Syv cirkler

‘It was all about circles’

By Jonas Olesen

Syv cirkler (Circles of Sevenths) (1958), despite its relatively short duration of just under 7 minutes, is often regarded as Else Marie Pade’s electronic main work, still appearing modern and visionary to this day. The work was composed in collaboration with the DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) technician Sven Drehn-Knudsen, shortly after they had completed the ambitious musique concrète work, Symphonie magnétophonique.

Inspired by their visit to the 1958 World’s Fair, Expo 58 in Brussels, Pade and Drehn-Knudsen crafted Syv cirkler. At the exhibition, alongside their DR colleagues, they immersed themselves in the latest musical developments while scouting music for an upcoming Danish radio series on electronic music titled Music in the Atomic Age. In Brussels, Pade encountered her two major musical influences, composers Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and witnessed performances and lectures by luminaries like John Cage, Luciano Berio and Henk Badings. Pade described the overwhelming sensory experience as follows:

‘Inside the exhibition, I simply had the shock of my life! The entire, enormous World’s Fair was filled with experiments. Everyone was experimenting with everything.’

Pade and her colleagues also experienced the Philips company’s specially designed pavilion, which later gained significance as an extremely important landmark in the history of electronic music. Designed by architects Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis, the pavilion featured a distinctive construction made up of a series of ‘hyperbolic paraboloids’, resulting in an incredibly futuristic look. Upon entering the pavilion, visitors were treated to an awe-inspiring multimedia performance centered around Poème électronique by Edgar Varèse, composed specifically for the pavilion. As a form of ‘intermission music’ for those entering and exiting the pavilion, Xenakis’ Concret PH played through an impressive array of 425 loudspeakers.

However, it was another spatial installation at the exhibition that directly inspired Pade’s Syv cirkler, namely the Vortex show by the American composer Henry Jacobs, which was presented in a planetarium. Here, artificial stars adorned a dome while electronic music filled the space through a multi-channel system. Pade would later reminisce:

‘You could easily keep the stars apart, just like when you look at them in the real sky. They all looked the same, but they didn’t clump together. They maintained their distance due to the acoustic placements of the speakers ... it kept going around in my head, and it dawned on me that it was all about circles. This is how the concept of delineating the seven spheres by assigning distinctive timbres and velocities to each of them was born.’

Upon returning to Denmark, Pade resolved that her next composition ‘should have an astral quality’, and she, along with Drehn-Knudsen, promptly embarked on the composition of Syv cirkler. In her subsequent reflections, Pade mentioned the work as a direct commission from Jacobs for a Vortex installation in San Francisco. However, it’s probable that the inspiration for the piece preceded the commission. Regrettably, there is no available information regarding whether the composition was performed in the American Vortex installation.

Syv cirkler follows a serial structure, with a sequence of seven tones explored, repeated in transposed variations, and continuously interwoven with new sequences. The piece’s circular essence is clearly discernible through a pulsating and recurrent rhythm, distinguishing it from the typically more rhythmically abstract electronic music of its era.

Syv cirklercan be characterised as being much more melodically driven than Pade’s later electronic works, where tonal elements often appear more fragmented. The musical expression is marked by a cool atmosphere, where the circulating sequences of tones create an almost hypnotic effect. Originally, the plan was for the ‘circles’ to move in stereo, but technical limitations kept it in mono.

Jonas Olesen is an electronic composer, sound artist and writer. The program text was previously published in a longer version in connection with EMP 4.
 

© Dybfølt

Circles of Sevenths Reimagined

By Dybfølt

Syv cirkler by Else Marie Pade stands as one of her earliest electronic works, characterised by a simple yet sophisticated structure: a sequence of seven tones is repeated, with each layer added at double speed, building up to seven layers – seven ‘circles,’ so to speak. This structure develops from whole notes to 64th notes, with the tape recorder’s speed intensifying until the piece mirrors itself and gradually winds back down. It is well documented that Pade never saw tonal and atonal music as opposites – she could appreciate both Chopin and Schoenberg without taking sides. Her lucky numbers, 7 and 12, are said to symbolise this balance: the seven notes of a major scale and the twelve notes of the chromatic scale. Given this background, a question arises: why did Syv cirkler become atonal when the number seven also symbolises tonality? What if the tone sequence was instead based on a major scale? This creates a simple, harp-like ostinato that oscillates between C and F major – an ideal fit for cello and double bass.

With this in mind, we have created two versions of Syv cirkler. One is a version faithful to the original score, using overdubs to replace the tone generators with cello and bass, aiming to recreate Pade’s dynamic fades through mixing. The other is a remix, where the tone sequence is based on a major scale instead of a chromatic one, with the ‘circles’ gradually shifting in real-time. This allows the piece to be performed live without overdubs.