolic parabaloids. It was rejected on the grounds that the interior would require
more solid, acoustically insulating walls. Le Corbusier and the sound engineers wanted a
structure of concrete to keep exterior noise from interfering with the presentation. But the
complex shapes of Xenakis' hyperbolic parabaloids made it impossible to build a conventional
poured concrete structure. The solution that would satisfy both Xenakis' ideas and the
acoustical requirements of the Poeme Electronique was a system of precast concrete panels
hung in tension from wire cables. Because hyperbolic parabaloids are generated by straight
lines, the method of using precast panels was easy to implement. This ingenious compromise
was devised by Hoyte Duyster, the chief engineer for the Philips project. The panels were
constructed in a hangar shed from a simple sand mold that matched the curvature of the
pavilion. Once the panels were cast around the sand mold, they were numbered, shipped to
the construction site and quickly assembled. They would hang on steel cables strung from
thin concrete ribs that were cast in place. These ribs are visible in the photograph where the
walls converge at the ends of the pavilion. The result was a quickly and efficiently constructed
building that fulfilled the requirements of the Poème Electronique.

While the design of the pavilion was underway, Le Corbusier was busy figuring out what
would be happening inside. Le Corbusier wanted the Poème Electronique to consist of an
eight-minute film made up of an array of still photographs highlighted by changing washes of
colored light on the interior surfaces of the pavilion. The underlying concept related to Le
Corbusier's own view of the progress of humankind through history and into the future.
However, the Poème would not be a presentation of concrete images associated with events
or historical developments. It was meant to be abstract and highly symbolic, with groups of
stills chosen to make a statement about humanity. These images, including such diverse
subject matter as tribal art, baby faces, animals, machinery, Charlie Chaplin and even a
mushroom cloud, were arranged in rather confusing combinations and juxtapositions. For
example, Charlie Chaplin and the mushroom cloud would be shown next to each other in an
attempt to show the absurdity of modern warfare. The eight minutes was made up of seven
sequences: "Genesis," "Matter and Spirit," "From Darkness to Dawn," "Manmade Gods,"
"How Time Molds Civilization," "Harmony," and "To All Mankind." The actual filming of the
images was carried out by Philippe Agostini, a celebrated filmmaker who further enhanced the
visual potency of the PoŠme with his techniques of quick montage, innovative framing
methods, and rotation, reflection and movement of the images. The color projections were
integrated into this grand scheme and were laid out in a sequence that would help dictate the
mood of each image or series of images. All visual media utilized Philips' latest projection
equipment. The final result was a highly original visual arts spectacular showcasing Philips
technology, but more importantly an artistic expression of Le Corbusier's vision of humanity,
laced with all its propaganda and personal biases (including images of Le Corbusier's designs
meant to suggest mankind's hope for the future).

The audio component of the Poème Electronique however, was completely devoid of the
influence of Le Corbusier. Varèse was given free reign in this respect, composing the music
sporadically from the time he accepted the commission in 1956 to when it was recorded in
late 1957, while the pavilion itself was nearly complete. The music was purposefully to have
no relationship to the visual components of the presentation, so that the entire ensemble
would not be one of coherence, but one of abstraction and juxtaposition. The eight-minute
composition consists of a combination of electronically generated sounds and "concrete"
sounds, or real-life sounds and noises that have been recorded. While to most ears the
"music" sounds like a lot of swirling and tapping noises with bizarre human voice sounds, it is
actually a carefully structured composition with a recurrence of themes leading to variations
and climaxes. But the music also had a spatial dimension, in that different sound sequences
were directed out of one of the hundreds of speakers that were mounted on the pavilion walls.
The effect was a sense of "moving music," where sounds would whisk across the space in a
manner that would enhance the rising and falling aspects of the composition itself. The music
was the final dimension in this showcase of Philips' technology, for it was all recorded using
the company's high-tech audio equipment, and projected from their sound reproduction
equipment and speakers. And although it had no direct relationship with the rest of the Poème
Electronique, Varèse's music was integral to the final ensemble because it presented a audio
component that was as equally modern and abstract as the architecture and images.

