# Saturationism and hyper-spectralism



## RGanon (Jun 14, 2021)

I recently discovered the music of "saturationist" composers (Yann Robin, Raphaël Cendo, Franck Bedrossian, Dmitri Kourliandski) and... it strongly reminded me of the music of Dumitrescu, but I have not found any mention of the influence of the _Romanian_ spectralism on them. Do you think there are many similarities in this music? How relevant is my juxtaposition?


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

I can't claim to understand this.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

^ Interesting. I'm wondering what that squeaky stringy sound is around 4:20 and near the end. I don't see any fast bowing action at 4:20, sounds to be some electronics manipulation or amplification of the finger sliding?


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

pianozach said:


> I can't claim to understand this


Whats to understand? It sounds cool


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

This is all new to me, thanks for posting it. the Robin piece seems to have spectralist influences but maybe concerned more with noise of various colors? At least it sounded like that to me - approaching pink or brown noise at parts.

Found an orchestral piece that has some amazing textures, particularly the section beginning around the 4:00 mark


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

RGanon said:


> I recently discovered the music of "saturationist" composers (Yann Robin, Raphaël Cendo, Franck Bedrossian, Dmitri Kourliandski) and... it strongly reminded me of the music of Dumitrescu, but I have not found any mention of the influence of the _Romanian_ spectralism on them. Do you think there are many similarities in this music? How relevant is my juxtaposition?


My feeling is that there's more complexity in the saturationists than there is in Dumitrescu, more counterpoint and more interesting rhythms. But yes, both work with complex timbres and extended techniques and, of course, Dumitrescu was a force in the French music scene.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> ^ Interesting. I'm wondering what that squeaky stringy sound is around 4:20 and near the end. I don't see any fast bowing action at 4:20, sounds to be some electronics manipulation or amplification of the finger sliding?


4:10-4:45 may be the most interesting part of the piece.

I think the boingy string sound you're hearing isn't an added thing . . . it's actually being played, even though you don't SEE it happening. I think it's happen as a result of the bowing rather than the fingering.

*EDIT: Oh. It IS added sound. Never mind.*


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Bwv 1080 said:


> Whats to understand? It sounds cool


I seek understanding. Hunger for it.

That said, there's some pretty cool things happening, and I'm not enjoying most of it. I'd venture that my 19-year-old former self might have enjoyed, but I find it more of a curiosity. I don't hate it, and I don't love it. There's some fascinating stuff going on, but I'm not really grokking an overarching cohesiveness in the piece.

Maybe it will grow on me.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Phil loves classical said:


> ^ Interesting. I'm wondering what that squeaky stringy sound is around 4:20 and near the end. I don't see any fast bowing action at 4:20, sounds to be some electronics manipulation or amplification of the finger sliding?


Program note:



> Subtitled "Crescent Scratches", it echoes the scratches, the modulations of music performed on vinyl turntables by DJs. In this work, "crushed sounds dominate" to use the expression of journalist Jérémie Szpirglas. Yann Robin upsets the codes of the quartet. It "persuades us that overdriven sound is not always overly distorted and that it can be ductile or even silky and allow a certain sensuality of tone," explains journalist Michèle Tosi.
> 
> As the composer explains, two ideas dominate in his Quartet: the "saturated glissando" and "the notion of loop". And unlike his Quartet n ° 1, Yann Robin *does not use an "electronic device"* here.


I find the work interesting and I will look for others by the composer. Thanks for posting.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

pianozach said:


> I seek understanding. Hunger for it.
> 
> That said, there's some pretty cool things happening, and I'm not enjoying most of it. I'd venture that my 19-year-old former self might have enjoyed, but I find it more of a curiosity. I don't hate it, and I don't love it. There's some fascinating stuff going on, but I'm not really grokking an overarching cohesiveness in the piece.
> 
> Maybe it will grow on me.


I don't think you're approaching this sort of thing in a very useful way.

In my opinion listening to these composers' music is valuable in exactly the same way as watching a high wire circus act is valuable. It's all about the thrill of the encounter of the listener with the extreme virtuosity of the performers, and the unexpectedness of the sounds they make.

There is nothing to grasp beyond that. It is music very much imbalanced to the body and away from the mind. To borrow some buzz words and use them in a slightly different context, is not gnostic music, it is drastic music.

