#18 Ascolta — Éliane Radigue

ascolta

  • Thursday, 02 April 2026, 18:00–19:00
  • Toni-Areal, Composition Studio 3.D02, Level 3
  • Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Zurich

Free admission

Éliane Radigue (24 January 1932 – 23 February 2026) was a renowned French composer.

Éliane Radigue with cat

Éliane Radigue was born in Paris. She studied electroacoustic music techniques at the Studio d’essai of the RTF under Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry (1957–58). After a longer period devoted largely to raising her three children, she worked as Pierre Henry’s assistant at Studio Apsome from 1967 to 1968. She was a guest artist at the School of the Arts at New York University (1970–71), the University of Iowa, the California Institute of the Arts, and Mills College in 1998. She regularly spent time in the United States and worked in her own studio in Paris.

In the late 1960s, Radigue created sound environments using endless tapes of different lengths that gradually slipped out of phase, producing potentially infinite cycles. These “combinatorial music pieces” were presented in galleries and museums. Since 1970, she explored this approach in numerous works, from Chry-ptus (1970) to La Danse des Dakinis (1998). These performances, marked by extreme austerity and an almost ascetic quality, consist of a continuous, ever-changing sonic flow of remarkable slowness, with transformation occurring within the sound mass itself.

Éliane Radigue passed away on 23 February 2026.
The #18 ascolta listening session on 02 April 2026 is therefore dedicated to her memory.

Programme

Éliane Radigue — The Resonant Island
Released on Shiiin (2005)

The Resonant Island was the first release on the label Shiiin, founded by Stéphane Roux and Patrick Richer, with journalist and historian Daniel Caux closely associated with the project. The work explores the essence of musical vibration.

Duration: 55 minutes

In continuity with Radigue’s earlier recordings, this piece immerses the listener in a peaceful, meditative, and hypnotic experiment. Demanding and uncompromising, it also reminds us of the importance of attentive listening. Radigue explores states of fullness, emptiness, and transparency, as in The Reflection of an Island in the Waters of a Lake.

Over the course of 55 minutes, the sound mass appears animated by wave effects: a permanent, progressive oscillation revolving almost imperceptibly around a series of breaks. These subtle, perhaps partly imagined nuances foster a peculiar sense of tactility and open spaces of extraordinary richness within high-frequency curves, ascending spirals, or deceptive appearances. After a few minutes of listening, ghostly melodies emerge: a choir, an opera with soloists, a church organ. The imagination is set in motion.

As Daniel Caux notes on the album sleeve, this sound sculpture was gradually composed in 2000 at the studios of the Centre de Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis (CCMIX) in Alfortville.