Gerard Pape (Paris, France)
With regard to Reinhold Friedl’s article that is a critique of both the new Salabert master tape as well as Mode’s 5.1/stereo version of Xenakis’ La Légende d’Eer that I participated in both as director of C.C.M.I.X. as well as interpreter of the tape, I would like to respond with a series of questions and remarks of my own.
Why does Friedl call it a "fault" that the test tones were left in ? (Here I mean in the new master tape that Salabert has published, not in the Mode recording, which does not include these tones.) If they were included on the master tape, Xenakis must have put them there for a reason. In any case, it was quite typical to include such tones for performance reasons at the time (1970s). Anyone that knows Xenakis’ music, even a little, wouldn’t make the mistake to think the test tones are part of his music.
Also, the "8th channel" on the analogue master tape was digitized knowing full well that it was a synchronization track for the visual part of the Diatope and not to be played as audio. This was not a fault, but a choice. We were curious to know what this track SOUNDED like, even if we knew it was originally only a synchronization track for the visual part. I would add that we did not do this transfer work of the analogue master for Salabert.
We were not preparing the music for publishing, but for a new recording/performance. Again, we did not include this visual synchronization track audio in our DVD/CD release.
When I left the CCMIX, Sharon Kanach asked me to give all tapes that I had and I shared with her the new transfers of Xenakis’ tape music.
She gave them, as is, to Salabert I would add. If Salabert doesn’t want the test tones or the 8th track to be given to those that rent the tape, it is easy enough for them to eliminate them ! This is the publisher’s job to decide what to publish.
I asked that the whole master tape be digitized at 96khz/24bit to preserve it AS IS so that then I could make the best possible recording/interpretation sonically speaking. Curiously, in Friedl’s article, he never mentions the difference in timbre, the new brilliance that is to be found in the Mode Recording.
The material that Diego Losa of the GRM, who did the transfer on their almost unique machine, provided us with was a straight 96khz, 24 bit transfer of the single 2 inch analog multi-channel master tape provided by RICORDI MILANO. There was no second reel to be transferred as Friedl proposes. When we mixed in New York, all was in the original 96khz version. Our original master used just that. There was no transfer to 48khz or to 44khz during the recording of my 5.1 performance. Only at the moment when the DVD and CD were mastered was the lower sampling rate of 44.1khz used to make the stereo version and that was made from the 5.1 version as a whole. Again, there were no "two reels" that we worked with.
So, the mystery remains why only the last 13 minutes should be longer and with a different pitch in our version as opposed to the Disques Montaigne version (as Friedl has discovered) ?
Is it not possible that the error is in the Disques Montaigne version due to an error in transferring from a 48 khz multi-channel digital master (in those days ADATs or DA88s were digitally mastered at that sampling rate) to a 44.1 khz CD stereo master ?
It is entirely possible that the ADAT or DA88 tapes used were 2 X 30 minutes and so, there, an error could occur if, in the stereo transfer, someone forgot to convert from 48 khz to 44.1 khz only for one "reel". This is a small enough error that it could have passed unnoticed, given that the "first reel" was correct. Maybe the difference in pitch and length are a consequence of an error in the Disques Montaigne version ? Why assume that it is the Mode version that is wrong ?
Only if you re-digitize the original master tape that is to be found in Milano in the archives of Ricordi can you know for sure whether the Mode version or the Disques Montaigne version is accurate as to the original analogue multi-channel master of "La Légende d’Eer".