Looking for understanding is a waste of time, there's nothing to understand. Just let yourself be effected viscerally, or find something else to do.

(This, by the way, is one big difference between the saturationist composers and Dumitrescu and Avram and Radulescu. And indeed a big difference between them and Lachenmann and Holliger and Ferneyhough. And them and the mainstream Spectralists. Drastic music is very _now_, there was nothing like it before.)


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Here's a facsinating interview between Bedrossian and Samuel Andreyev (who's also a composer and has a great youtube channel). If I remember correctly, they discuss the origins of the term "saturationism", the influence of non-classical music on Bedrossian, his studies with Grisey, etc.:






And here's a lecture given by Bedrossian. This I haven't watched so can't comment on the quality:


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

pianozach said:


> 4:10-4:45 may be the most interesting part of the piece.
> 
> I think the boingy string sound you're hearing isn't an added thing . . . it's actually being played, even though you don't SEE it happening. I think it's happen as a result of the bowing rather than the fingering.
> 
> *EDIT: Oh. It IS added sound. Never mind.*


What added sound? The program note says no electronic devices are used.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

pianozach said:


> 4:10-4:45 may be the most interesting part of the piece.
> 
> I think the boingy string sound you're hearing isn't an added thing . . . it's actually being played, even though you don't SEE it happening. I think it's happen as a result of the bowing rather than the fingering.
> 
> *EDIT: Oh. It IS added sound. Never mind.*





SanAntone said:


> Program note:
> 
> I find the work interesting and I will look for others by the composer. Thanks for posting.





SanAntone said:


> What added sound? The program note says no electronic devices are used.


Program Notes:



> Subtitled "*Crescent Scratches*", it echoes the scratches, the modulations of music performed on *vinyl turntables by DJs.* In this work, "crushed sounds dominate" to use the expression of journalist Jérémie Szpirglas. Yann Robin upsets the codes of the quartet. It "persuades us that overdriven sound is not always overly distorted and that it can be ductile or even silky and allow a certain sensuality of tone," explains journalist Michèle Tosi.
> 
> As the composer explains, two ideas dominate in his Quartet: the "saturated glissando" and "the notion of loop". And unlike his Quartet n ° 1, Yann Robin does not use an "electronic device" here.


I suppose it depends on your definition of "electronic device" then, I guess. And the program notes are rather poorly worded. I'd say that utilizing turntables and a DJ, in addition to the string quartet, IS "added sound."

But the wording DOES say that *Quartet No. 2* "echoes the scratches, the modulations of music performed on vinyl turntables by DJs". To _*me*_ that meant that there is a DJ playing turntables, and the quartet echoes *"the scratches . . . performed on vinyl turntables by DJs"*.

On further analysis of the sentence, it means that the quartet reminds us of DJ scratching, NOT that there are DJs scratching live WITH the quartet.

And that's what I thought IN THE FIRST PLACE, until you posted the program notes as if to contradict my impressions that there weren't any added noises from elsewhere. So I figured that YOU must be right that there WERE indeed added noises, so I edited my comment to reflect that.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

pianozach said:


> Program Notes:
> 
> I suppose it depends on your definition of "electronic device" then, I guess. And the program notes are rather poorly worded. I'd say that utilizing turntables and a DJ, in addition to the string quartet, IS "added sound."
> 
> ...


It says it "*echoes* the scratches, the modulations of music performed on vinyl turntables by DJs." This means, IMO, the composer was attempting to suggest those effects but with the acoustic string quartet.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Saturationism and hyper-spectralism*

Saturationism and hyper-spectralism. Sounds a lot like the title of a work by Boulez or Xenakis.

In any case, the Yann Robin pieces prove splendid examples of "new music", and that is probably all one needs to _understand_ about it. Those who enjoy creating extra-musical programs for Bach's fugues or Beethoven's string quartets or Tchaikovsky's symphonies can equally enjoy creating a story to fit the Robin quartet or the orchestral piece _Ashes_. Whatever works for you. Simply hearing these pieces works for me.



pianozach said:


> I seek understanding. Hunger for it.
> ...
> Maybe it will grow on me.


