Iannis Xenakis - Orient-Occident

Orient-Occident, film music for 2-track tape & 4 loudspeakers (1960) By 1960, Iannis Xenakis, who had worked as an architectural assistant to Le Corbusier for over a decade, was on his own, striking out as a professional composer. Through his association with the electronic music studio at Radio France known as Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), he was awarded a couple of commissions to produce soundtracks for documentary films. Orient-Occident, the only one to have seen life as a concert work and recording, was created for a film by Enrico Fulchignoni. The premise of the work was a portrayal of a whole range of ancient cultures, based on an exhibit of artifacts collected from throughout Europe and Asia. Interestingly, the director intentionally gave the composer complete freedom to create a soundtrack that would reflect the images and the intent of the film, but without needing to track the visual structure in any specific way. Xenakis drew upon a range of unusual sound sources, includi