Éliane Radigue: Trilogie de la Mort

About

Created between 1985 and 1993, Trilogie de la Mort is considered by many to be Éliane Radigue’s masterpiece. An extended sonic meditation on death informed by Radigue’s dedicated engagement with Tibetan Buddhism, the piece is made up of three hour-long ARP 2500 synthesizer compositions: Kyema, Kailasha, and Koumé. Kyema was inspired by the Bardo Thodol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead, with six sections reflecting the six bardos, or intermediate states of life and death which constitute the existential continuity of a being. Shortly after finishing the piece in 1988, Radigue learned of a tragic car accident which took the life of her son Yves. Two weeks later, she began work on Kailasha, named after the most sacred of the Tibetan mountains, Mount Kailash. Although an actual visit to the site, considered to be the center of the world in Tibetan cosmology, was beyond Radigue’s capacity, the piece functions both as a sonic pilgrimage and a memorial to her deceased son and was completed in 1991. A subsequent trip to Nepal for the cremation of her Tibetan master convinced Radigue of the transcendental aspect of death as part of a perpetual becoming, lending a heightened clarity to Koumé, which she finished in 1993, completing the trilogy. Trilogie de la Mort was premiered in November 1993 at the monastery at Cimiez in Nice where the sound from hidden loudspeakers seemed, according to minimalist composer Tom Johnson, to ooze out of the walls.

Trilogie de la Mort will be diffused using a newly produced reel-to-reel tape edition made from the original master, one of a series produced by Blank Forms in collaboration with Radigue for the high quality presentation of her work.