Vlaams Radiokoor: Xenakis & Scelsi

For Serment, based on the Hippocratic Oath, Xenakis weaves a vivid tapestry of refined vocal textures: solo voices, shifting sonic blocks, and broad repetitive gestures form the framework of a work that is austere, yet remarkably powerful and direct. Nuits is Xenakis in his purest form.

Drawing on his long nights as a political prisoner—filled with the harsh cries of guards and the screams of tortured companions—he strips vocal music of every familiar shape of language. Nuits is not a narrative, but an intense exploration of sound: darkness, fear, and the raw power of the human voice, rooted in Xenakis’s personal history and his mathematical vision. 

The music of the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi was first performed live—and thus truly discovered—only in the late 1980s, shortly before his death. Convinced that each listener would perceive the same note differently depending on their position and distance from an instrument, Scelsi considered performances unnecessary.

In Yliam, Scelsi applies his characteristic focus on a single pitch or sonic core to a vocal mass. The work becomes a living sound sculpture, constantly breathing and transforming. His earlier Tre Canti Sacri already explores this  technique. Nourished by religious and transcendental themes, it is an acoustic meditation in which the human voice becomes a medium of sacred intensity.