From Harmony to Chaos: Le Corbusier, Varèse, Xenakis and Le poème électronique

From Harmony to Chaos offers an entirely new reconstruction of Le poème électronique on the basis of an in-depth analysis of Le Corbusier's original scenario. The structure and genesis of the Poème are discussed against the background of the conceptual viewpoints of the three artists concerned. Pivotal in this discussion is Le Corbusier's notion of a synthèse des arts, in this case the synthesis of architecture, the visual arts, film, spoken word and music. For Varèse Le poème électronique represented the moment at the end of his career when he witnessed the realization of a number of his utopian ideas about spatial music. As for Xenakis, the experiment with spatial reproduction formed the basis of aspects of the music that he would go on to compose in the years that followed.