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Noise, Dissonance and the Twentieth-Century Spiritual Crisis: Synchresis in Chion's Requiem

Michel Chion’s Requiem (1973) exhibits an iconoclastic use of traditional religious texts. The second half of the twentieth century had inaugurated a time of radical cultural change; a crisis of faith existed, as changes in religious thought occurred too fast for new forms of expression to develop. Old rituals and categories were no longer adequate to describe the human experience, yet there continued to be a need for religious expression. A parallel crisis was developing in music, as classical music became enshrined in old forms. Composers, recognizing the inadequacy of old models of expression for contemporary spiritual and musical needs, sometimes placed religious themes and texts into new contexts, resulting in a mingling of the sacred and the profane which may appear to be shocking or even blasphemous. This paper is a part of a larger study of such works from the 1960s and 70s, examining how this blending of contexts might be interpreted. It examines how Chion uses noise as symbol, and how he creates dissonance through ironic juxtaposition of text, material and sonic treatment relying on synchresis to forge meaning.