Eliane Radigue: Spiritual Resonance

St Stephen Walbrook

I’ve been spending a surprising amount of time lately sitting in churches, in a praying position. Not the result of a sudden calling to mend my agnostic ways, but for a series of concerts dedicated to the music of the little-known pioneering French composer Eliane Radigue.

Aged 80 this year, Eliane is enjoying her first major retrospective in the UK thanks to the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin organisation Sound and Music. It began last week with an evening of instrumental works at Christ Church Spitalfields, the second of which was last night, and continues through her on-going electronic compositions at St Stephens Walbrook. Having been to three of the six concerts to date, I now feel like I have enough of a grasp of her music to write about it.

First though, some background. After working as an assistant to the pioneers of musique concrète Eliane began composing music with tape loops and feedback during the 1960s. She was later introduced to synthesisers, to which she took and initial dislike, before discovering an affinity with ‘a tiny field of sound’ that interested her on an ARP500. As she explains in her recent Guardian interview “I just dug under its skin” and continued to do so, for many years.

Eliane Radigue

I attended one of the playbacks of these classic works at St Stephen Walbrook last week. Eliane’s music, extremely minimal and delicate, displays all the signs of someone that’s been playing with tape loops.  It repeats notes in gentle oscillations with slight and gradual shifts in tone and the occasional bright harmonic, often accompanied by feedback, hum or crackle. It’s hypnotic in its ebb and flow and you soon find yourself absorbed, eyes closed and head down. The position of Henry Moore’s magnificent circular altar of travertine marble under the centre of the dome lends to sitting in the round, so when you open your eyes in the spaces left by softer sounds, you realise that you’re sitting in a room full of others also entranced, reflecting, absorbed. As if praying. You leave with a heighten sense of the world outside.

In recent years Eliane has stepped away from the synth to focus on un-scored collaborations with a select group of instrumentalists, and it’s these that have been showcased at Christ Church as part of Spitalfields Summer Music Festival. Last week I saw the Lappetites perform Elemental II and the world premiere of Occam I, a piece for solo harp played by Rhodri Davies. The former was very close to her synth work, although perhaps with more texture.  In the latter, Davis uses the sawing motion of a bow to create buzzing pulses offset by occasional and increasing harmonic plucks. Sadly I missed the translation of Elemental II for bass guitar that followed, which I’m told resonated through the bodies of those present.

It’s in last night’s Naldjorlak trilogy that Eliane’s instrumental work seems best described though. Pt.I played by cellist Charles Curtis has similarities with the bowing of Occam I – a slow, oscillating sawing, like a chair being scrapped around your head, although altogether more brooding. Offset by harmonics and the scraping of the bow, it’s almost like feedback on an electric guitar. The work rises in pitch, imperceptibly at first, and by the end Curtis is playing the hyper taught string-not-to-be-played below the bridge, creating a sound not unlike the echo of braking and screeching traffic or electric trains, at once both gentle and piercing. It blends with the traffic noise of engines and sirens on Commercial Road outside and by its end you feel a weight lift.

Eliane Radigue, Bruno Martinez, Charles Curtis, Carol Robinson

Pt. II sees a tone we’ve not yet heard, that of Carol Robinson and Bruno Martinez’s basset horns. Edging gently into our perception like all of Eliane’s work the notes come through with increasing force.  Sitting opposite each other, the push and pull of their alternate circular breathing begins reminiscent of a didgeridoo, but morphs into pulses of a spaceship force field or slow motion lightsabre. Towards the latter half it tails off to the sound of fingers on the rims of glass or the warm evening sun spilling through lead lined windows into the whitewash ceiling of Christ Church. I’m reminded of yoga sound bath meditation, before the piece tails off into a quiet aesthetic that seems to prefigure early 90s ambient goa music. While the meditative influence of Eliane’s Buddhist faith is apparent throughout her music, this is one of the few places it seems to reflect any existing traditions.

Pt. III combines its preceding parts to great effect in a way that I’ll leave to your imagination rather than fail to describe. A long meditative silence followed the last note before the eventual rapturous applause. I’m told that Naldjorlak is due to be recorded in Paris soon, but if you want to catch Eliane’s electronic works in London they’re at St Stephen’s Walbrook until Saturday 26 June. I also recommend visiting her installation works played through Sonic Beds designed by Lappetite Kaffe Matthews in Waterman’s, Brentford and the Rich Mix, Shoreditch. They’re like an aural sonic body massage.

For tickets and info visit: www.soundandmusic.com