The combination of Xenakis' architecture, Le Corbusier's visual ensemble, and Varèse's

music provided a very memorable experience. Millions of people visited the Poème
Electronique, and all agreed that was new and different. The general public was for the most
part baffled by the bizarre images and sounds. Howard Taubman of the New York Times
called it "the strangest building at the fair," and remarked that "the sounds that accompany
these images are as bizarre as the building" (17). This attitude is generally representative of
the public response to the building. The response of critics specializing in art and architecture,
however, was extremely varied. A Swedish critic characterized the pavilion as "a deeply
fascinating realization of a dream which has tempted artists since...Wagner: the dream of the
total work of art" (Romare 175). Although this view is typical of the pavilion's supporters, its
detractors often focused on specifics rather than the ensemble in its entirety. The architecture
in particular was harshly criticized for its awkwardness and uncomfortable ambiguity between
structural rationality and free-form expressiveness. Italian architect Ernesto Rogers thought
that "where the result should have been a fluid sequence of convexities and concavities...,
there are disturbing elements for reinforcing....It is not a fulfilled architecture, it is not a clear
composition; it is only the indication of new architectonic dimensions" (4). Rigid tectonics and
smooth, curving surfaces tended to cancel each other out. Varèse's score would exercise the
most lasting influence of any aspect of the Philips Pavilion. While not enthusiastically received
by the public, it influenced an entire generation of avant-garde composers with its use of
electronic music, including the American John Cage and the German Karlheinz Stockhausen.
In the end, the area afforded least attention and recognition by the Philips corporation
became the most memorable part of their exhibit. The Philips Pavilion is mentioned only
briefly when discussing the career of Le Corbusier, as a footnote to an already distinguished
career. But the Poème Electronique by Edgard Varèse was one of his greatest
accomplishments.

The Philips Pavilion was demolished on January 30, 1959. Like most world's fair buildings, it
was a temporary structure never meant to remain standing beyond the duration of the fair. But
because it was demolished, the work of art is lost forever. We can see pictures like these,
look at Le Corbusier's images, even listen to Varèse's score, but the complete ensemble
integrated into a single space surrounding and moving around the visitor is something that
can never be recreated. Therefore, the Philips Pavilion and its Poème Electronique remain an
artistic achievement that have left their mark on precisely eight minutes of history.

~Aaron Zephir

POSTED BY INDUSTRIAL::MUSIC::LIBRARY AT 8:27 PM 0 COMMENTS LINKS TO

THIS POST

LABELS: 1958, BELGIUM, BRUSSELS, EDGARD VARÈSE, IANNIS XENAKIS, KARLHEINZ

STOCKHAUSEN, LE CORBUSIER, PHILLIPS PAVILION, POÈME ELECTRONIQUE

Documents:
http://pastiche.info/documents/philipspavilion58/index.html#
Live Program Notes Presented at the Concert:

http://www.music.columbia.edu/masterpieces/notes/varese/notes.html

Poème Électronique is unique among the pieces you are about to hear tonight in that it was composed to be

a part of a multi-media work of the same title. This spectacle of film, light, and sound was created for the

Brussels's World's Fair of 1958, taking place in the Philips Pavilion (images 1-2, at right). The project was

conceived by architect Le Corbusier, here shown in front of the Pavilion with Varèse and Philips director Louis

Kalff (image 3). The pavilion was designed primarily by Iannis Xenakis, whose work Bohor will close this

evening's concert.

The technology available to Varèse at the time he created Poème Électronique was out of reach for most of

his life (image 4), forcing him to realize his unique vision through conventional instruments. When early

electronic instruments became available, Varèse was quick to use it towards his goal of "organized sound."

These works from the twenties and thirties often anticipated methodologies and aesthetics that would be

idiomatic to tape music, when the latter's arrival was still three decades away. The excerpts you will hear

now illustrate a typical Varèse-ian gesture--an accumulation of single tones ending with a great crescendo--

taken first from 1925's Intégrales, followed by a similar fragment from Poème Électronique. Though by no

means identical, the two heard side by side illustrates Varèse's consistency across different media and how

truly ahead of their time his early pieces were.

The version of Poème Électronique that you will hear shortly is the original three-channel version created at

the Philips Lab in Eindhoven (image 5).

When performed at the Philips Pavilion, the work was spatialized through four hundred speakers and an

elaborate switching mechanism, an environment that is unfortunately gone with the destruction of the

pavilion in 1959. Despite this compromise, Poème Électronique as it exists today still stands as one of the

early masterpieces of electronic music. It is also the realization of a life-long pursuit for Varèse, who was

already 75 when the work was completed.