To pianozach: I'm hoping my comment will help satiate your hunger for understanding. But beware. You probably don't want this sort of music to _grow_ on you. You might be better off with a mole, a skin tag, or a wart. At least modern medicine knows how to deal with such structures if you want them removed.

In the meantime, if this is indeed the current direction of "new music", I'm all for it. I find this sort of sound performance sound. And enjoyable to listen to. Too, I suspect it is hard on musicians' instruments, especially on strings, which leads me to consider investing in stock of companies that manufacture violin/viola strings and bow hair. Heck! I may grow rich from this stuff.

Saturationism and hyper-spectralism. Sounds also like a good bank account strategy to me.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

calvinpv said:


>


So far, I just watched the first 50 minutes of this lecture. Bedrossian basically introduced what he will be talking about, and he also played his 2012 work _Itself_, for orchestra, which is a pretty riveting work the more you listen to it. Without hearing the rest of the lecture (which I'll do tomorrow), my first impressions are:

I think at first glance, the OP's equivalence of saturationism = hyper-spectralism seems to be spot on. Bedrossian has emphasized a few times already in the lecture that he is more influenced by the spectralist approach to sound than by Lachenmann's approach. But also when listening to _Itself_, you can hear the sound layers chosen in such a way so that you don't hear any of the "seams" demarcating the individual instruments (not counting the occasional solo sections in the work, where obviously you know the instrument). This implies a pretty firm knowledge of acoustics and of the harmonic spectra of instruments. Not even Grisey and Murail seem to achieve this level of proficiency and this level of "seamlessness". So saturationism might just be thought of as spectralism done really really well.

And yet, putting it that way makes Bedrossian's music sound derivative, when my ears say otherwise. For one thing, the fact that the resulting sound is a seamless, organic, indivisible whole gives one the impression of a free-floating sound untethered to the instrumentalists, like it just drifted into the auditorium from the outside and is passing through. With other pieces, when you are able to ground the musical sounds to the musicians (using your ears), you're able to say things like "this sound comes from musician x and not musician y", "that sound comes from musician y and not musician x", "this sound previously came from musician x and now no longer does", "this sound previously did not come from musician x and now does". Such statements are necessary preconditions for establishing in your head the counterpoint, harmony, rhythms of the piece. But with the Bedrossian piece, these statements are denied to you -- or at least, denied to you immediately. Therefore, you're prevented from picking up, for example, the counterpoint or rhythm, though no doubt they exist (or do they?). Or perhaps Bedrossian has in mind a sort of acousmatic listening experience where you need to locate these things without resorting to the source of the sound in your explanation.

But if this is what Bedrossian is going after, then saturationism is, also a departure from spectralism, despite it being a "hyper-spectralism" simultaneously. Spectral music, despite it being pretty radical in other ways, requires a somewhat traditional mode of listening since, though you do listen to the resulting sound complex, you're expected to appreciate how the different parts contribute to the whole. But in Bedrossian, you don't get the opportunity to decipher the parts.

The more I think about it, the more I think this approach to timbre is pretty groundbreaking.

Here's the program note to _Itself_:



> Itself pursues the project of a musical form essentially rhythmicised by the unfolding and transformation of sonic material. From this perspective, a certain number of questions -- which can already be found in the majority of my previous works, notably Charleston (2005), It (2005-2007) and Swing (2009) -- return here for development on the scale of the symphony orchestra.
> 
> Colour through Excess
> 
> ...


Here's the commercial recording:


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

When writing my post above, I found this work by Raphaël Cendo that's an even better example of what I was trying to get at. There's some real crazy witchcraft going on here:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I’ll just mention in passing that a saturationist composer whose music is particularly enjoyable is Dimitri Kourliandski.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

calvinpv said:


