The Unfinished Skeleton of an Avant-Garde’s Vision

Hanna Yanglou

There are twists of fate that shape the life of an individual and the history of society. Some are marvels of luck and chance, a lucky break for the tortured soul. Others are obstacles that force them to recreate themselves, to reshape their paths.

The event of the Anti-Nazi resistance in Europe brought Iannis Xenakis from Greece to Paris in 1947. He arrived with nothing but the clothes on his back. However, he came with a full bright mind, trained in engineering, architecture and mathematics. Despite having next to no training in music, he came with the determination to enter the musical circles of France. An avant-garde musician of his time, he broke through the limitations of the conventional chromatic scale, and brought in the infinite ranges of frequencies that exist in natural sound.

In 1983, Xenakis entered a competition for the design of a New National Music Conservatory in Paris’ Parc de la Villette. Teaming up with architect Jean-Luois Veret, he created a breathtaking vision called la Cité de la Musique. As both acoustician and architect, he planned the exterior and interior designs, which included his signature concrete hyperbole of pointed, inverted curvilinear designs on the outside as well as an innovative experimental auditorium on the inside.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t picked to design the Conservatory. Nonetheless, the complete plans of his proposal remain. Would this concert hall have been a success, a ‘’Jewel Box of Sounds’’, as he claimed?

Ultimately, this hypothetical City would be composed of two buildings. The first, restricted from the public, would be a three storey conservatory where teaching and research would be implemented. Designed in classical rectangular architecture style, it included however one interesting detail. Xenakis had plans to put undulating glass planes like the ones in La Tourette, a convent he designed with le Corbusier in 1954. In appearance, the building would have irregular intervals of windows, which would appear to be a frozen kind of musical movement.

Xenakis made detailed plans of the parking lots, reception, service center, storage space for musicians, maintenance space and a number of concert halls. A Craftsman’s Cité where instrument builders could gather and activities related to the profession would take place was also suggested.

Separated by a garden, the two buildings would connect the Conservatory and the Experimental Auditorium using a multifunctional artery, inclined on a slope and partially transparent.

The second building would be open to the public and would include an Instrument Gallery, located at metro level, underground, for curious passers-by.

The auditorium in the second building is the highlight of the City. Shaped as a quasi-void, asymmetrical oval, about 700 meters squared and 18 meters high, it was designed to prevent acoustic shadows, or dead noise spots. Its plastic walls, perforated with panels so that the sound would resonate, would bulge slightly. The panels could open to allow the sound to echo into a larger volume to allow different performances possibilities.

The shape of the Experimental Auditorium is remarkably similar to the Berlin Philharmonie (1956), by Hans Scharoun. Unlike traditional concert halls, Scharoun’s has a vineyard-like layout. It is an exception to the traditional shoebox-like halls. Most other geometric forms reflect sound poorly, but against all odds, the Philharmonie is an acoustic marvel. Both concert halls are asymmetrically oval shaped. Would the Cité de la Musique have been a success like that of the Philharmonie? ‘’You never know with acoustics,’’ Jane Moss, vice-president of the Lincoln Center in New York, said, referring to the newly built Alice Tully Hall, designed by diller scofidio + renfro.  Only when built can a concert hall be put to the test.

At the same time as Xenakis arrived in Paris, the American acoustician Russell Johnson, who designed the notable Birmingham Symphony Hall in the UK and Lucerne Concert Hall in Switzerland, began to change acoustics from a phony art and a failed science in the minds of most concert goers into a phenomenal success. Some of his techniques include hidden reverberation chambers that recreate cathedral-like effects and different materials such as removable draperies to absorb echoes. Johnson preferred parallel walls and high ceilings for lateral sound-reflection, like those found in the ancient music halls. Xenakis himself designed similar chambers that would allow for echo. The City’s walls would be made of plastic, but be specifically shaped for reverberance. Nonetheless, one wonders if the shape of the hall would really succeed in warmth and clarity of sound.

The Auditorium would be able to seat 800 people on ground level and 400 more on balcony level. Comparatively to other halls, it is a small amount, as most concerts venues are designed for around 2000 spectators. Johnson states that such number should the maximum limit for the capacity of a hall, so that the sound can reach all of the audience without losing quality.

Xenakis made remarkable floor designs with one meter square cube surfaces that could be raised or lowered eight meters in height.  This allowed the ‘’stage’’ to be configured in nearly limitless kinds of patterns, an ingenious design that would allow orchestras to break out of limiting traditional placements. Many of Xenakis’ works experiment with the placing of instruments, and the movement of spectators. One would imagine he would have wished the audience to be in continuous movement as the orchestra played, as shown from the spirals drawn by Xenakis in his image of an orchestra below.

In the end, the auditorium would have had a ramp of 3.25% elevation, which wrapped itself two and a half times around the structure. This allowed the audience and small groups of musicians to view and listen in points that encompassed nearly all of the Hall’s space. The freedom of movement would allow for a greater listening experience.

The rejection of la Cité de la Musique was a fatal blow to Xenakis’ future architectural pursuits. It was his first and last experiment with acoustic design. He later limited himself to musical and architectural choreography. It was an unfortunate twist of fate.

At one point in his life, Xenakis said to his son, “Do you realize that we’re meteorites; almost as soon as we’re born, we have to disappear?” And yet, though the meteor has faded into the darkness of space, the echoes of this multi-disciplinary composer still trail behind him today. The remnants of his painstakingly planned music hall sing of an incessant question. What if it had been chosen? If “architecture is frozen music,” as Goethe once said, what kind of structural rhapsody would this avant-garde musician have created?

One would have to build it to find out.