Jonchaies, for 109 musicians
Iannis Xenakis has penned a large number of orchestral works over the forty-some years of his output. Jonchaies, written in 1977 at about the halfway point of his career, is not the longest of them, but is notable for being scored for the largest ensemble, calling for well over one hundred musicians. This piece was premiered as the highpoint of a month-long festival of Xenakis's music in Paris in December of that same year. What is especially notable about this piece is the range of expression the composer presents. The long opening, for strings alone, punctuated by occasional percussion, unfolds a remarkable six-part canon, with the different voices peeling off from the unison line that begins the piece. What is more apparent than this contrapuntal technique, however, is the evocative flavor of Indonesia, heard in the quasi-pentatonic scale and in the doubling of bowed notes with plucked and sliding sounds.
This colorful, harmonious texture was quite new to the music of Xenakis, and caused quite a sensation. There followed, though, sections of more typical, uncompromisingly modern textures, including pulsing rhythmic articulations involving in the entire orchestra, wild keenings of the large brass section, sculptural passages of sliding string sounds, and so forth. The lyricism and exotic magic of the opening is set off even more sharply by these rather violent passages that follow. Jonchaies ends, some fifteen minutes later, with high piccolo cries, in almost direct imitation of the end of La Légende d'Eer, the electroacoustic work Xenakis completed just prior to the orchestral score. This is a fascinating, powerful orchestral score. ~ James Harley, All Music Guide