> I think at first glance, the OP's equivalence of saturationism = hyper-spectralism seems to be spot on. Bedrossian has emphasized a few times already in the lecture that he is more influenced by the spectralist approach to sound than by Lachenmann's approach. But also when listening to _Itself_, you can hear the sound layers chosen in such a way so that you don't hear any of the "seams" demarcating the individual instruments (not counting the occasional solo sections in the work, where obviously you know the instrument). This implies a pretty firm knowledge of acoustics and of the harmonic spectra of instruments. Not even Grisey and Murail seem to achieve this level of proficiency and this level of "seamlessness". So saturationism might just be thought of as spectralism done really really well.
> 
> And yet, putting it that way makes Bedrossian's music sound derivative, when my ears say otherwise. For one thing, the fact that the resulting sound is a seamless, organic, indivisible whole gives one the impression of a free-floating sound untethered to the instrumentalists, like it just drifted into the auditorium from the outside and is passing through. With other pieces, when you are able to ground the musical sounds to the musicians (using your ears), you're able to say things like "this sound comes from musician x and not musician y", "that sound comes from musician y and not musician x", "this sound previously came from musician x and now no longer does", "this sound previously did not come from musician x and now does". Such statements are necessary preconditions for establishing in your head the counterpoint, harmony, rhythms of the piece. But with the Bedrossian piece, these statements are denied to you -- or at least, denied to you immediately. Therefore, you're prevented from picking up, for example, the counterpoint or rhythm, though no doubt they exist (or do they?). Or perhaps Bedrossian has in mind a sort of acousmatic listening experience where you need to locate these things without resorting to the source of the sound in your explanation.
> 
> ...


I don't agree with most of this. What you hear in Itself I don't, for example. But I just wanted to say what you say about the (alleged) difficulty of allocating sounds to their sources made me think of Pierre Schaeffer's ideas.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I don't agree with most of this. What you hear in Itself I don't, for example. But I just wanted to say what you say about the (alleged) difficulty of allocating sounds to their sources made me think of Pierre Schaeffer's ideas.


Pierre Schaeffer is exactly who I was thinking of when I wrote that. These saturationist pieces sound like some of the crazier electronic works out there ... but aren't themselves (fully) electronic. Compare the Raphaël Cendo work I posted above with, for example, this acousmatic electronic work by Natasha Barrett. They sound awfully similar in style, even though the Cendo is an electroacoustic work while the Barrett is solely a tape piece. I guess what I'm saying is that the gap between the sounds coming from an orchestra and the sounds coming from a synthesizer is getting smaller. Acoustic pieces are sounding more and more like electronic pieces. The orchestra can now do what was previously exclusive to the computer.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

calvinpv said:


> Acoustic pieces are sounding more and more like electronic pieces. The orchestra can now do what was previously exclusive to the computer.


Is this unique to "Saturationist" works? Extended instrumental techniques are integral to many new works by this generation of classical composers.

I cannot find the term Saturationism in Grove and wonder what is its origin.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

SanAntone said:


> Is this unique to "Saturationist" works? Extended instrumental techniques are integral to many new works by this generation of classical composers.


I was thinking this same thing when writing out my posts. It's definitely not unique to most composers writing today. So maybe what separates the so-called "saturationists" from other composers is a self-awareness of this trend in orchestral writing and embracing it as an end in itself vs. other composers who might have other aesthetic goals in mind and whose crazy electronic-esque sound worlds are secondary effects. That's just a guess; I'll have to read up on it a bit more and finish the Bedrossian lecture I posted. I would imagine there are differences even among the saturationists. For example, Cendo's music sounds much more extreme and violent than Bedrossian's.



> I cannot find the term Saturationism in Grove and wonder what is its origin.


Saturationism isn't a formal school of thought per se, and it's also a fairly recent term. If I remember correctly from the Bedrossian interview I posted above, the origins of the term date back to a 2007 or 2008 conference that Bedrossian and Cendo attended where Bedrossian provocatively suggested a catch-all term that connects the two composers and it sort of stuck in people's minds. I think it's one of those terms like "new complexity" that is meant to describe a certain general approach to composition but is too vague to be any more helpful than that. A couple of CD liner notes that I have of these composers have also used the term.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

pianozach said:


> 4:10-4:45 may be the most interesting part of the piece.
> 
> I think the boingy string sound you're hearing isn't an added thing . . . *it's actually being played, even though you don't SEE it happening. I think it's happen as a result of the bowing rather than the fingering.*


I see it happening and, quite the contrary, see it happening in the left hand, not the bow hand. While the bow is being evenly and steadily drawn, the left hand is rapidly shifting position in something like a really exaggerated vibrato motion while contacting more than one string but without depressing them(?). A kind of left hand tremolo.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

calvinpv said:


