Unexplainable – "Composing Chaos"

Vox Media Podcast Network – October 8, 2025
Host: Noam Hassenfeld
Featured Guest: Evan Ziporyn

Episode Overview

In "Composing Chaos," Unexplainable explores the mysterious allure and musical mechanics behind Terry Riley’s seminal composition, In C. Host Noam Hassenfeld dives deep into why this piece of music—often described as chaotic, unpredictable, and endlessly new—has captivated his imagination for years, influenced the show’s very theme song, and shaped generations of musicians. The episode unpacks how In C is composed to embody chaos, the philosophical questions it raises about order in art and life, and what it’s like to perform this ever-shifting sonic experiment.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Magnetic Pull of Obsession: Why We Fixate ([01:07]–[02:23])

• Obsession and Personal Taste: Noam and Mara riff on the inexplicable things we love, highlighting the difficulty of determining what’s genuinely ours versus algorithmically "served."

  • “Figuring out why we like it can be even harder. Kind of like a personal unexplainable.” —Noam ([01:59])

• Noam’s Musical Obsession: Introduces his favorite piece—In C by Terry Riley—as an ongoing personal mystery.

What is In C? The Anatomy of Controlled Chaos ([03:09]–[05:51])

• Origin Story: Noam details that In C was written in 1964 by Terry Riley and is famously flexible—each performance is radically different.
• Structure & Rules: Describes the 53 short musical patterns, which musicians can play in their own time, resulting in a collective performance that is "never the same twice."
• Variety of Interpretations:
  • Solo cello (Maya Beiser), vocal choir (Ars Nova Copenhagen), psychedelic rock, dance troupes, African-Western mixes, and even pop music (Baba O’Riley by The Who).
• Dynamic Recordings: "It’s just an idea that can be expressed in all kinds of different forms." —Noam ([08:22])

The Sound of Life: Music as Emergent Phenomenon ([08:44]–[11:44])

• How it Sounds: Persistent pulsing, accumulation and shifting of patterns, never a true drop or climax.

  • “It feels alive to me. It's a piece that feels like a bunch of little people talking to each other. They're all saying their own thing…It feels like you're watching some type of living thing happen just in music.” —Noam ([09:36])

• Personal and Universal Meaning: Tied to Noam’s day-to-day internal soundtrack and experienced as both a metaphor for the universe and personal consciousness.

  • “I just feel like it's about everything somehow. Like it's a song about my internal experience. It feels like it's about the universe. It's about this tenuous relationship between chaos and order…” —Noam ([10:59])

• Mandalas and Impermanence: Drawing parallels to Buddhist sand mandalas, Noam highlights the piece’s sense of growth, unpredictability, and peaceful dissolution.

Composing the Unexplainable ([13:16]–[15:01])

• Influence on the Podcast:
  • Unveiling how In C and its techniques influenced the Unexplainable theme: “When I made the theme song, I wanted to make something that kind of felt like a mandala, you know, that comes out of nothing that goes into chaos, that gets really complicated just for a second, and then it disappears.” —Noam ([14:03])
  • “It's like the arrow in the FedEx logo.” —Mara ([13:54])

Performing Chaos: Ensemble Experience with Evan Ziporyn ([18:02]–[25:22])

• Guest Introduction:

  • Evan Ziporyn, clarinetist, composer, long-time performer and producer of In C, joins to share his decades-long relationship with the work.
  • “I've played NC probably 500 times in my life, I would say.” —Evan ([18:07])

• Score Simplicity and the Hike Analogy:

  • The score is just 53 patterns on one page, made on a bus ride.
  • “It's the best piece I know to just take any group of people with goodwill and have them make something really beautiful and very memorable without fail…It's kind of like taking a hike. You don't have to be all bunched up together, but you don't want to be too far apart either.” —Evan ([18:52])

• Letting Go for True Chaos:

  • Musicians must grapple with letting go of full control, making micro-decisions in real time.
  • “You just let it happen, which is not as simple as it sounds, because you have to really realize that you can't control everything.”
  • Riley’s guidance: “If that should happen, just kind of go with it because it’s cool.” ([20:57])

• Dangers of Over-Planning:

  • Attempts to pre-design special moments weaken the piece: “The magic of this piece is that things that just can't happen when you're kind of thinking about it…But when you're there doing it in performance, suddenly, you know, just these really remarkable crescendos happen…But it doesn’t, you know, it’s not just about you.” —Evan ([21:47])
  • Contrasts traditional Western classical music notation with the in-the-moment, communal experience of In C.

• Emergent Phenomena and Endings:

  • The piece organically morphs, paralleling life's lack of tidy narratives:
    • “We like our narrative art to have beginnings and ends…as we live them, it's very seldom that things are very clean...What's nice about NC is that it's kind of like that.” —Evan ([23:20])
  • Discoveries from performance: “The power of kind of rhythmic empathy with other people…It's glorious when everybody crescendos together and nobody’s told anybody to do that, but everybody does it…” —Evan ([24:10])

• Trust in the Group:

  • The ending is undefined: "You’re playing and you’re playing, and then there's like, this thing that happens. You go like, and now we’re done. And everybody knows it. And I don't understand that either, but it's a really amazing thing." —Evan ([24:53])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Heart of the Piece:

  • “It’s this kind of weird blob of sound that hits different every single time you listen…Like, how do you actually create chaos? Like, how do you write it?” —Noam ([02:30])

• On Performance:

  • “It's a platform for the players to do whatever they want to do.” —Evan ([21:02])
  • “Things suddenly get really loud. Things kind of empty out to the point where you feel like the whole thing could just fall apart. But it doesn't...” —Evan ([21:47])

• On Musical Empathy and Community:

  • “What I discover…is just the power of rhythmic empathy with other people…a certain kind of faith. Not like a religious faith, but just, like, faith in community.” —Evan ([24:10])

• On Unexplainable Themes:

  • “I kind of feel like NC is unexplainable in music form. Like, we're trying to bring order to chaos in a sense, but not that much order.” —Noam ([13:00])
  • “We respect the chaos.” —Mara ([13:08])

Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------| | 01:07 | The personal mystery of obsession | | 03:09 | Introduction to In C and its uniqueness | | 05:07 | How performances of In C are structured | | 08:44 | Noam describes the sonic "life" of In C | | 11:22 | Musical metaphors: mandalas and impermanence | | 14:03 | "Unexplainable" theme song roots | | 18:07 | Evan Ziporyn’s history with In C | | 18:52 | The "hike" analogy for group performance | | 21:47 | The magic of emergent group dynamics | | 24:10 | On empathy, faith, and knowing when the piece ends |

Additional Listening & References

• Key recordings referenced: Bang on a Can (produced by Evan), Maya Beiser, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Acid Mothers Temple, Africa Express, and a dance version by Sasha Waltz (YouTube).
• In C’s influence: Baba O’Riley by The Who.
• If you want to hear Noam’s own high school In C cover, it plays near the episode’s end ([25:38]).

Episode Tone & Takeaway

Composing Chaos skillfully weaves personal narrative, musical enthusiasm, and philosophical inquiry to show how In C is both a model and a metaphor for the unknown. The language is conversational, curious, and frequently playful—mirroring In C's spirit of exploration. The result is an invitation to appreciate chaos: not as disorder, but as a space for emergence, creativity, and collective discovery.