"[2][4] According to Xenakis, the quote describes "the death of Patroclos and how his young soul entered the earth weeping for the fatal issue and for the loss of youth and power.
[1][6] For the most part, the piece is composed of sonorities of long duration, with widely-ranging dynamics and timbral properties, surrounding a central outburst of more active material.
[6] In his analysis of the work, theorist Michael Boyd identified its core oppositions as those of "noisy vs. harmonic timbres," as well as "constant vs. contoured dynamic envelopes," and suggested that Charisma "ultimately gravitates toward noise as it unfolds.
Cellist Christophe Roy recalled that he and clarinetist Dominique Clément "sweated on this work, which lasts 4 minutes and in which there are only twenty sounds to play, for a whole year before getting what we wanted!
[9] Clarinetist Alain Damiens remarked that, while preparing the work, he "noticed that Xenakis managed to make a whole system of beats, those vibratos you hear when you play extremely lightly... you could feel an incredible sound vibration.