Concret PH (1958) is a musique concrète piece by

Iannis Xenakis Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde c ...

, originally created for the

Philips Pavilion The Philips Pavilion was a World's Fair pavilion designed for Expo '58 in Brussels by the office of Le Corbusier. Commissioned by electronics manufacturer Philips, the pavilion was designed to house a multimedia spectacle that celebrated postwar ...

(designed by Xenakis as Le Corbusier's assistant) at the Expo 58 and heard as audiences entered and exited the building (PH = '' paraboloïdes hyperboliques'', ''concret'' = reinforced concrete/musique concrète). Edgard Varèse's ''

Poème électronique ''Poème électronique'' (English Translation: "Electronic Poem") is an 8-minute piece of electronic music by composer Edgard Varèse, written for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. The Philips corporation commissioned L ...

'' was played once they were inside the building. At 2 1/2 minutes long and focused primarily on density, "Concret PH" was created in the Philips office in Paris (Varèse having exclusive access to the studio with spatialization capabilities established at the Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven) or at the

Groupe de Recherches Musicales A group is a military unit or a military formation that is most often associated with military aviation. Air and aviation groups The terms group and wing differ significantly from one country to another, as well as between different branches ...

. The only sound source is burning charcoal, cut into one-second fragments, Roads, Curtis (2004). ''Microsound'', p. 64–65. . with numerous transpositions and

overdub Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more av ...

s, a

granular Granularity (also called graininess), the condition of existing in granules or grains, refers to the extent to which a material or system is composed of distinguishable pieces. It can either refer to the extent to which a larger entity is subd ...

texture from which Xenakis creates a continuum. Using slight manipulation, the main techniques were splicing, tape speed change, and mixing. The piece was composed intuitively, rather than being guided by mathematical processes. In the Philips Pavilion, it was projected over 425 loudspeakers through an 11-channel sound system. Xenakis described the effect as "lines of sound moving in complex paths from point to point in space, like needles darting from everywhere."Rowell, Lewis (1985). ''Thinking About Music: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Music'', p. 241. .

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