Occam XXV sustains a single organ drone for nearly 45 minutes, tracing a long, gradual arc of fluttering harmonics and microtonal pulses, sounding as alien as the French composer’s synthesizer work.
“We live in a universe filled with waves” says Éliane Radigue, the revered French composer. “Not only between the Earth and the Sun but all the way down to the tiniest microwaves, and inside… is the minuscule band that our ears turn into sound. We… come into contact with [them] physically, mentally and spiritually.”
She should know. An early apprenticeship in the mid-1950s with composers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry led to her induction into their nascent Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète, an organization deeply invested in the role of sound in everyday life. But Radigue soon went her own way. Throughout the 1960s, she began to experiment with extended feedback drones and microtunings, to the disapproval of her former mentors. An encounter with the ARP 2500—the customizable modular synthesizer whose stable tuning and rich timbral possibilities set it apart from the competition at Moog—set her on a path that would continue for the next 25 years, exploring the potential the instrument afforded to sculpt sound.
Radigue released only a handful of LPs in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, but a younger generation began championing her works around the turn of the millennium. The three-plus-hour Adnos I, II y III, composed at Mills College in the early 1980s and considered one of her landmark works, didn’t hit shelves until Table of the Elements put it out in 2002. Since then, her catalog has grown by a degree or two. This slow build matches the unwavering patience of her music; today, Radigue is hailed as a landmark artist whose pieces set a high-water mark for the evocative and sensual potential of drones. To engage with her work requires close engagement with what her contemporary Pauline Oliveros termed “deep listening.” Her music is dynamically flat but endlessly supple, and one submits to the gentle force of the oscillations and the mesmerizing undulations of waves within waves.
If Radigue had stuck with the ARP, she could have enjoyed a much-deserved victory lap in the 2000s as a synth pioneer. Instead, as the world caught up with her vast archive, she made a hard pivot to composing for acoustic instruments, from solo harp to full orchestra. The Occam series is a body of work made in close collaboration with select players—her “knights of the Occam.” Just as Radigue doubled down on the ARP for a quarter century, these musicians’ technical input and ongoing relationship with the composer mean the pieces are theirs alone to play. Named after the 14th century Franciscan friar William of Ockham, whose rule of simplicity is today known as Occam’s Razor, the series prizes reduction and clarity. What can be illuminating when encountering these works is how alien the traditional instruments can sound. Radigue strips away the classical signifiers of expressiveness and musicality to tap into raw sound. Where her works for synthesizer never felt synth-y, her works for soloists, ensembles, and orchestras could convincingly stand in for her beloved ARP.
Occam XXV was commissioned by Organ Reframed, the festival founded and curated by Claire M. Singer devoted exclusively to organ works. Performed by Frédéric Blondy, Occam XXV is quintessential Radigue, with a single long drone gradually accumulating mass before it falls away, bit by bit, into silence. Clocking in at a sprightly 44:30, it’s manageable enough that a more casual listener can take it out for a spin without feeling overburdened.
Radigue never rushes—one of the most common descriptions of her music is that its changes come so slowly they are imperceptible in the moment, and only registered in hindsight. Occam XXV doesn’t quite get there; across the span of the piece, it’s easy to track the development from elemental sub frequencies through a magisterial, full-spectrum sound to the thin, ethereal outro. This is an asset. The joy of the music is hearing this gradual arc unfold and basking in the richly entwined moments along the way.
A major component of the sound is the psychoacoustic beating that results from Radigue and Blondy’s careful mixing of frequencies. Tones flutter and vibrate, shimmering with a gentle vibrato that comes from layering slightly detuned adjacent pitches. It’s a sound familiar to us—we hear it when tuning a guitar, but also as airplane engines are readied on the tarmac, or in the glistening harmonics of a singing bowl. These pulsations retain a surprising gravity, focusing the ear and the mind. The shifting drones seem both utterly still and yet in constant motion. This dual nature gently facilitates a state of meditative stillness.
Such gentleness is one of the key qualities that makes Radigue’s music so timeless. Overlooked for the better part of her career, she committed fully to her esoteric practice and brokered zero compromises along the way. On the surface, her works can seem impenetrable and severe, lacking any hint of new-age warmth or ambient chill, despite her deep devotion to Tibetan Buddhism. Yet Occam XXV is a testament to the generosity at the heart of Radigue’s practice. The single drone that extends throughout could go twice as long—or more. It feels like breathing, sounds radiant, and leaves the attentive listener in a space of attuned grace.
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