The interaction of text and sound in electroacoustic version Pour la Paix by I. Xenakis

This article represents an analysis of the tape version “Pour la Paix” by I. Xenakis. This work contains three components: UPIC computer sounds, ten pieces for mixed choir and dramatic reciting. Reciting consists of alternating texts of two childhood friends and scattered scenes of war. This narrative is unfolding up to 769″, when friends begin to move to the meeting place— ​place of their death. Сomputer sounds emphasize this separation. In the first part most of the sounds are sharp and brief. In the second part, they are continuous and serve as background for the text. I argue that all the UPIC's sounds sonograms correlate to the text. As a result eight main types of sounds are found. These sounds can be described as 1) tone with certain pitch 2) certain tone with noise's grace-notes 3) sounds of aliquant harmonics surrounded by glissando noise 4) rhythmical glissando of nonmultiple frequencies in a small diapason 5) “mirror” 6) noise 7) sudden glissando notmultiple frequencies in a wide range and different speeds counterpoint noise 8) “spreaded” sinusoids. These sounds form two general types: the War sounds and the Peace sounds which converge at the end. Choirs are independent of text and UPIC's sounds and express only images of death. Thus all three components of the compositions have their own line of development. Their relation to each other is different: most abstract sound goes to chorus, semantically rich sound of UPIC becomes direct source of the story.