> I think at first glance, the OP's equivalence of saturationism = hyper-spectralism seems to be spot on. Bedrossian has emphasized a few times already in the lecture that he is more influenced by the spectralist approach to sound than by Lachenmann's approach. But also when listening to _Itself_, you can hear the sound layers chosen in such a way so that you don't hear any of the "seams" demarcating the individual instruments (not counting the occasional solo sections in the work, where obviously you know the instrument). This implies a pretty firm knowledge of acoustics and of the harmonic spectra of instruments. Not even Grisey and Murail seem to achieve this level of proficiency and this level of "seamlessness". So saturationism might just be thought of as spectralism done really really well.
> 
> And yet, putting it that way makes Bedrossian's music sound derivative, when my ears say otherwise. For one thing, the fact that the resulting sound is a seamless, organic, indivisible whole gives one the impression of a free-floating sound untethered to the instrumentalists, like it just drifted into the auditorium from the outside and is passing through. With other pieces, when you are able to ground the musical sounds to the musicians (using your ears), you're able to say things like "this sound comes from musician x and not musician y", "that sound comes from musician y and not musician x", "this sound previously came from musician x and now no longer does", "this sound previously did not come from musician x and now does". Such statements are necessary preconditions for establishing in your head the counterpoint, harmony, rhythms of the piece. But with the Bedrossian piece, these statements are denied to you -- or at least, denied to you immediately. Therefore, you're prevented from picking up, for example, the counterpoint or rhythm, though no doubt they exist (or do they?). Or perhaps Bedrossian has in mind a sort of acousmatic listening experience where you need to locate these things without resorting to the source of the sound in your explanation.


The way you describe this type of music reminds me very strongly of what Eliane Radigue does with an orchestra, especially later in this piece:






But then the actual sound of this piece is of course very very far from the pieces you linked. I don't totally understand why Radigue in general doesn't count as a spectralist or, perhaps, in this case, a saturationist - I mean, I can hear that her work sounds unlike most composers associated with those labels, but in terms of intellectual/aesthetic preoccupation the overlap seems enormous.

Anyway I agree with your other post further down about the gap between orchestral sound and synthesized sound shrinking - it really strikes me as a huge challenge these days to justify, aesthetically, writing music for a whole orchestra...


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

In the scores I have seen by Bedrossian or Robin, they appear more purely textural like Xenakis - dont see the notated high upper partials that you see in spectralist pieces. Although Bedrossian was briefly a student of Grisey (cut short by his death)

Found this Bedrossian's publisher page



> One might confine oneself to the definition given during the seminar organised at the CDMC17 in 2008 : 'The saturated phenomenon in the acoustic domain is an excess of matter, energy, movement and timbre18'. Inharmonic, distorted and multiphonic sounds, the Berio tremolo doubling a flatterzunge, Larsen effects, static, etc. are part of the field of saturated sounds. Certainly, the serial system tended towards an excess of sounds-Iannis Xenakis as well as Pierre Boulez perceived this quite well in their time. But rather than consider it a 'sound barrier', a limit not to be
> crossed, the 'saturationists' apprehend this situation of sound accumulation as the natural condition of sound today. This view of music is also a criticism of the dominant discourse of the 1990s elaborated in the wake of composer Helmut Lachenmann in which 'instrumental musique concrète' appears as the alternative to the aura of philharmonic sound. Saturated music refuses to enclose itself in the Lachenmannian dilemma opposing 'bruité sound' and 'philharmonic sound', proposing the world of complex sounds as the paradigm of the 21st century. To borrow the terminology of philosopher Jean-Luc Marion19, the strength of this concept is to set the complex sound as an excess of intuition over the signification of the sound itself. It means refusing to confine it in an a priori framework, giving it a chance to be itself. To parody the philosopher : 'The sound first listens to itself and is uttered only afterwards20'.


https://www.billaudot.com/en/composer.php?p=Franck&n=Bedrossian


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Is For Samuel Beckett saturationist? I mean I know it isn't -- but is that just because it wasn't written by Bedrossian & Co., or is there something intrinsic. Complex sounds, given a chance to be themselves, not part of an a priori framework . . . .


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