# The Spectral music thread



## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

TC members are invited to contribute herewithin anything related to Spectralism.
The core content is spectral music from the 1980s and the 1990s, plus late-1970s also.

Most composers of spectral music are rarely discussed @ TalkClassical with intermittent limelight focused onto Grisey and/or Murail at the expense of those whose names follow:

Thierry Blondeau
Antoine Bonnet
Marc-André Dalbavie
Hugues Dufourt
Frédéric Durieux
Ivan Fedele
Jean-Luc Herve
Philippe Hurel
Philippe Leroux
Fabien Lévy
Philippe Manoury
Michael Obst
Jean-Claude Risset
Thierry Went

Half of the above have an album or two in my collection, with music by Dufourt and Fedele - thus far - resonating the most with me.

Spectralists from Romania, Denmark, Finland ... even the U.K. are welcome, too.
Post your relevant input, if any ... but please don't let this thread become the Grisey & Murail TV show (or the Saariaho & Lindberg show)! Plenty of others to traverse the spectrum.


----------



## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

I think Spectralism is a stylistic dead-end much like Minimalism, Serialism et. al. Each of the practitioners of these styles have exhausted what could possibly be done with it. Of course, this doesn't mean that we can't enjoy their music, but my point is that there's not really much else that could be said musically within this style. Just my two cents.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Can I tell if it’s spectral by listening?


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Jonathan Harvey’s paper 



https://music.arts.uci.edu/abauer/spectral/readings/Harvey_Spectralism.pdf


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Natura Morta Con Fiamme (1991) - YouTube

Romitelli Natura Morta. Spectral?


----------



## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

A few more people who come to mind who have ties to spectralism in various ways: James Tenney, Horațiu Rădulescu, Giacinto Scelsi (pre-spectral but influenced many of the spectral people), Joshua Fineberg, Georg Friedrich Haas. Ligeti's way of approaching time was quite influential to spectralism, although I don't think of Ligeti as a spectral composer per se. Fineberg also has a great article on spectral music, which is definitely worth a read!


----------



## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Already mentioned, American James Tenney created over 50 significant works of what is now commonly called ‘spectral music’. Tenney’s work is a seminal representative of a broader current of spectral music composition that arose in North America independently of spectralist developments in Europe. Tenney’s _Clang_ from 1972 is an early example of spectralism. In the same year he composed _Quintet: Five Textures_ for string quartet and bass. The spectralist members of the set are _I: Some Recent THOUGHTS for Morton Feldman_,_ III A Choir of ANGELS for Carl Ruggles_, and _V: SPECTRA for Harry Partch_. Tenney’s later spectral works include _Glissade_ (1982), _Critical Band_ (1988), _Diapason_ (1996), _Arbor Vitae_ (2006), and the series of works entitled _Spectrum I-8 _(1995-2001).


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Neo Romanza said:


> I think Spectralism is a stylistic dead-end


Yes I think this is what Boulez thought was probably the case, because he he didn't see a way the music could be more than atmospheric, more than just a linear sequence of different timbres and textures. he makes the point in the Collège de France lectures. But in fact it has lived on, in the hands of the likes of Frank Bedrossian. I don't know any details of what he's about.

Ironically I think some of the original French Spectralists wrote some lovely music -- when they weren't being spectral. Murail's Territoires d'oubli for example. Or can you can write spectral music for a piano?

There's also the Romanian "school" to think about -- Avram, Dumitrescu, possibly others.

And then there's Romitelli

Boulez's criticism seems to me to apply to quite a lot of music in fact, especially electronic and noise.


----------



## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Mandryka said:


> Yes I think this is what Boulez thought was probably the case, because he he didn't see a way the music could be more than atmospheric, more than just a linear sequence of different timbres and textures. he makes the point in the Collège de France lectures. But in fact it has lived on, in the hands of the likes of Frank Bedrossian. I don't know any details of what he's about.


Bedrossian has some absolutely fantastic stuff. I remember listening to Traces D’Ombres, Twist, and Stream Itself – somehow he manages to combine many elements from spectral harmony and timbre (honestly I don’t see how one could separate these) and bring these into faster music, something that’s got more of a driving forward motion than a lot of more of the atmospheric spectral music. I’ll have to study this closer and see how this works in more detail. 



Mandryka said:


> Ironically I think some of the original French Spectralists wrote some lovely music -- when they weren't being spectral. Murail's Territoires d'oubli for example. Or can you can write spectral music for a piano?


Joshua Fineberg’s Veils comes to mind as an example. 



Mandryka said:


> There's also the Romanian "school" to think about -- Avram, Dumitrescu, possibly others.
> 
> And then there's Romitelli


Yes, Aveam, Dumitrescu, perhaps Radulescu as well, Niculescu too.



Mandryka said:


> Boulez's criticism seems to me to apply to quite a lot of music in fact, especially electronic and noise.


I think Boulez’s criticism is quite interesting and reveals quite a lot about Boulez as a composer.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

A place where Spectralism seems to have survived, and indeed to be thriving, is in Eliane Radigue's acoustic work. But the idea that you can get inspiration in a composition by the properties of a specific sound is probably quite widespread. Maybe there's more to Spectralism than that.

