Volume 10 Issue 4 - December 2004

COMPOSER TO Composer
Ajier a 1111111ber of years
away, composer James Harlev
has retumed 10 Canada
10 teach at the University of
G11elph. He brings with him
a wealth of experience and
in1eres1, including m(lny engaging
pieces, and a .1ew
book 011 the music of lannis
Xe11akis (Row/edge -
www.rowledge-ny.com).
His piece Ponrai1. for solo
jlwe. can be heard 011 December
Jrd at the River Run
Centre, Guelph, and his music
is also featured on a February
Jrd Noon Concert Series
James Harley
evem aJ the School of Fine Art a11d
Mmic, Guelp/1. At the latter concert.
listeners will hear Voyage,
Chaotika, and the 8-chaimel audio
a11d video version of his recem
piece Wild Fmits.
STEENHUlSEN: Your book
Xenakis: His Life in Music was published
in J1111e 2004. W1ry did you feel
it was necessary to add w the body
ofwoi* 011 this imporuuu composer?
HARLEY: I didn'1think 1here
was a grea1 deal of work about
him. There are cenainly some
wriuen publications by him, but he
barely talks about his music in specific
terms. and he pretcy much
gave up 1alking abou1 ii a1 all af1er
1969. There also wasn't anything
out there that gave you a chronological
overview of what he'd
dont: from start to end - a guided
tour through his music and some
reforence to the ideas and techniques.
It came ou1 of waming to
understand more of his music be1-
1er. panicularly as a 101 of his
work 1s never performed in Nonh
America.
STEENH
l'ffRRVlEWED BY PAUL STEEMIUlSEN
ISEN: W11y do you
think it's rarelv played here?
HARLEY:
Tha1's a good question,
because anybody who's
heard his orchestral music live
knows that il's incredible music,
and somt: of 11 is not ou1 of the
realm of being pt;rformable in the
usual amount of available rehearsal
umc. Xt:nak1s' music isn'1 really
on 1hc radar in Nonh America in
the \amt: way 1ha1 other European
compoSt:r arc, like Magnus Lindberl!.
or Harrison Binwis1le. The
nun;bcr of Nonh Amt:rican orchestral
performances of Xenakis'
music in the past fifty years could
probably be coumed on your digits.
It's a shame, because we have
good orchestras over here.
STEENHU1SEN: Did you cons11/J
directly with him for your book?
HARLEY: At times, yes, bu1
he's never been really imerested in
talking abou1 his music, although
there was the Conversations with
lannis Xenakis with Andras Balim
Varga (Faber, 1996). In the period
that I knew him, he was really
more interested in wha1 he was doing
righ1 then, and less imeres1ed
in dredging up details from decades
earlier. He was most helpful
gathering the materials though. It
is no small task tracking down all
those recordings and scores. He
also let me make copies of sketch
ma1erials. But to go in and say
"Whal did you do in bar six in tha1
piece from 1962?" was not something
you could do with him at all.
When I was working on the book,
he was preuy much at the end of
his abili1y to be communicative.
The las1 lime I remember having a
long conversaiion with him was with
his wite, Francoise, in 1996. II was
easier for him 10 remember things
when she was there to help him.
STEENHUlSEN: Why wasn't lie
imerested in discussing //is older
pieces?
HARLEY: Well. he wanted 10
look forward. He wasn'1 interested
in dealing with things he'd already
done. I remember going
down 10 Pi1LSburgh in 1996 10 hear
one of his rare orches1ral performances.
Somebody was imerviewing
him onstage beforehand, and
he literally wanted 10 talk abou1 the
piece he had jus1 written thac
hadn't yet been performed. Something
new he was enthusiastic
abou1. Bui 1he imerviewer kepi
trying 10 take him back to srudying
with Milhaud in 1949, e1c. It was
such a shame. because he so rarely
talked publicly abou1 what he was
doing.
STEENHUTSEN:
You heard a
performance of Dammerschein
there?
