Iannis Xenakis
Pléïades

Do you know what a sixxen is? It is a gadget that Mr. Iannis Xenakis invented one day to add to the arsenal of percussion instruments he had gathered for his piece "Pléïades," written in 1979. Some have said that percussions in the 20th century had the same importance as the piano in the 19th century and even earlier the violin in the 18th century: and Xenakis provides us with further demonstration with this long piece (44 minutes) for percussion instruments only, played by six performers.

The piece is divided into four parts and can start from any of them, chosen by the musicians. The parts are titled "Metals," "Keys," "Skins," and "Mixtures," and the first three refer to the families of instruments used in each part, while the last one includes sounds from all three sub-groups.

Let’s get back to the sixxen, then: belonging to the metal family are these strange instruments that Xenakis had made and named using some syllables from his surname, tuning them on 19 unequal pitches that include quarter tones, third tones, and their multiples. The keys family comprises tuned percussion instruments, such as vibraphones, marimbas, and xylophones. The skins family consists of membranophones, thus all the various drums, congas, tom-toms, and so on. Xenakis uses these to create the polyrhythm that characterizes "Pléïades": a piece built on the idea of «periodicity, repetition, duplication, recurrence, copy,» to quote the composer.

Indeed, when listening to the piece, one gets the impression that the sounds are organized in clusters, according to dense agglomerates that live by their own internal logic. Forget about the 4/4 rhythm, you won’t find it here. Instead, you will find «clouds, nebulas, pulverized galaxies of beats organized by rhythm»: the Pleiades of the Greek-French composer.

Thus, the listener becomes a lucky victim of this sound maelstrom, dragged «as if towards an inevitable catastrophe or a twisted universe». Xenakis's words are always fascinating: just like the percussion instruments, exalted by the 20th century but accompanying man since the dawn of time. And, listening to this music, we might perhaps grasp some remote resonance.