Éliane Radigue, OCCAM XXVI, performed by Enrico Malatesta at the Cambridge Foundry

Presented by Non-Event
December 1, 2023

Éliane Radigue (b. 1932) is a pioneering French composer of undulating continuous music marked by patient, virtually imperceptible transformations that purposefully unfold to reveal the intangible, radiant contents of minimal sound — its partials, harmonics, subharmonics and inherent distortions. As a student of, and assistant to musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry in the 1950s and 1960s, Radigue mastered tape splicing techniques, but preferred the creation of fluid, delicately balanced feedback works to the spasmodic dissonance of her teachers’ music. Finding peers among minimalist composers in America, Radigue began working with synthesis in 1970, eventually discovering the ARP 2500 synthesizer, which she would use exclusively for her celebrated electronic works to come. In 2004 she abandoned electronics for acoustic composition.

Occam Ocean is an ongoing series of solo and ensemble pieces composed by Radigue for individual instrumentalists in which each performer's personal performance technique and particular relationship to their instrument function as the compositional material of the piece. The “knights of the Occam,” as Radigue refers to the performers participating in the project, are therefore musicians who have developed individualistic, creative approaches to their instruments; and the resulting compositions are not transferable to other performers on that instrument. Citing the ocean as a calming antidote to the overwhelming nature of our vibratory wave-filled surroundings, Radigue has named the tributary components of her Occam series with the image of fluid water in mind. Solo pieces are Occams, duo pieces Rivers, and larger ensemble pieces Deltas.

Enrico Malatesta is the only performer of Radigue’s piece for solo percussion, the spectrally wild Occam XXVI for bowed cymbals. Although one of the last of Radigue’s chevaliers, as she calls those who have collaborated on her solo music, Enrico has been one of the most fervent and in-demand performers of her music, collaborating with Nate Wooley and others on larger pieces in Europe during celebrations of Radigue’s ninetieth birthday year.