Oh and let's not forget Stockhausen's _Stimmung_ -- spectral or not? 

Anyway inspired by this thread I've been enjoying Fausto Romitelli's Index of Metals this afternoon -- which may or may not be spectral, I can't say.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Vivier and spectalism

ON_LONELY_CHILD.pdf (uci.edu)


----------



## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

For me, there is not enough movement or change to really grab me.

The atmospheres are often amazing, but that is just not enough for me.

I have a couple of CD's by Anna Þorvaldsdóttir (Anna Thorvaldsdottir) that I keep returning to from time to time, but as I am listening to the amazing atmospheres, I keep waiting for something else to happen.

I guess she is categorized as post-spectral. Not sure what the differences are, but her music certainly sounds like spectralism to me.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Simon Moon said:


> For me, there is not enough movement or change to really grab me.
> 
> The atmospheres are often amazing, but that is just not enough for me.
> 
> I have a couple of CD's by Anna Þorvaldsdóttir (Anna Thorvaldsdottir) that I keep returning to from time to time, but as I am listening to the amazing atmospheres, I keep waiting for something else to happen.


The conception of music as a sequence of atmospheres is quite prevalent, I can't find it now but I remember (I think) reading an interview with Liza Lim where she basically said that the form is the content. There's something of a legacy of spectralism here, though it's obviously a bit bizarre to think of Lim as a Spectralist.

I did find this 

*JS: This physicality of creating sounds seems to be central to your work. Does it affect your music structurally in any way?*
_
LL: Analysing the behaviour of instrumental and vocal sounds in a distorted state has provided me with some useful models for organising ensembles of sounds and their interactions over time. But aside from structural considerations, another reason for exploring the physicality of how a sound is produced is also to work with the emotional texture of these energies – the different degrees of breathiness as a flautist pulls away from a normal embouchure position, or how one can push a sound to an extreme and then allow it to die away – these actions all have their own sensual qualities.

I also like the sensual quality of the musician’s touch on the instrument before and after a sound is made. For me, in those moments, the performer continues to contact the sound in the elusive zone from where sounds arise and then dissipate. (‘Silence’ is one of those ‘regions beyond a boundary’). This notion of ‘touch’ is actually a central principle in Chinese musical aesthetics, particularly in guqin (zither) music where the tactile and kinaesthetic is considered of equal and interdependent significance to sound. The element of ‘touch’ suggests the spiritual dimension of music beyond its actual physical sounding manifestation. [in music developed as a scholar’s music – played for oneself or more properly, in the presence of ‘the friend’, friendship ideally, meaning the perfectly attuned listener!]. In this spirit, ‘silence’ is thought of as a sensation of both hearing and touching.

Interview with Liza Lim - James Saunders (james-saunders.com) _


----------



## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

Do these piano pieces that bring out, emphasize, and utilize the overtones belong to Spectralism?

Somei Satoh: Incarnation II - Maki Sekiya





Charlemagne Palestine: Strumming for Bosendorfer Piano





Stainless Staining: Donnacha Dennehy - Lisa Moore


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Here's what is I think a paradigm of the genre, Grisey's prologue for viola from Espaces Acoustiques. It's available in 3 versions: vanilla viola, viola and resonators (whatever they are) and viola with electronics. This is with resonators (my fave -- the world needs more resonators!)

Gérard Caussé alto : Gérard Grisey Prologue pour alto et résonateurs - YouTube


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I'm not terribly concerned with schools or theories: I see them as props composers use to guide, focus and support their writing. Spectralism may have opened up some new possibilities for some composers but was probably too limited to be a major force for the future.

I have enjoyed quite a lot of Murail's and Grisey's music and have found something I enjoy in some Dufourt. But I think I am enjoying music by very gifted composers rather than spectralism per se. I also enjoy quite a lot of Jonathon Harvey's music. He has written:



> I find those composers working today who are completely untouched by spectralism are at least less interesting. History seems grand, for once; spectralism is a moment of fundamental shift after which thinking about music can never be quite the same again. Spectral music is allied to electronic music: together they have achieved a re-birth of perception. The one would scarcely have developed without the other. Electronic music is a well-documented technological breakthrough, spectralism in its simplest form as colorthinking, is a spiritual breakthrough.


From the introduction to his paper "Spectralism" - https://music.arts.uci.edu/abauer/spectral/readings/Harvey_Spectralism.pdf

I think you can also hear the influence of spectralism in Saariaho among others (e.g. Julian Anderson). Perhaps, then, it was not such a dead end.


----------



## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Enthusiast said:


> I think you can also hear the influence of spectralism in Saariaho among others (e.g. Julian Anderson). Perhaps, then, it was not such a dead end.


Yes, I'd say there's a number of composers who've been affected by spectralism, even if most of them wouldn't fit neatly under that label. Anderson and Saariaho are two good examples of this (and listen to how different their music is from each other).


----------



## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Back to this:


Mandryka said:


> Or can you can write spectral music for a piano?


This comes to mind as well – granted, there's percussion too, but I can definitely hear that the harmonies are shifting around different fundamentals.


----------

