Edgard Varèse Poème électronique

Plan of the Philips Pavillons on the World Fair in Brussels 1958 The architecture of the pavilion, a concrete building in the form of a tent with three apices or intersecting cones, was determined by paraboloids and hyperboloids which had suggested themselves to Xenakis in a graphic interpretation of the glissandi of his orchestral work 'Metastaseis'. Visitors were admitted into the pavilion in batches and could then listen to the composition of Varèse for eight minutes. 425 loudspeakers had been installed on the inner sides of the tent together with 20 amplifiers to play the three channel tape composition. Now, finally, Varèse could realize his concept of spatial music as 'bodies of intelligent sounds moving in space freely'.

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© Rolf Langebartels, Berlin 2014