HARLEY: Yes. It was grea1 to
hear live. The music really
doesn't come across the same way
in the recording a1 all. It was incredibly
imense, with iLS 40-note
clus1ers and so fonh. There's
nothing really shocking about any
of i1, bu1 when you hear i1 acous1ically,
the volume of sound and rhe
way it 1ravels around the orches1ra
is much more spatial and threedimensional.
STEENH UISEN: I wish someone
in this cowury would perfonn it.
HARLEY: Exactly. Orchestras
in Canada tend to do their obligatory
amoum of Canadian music,
bu1 rarely anything else. When an
orches1ral score you or I write is
performed, it's always in a contex1
of dead European music.
STEENHUTSEN: Tell me abow
Xenakis' UPIC system, and what
it's like lO work with.
HARLEY: II was a computer for
creating sound, where the interface
was a large electromagnetic drawing
board and an electromagnetic
pen. You designed your notes and
your 1imbral waveforms. There
was a little 1echnique to i1, but no
programming. In the mid-eighties,
tha1 was a unique way of
working. It wasn't a good system
for doing traditional music. A 1radi1ional
no1e was represented by a
horizontal graphic line, but you
could also draw lines chat weren't
horizontal, and the computer
would 1ransla1e your design onto
wha1ever frequency map you se1
up. For Xenakis, who was into
glissandi, he could just draw them
and they would be realized by the
compu1er. I did 1wo pieces there -
Voyage (tape), and Per Forame11
Acus Transire (Oute and tape). II
was a real luxury, because I had
open access to 1he machine. The
UPIC is really easy to use, bu1 ii
takes a long 1ime 10 do some1hmg
tha1 doesn't sound like everybody
else's UPIC music. I learned a lot
1here. Some of the ideas in my
acous1ic music tied into it as well.
I was trying 10 graphically control
1ex1urt:s tha1 were generated using
serial procedures. h overlapped
wi1h the idea of designing textures
graphically.
STEENHUISEN: Wha1 role does
chaos and chaos 1heory play i11
your music?
HARLEY: II came ou1 of those
years in Paris immersing myself in
Xenakis' whole approach to music.
I was working through prototypically
algorithmic compositional
procedures, but I wasn't programming
any computers. I was involved
wi1h serial procedures and
sieve 1echniques, and then read an
anicle abou1 "srrange aurac1ors -
non-linear chaotic functions. II
wasn'1 in reference 10 music. but I
wondered abou1 how it might apply.
I managed to get my li1tle
programmable calcula1or to run
ont: of 1hcse reiterative chao1ic
func1ions. It just produced numbers,
but when I looked a1 it, I realized
that the kind of repeti1ion
and varia1ion of numerical pauerns
seemed similar 10 musical patterns
ofrcpe1ition and variation. You'd
get a series of numbers, a pauem
coming back, but one of the numbers
was different, or one was
added on, 1hen it would be like the
original again, and so fonh.
I thought abou1 how it could be
applied to music, and I quickly realizt:d
that ii could be useful 10 ge1
it off 1he calculator and omo a
computer, where you could have a
printou1. Al that time I was living
in Warsaw, and I worked on the
procedure with a composer friend
of mine. We generated some values
tha1 I yould work with and apply
10 a composilional procedure.
I then moved co Momreal and
worked on it more imensively al
McGill, developing composi1ional
algorithms using a chaotic genera-
1or as 1he basis, and then figuring
ou1 ways to map those values in
ways 1hat would be useful to me as
a composer.
STEENHUISEN: What is an example
of a piece in which you employed
a process like 1hat?
HARLEY: Piano (1989) is one of
my first pieces to be written using
a chao1ic algorithm. For each section
of the piece. a fixed set of
pi1ches is determined in advance;
lhe algori1hm draws upon that se1
10 create an ordering, and another
procedure de1ermines the 1emporal
organization of this succession of
pi1chcs. On another level, the algori1hm
was also used to determine
1he 1empo of the section and
1he resolution of the 1emporal grid
(for example, eighth notes ).
There's more to it, but in this
case. the unfolding of a quite re­
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