Spectral music uses the acoustic properties of sound – or sound spectra – as a basis for

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

Definition

Defined in technical language, spectral music is an acoustic musical practice where compositional decisions are often informed by sonographic representations and

mathematical Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

analysis of sound spectra, or by mathematically generated spectra. The spectral approach focuses on manipulating the spectral features, interconnecting them, and transforming them. In this formulation, computer-based sound analysis and representations of audio signals are treated as being analogous to a timbral representation of sound. The (acoustic-composition) spectral approach originated in France in the early 1970s, and techniques were developed, and later refined, primarily at

IRCAM IRCAM (French: ''Ircam, '', English: Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) is a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound, especially in the fields of avant garde and electro-acoustical art music. It is ...

, Paris, with the

Ensemble l'Itinéraire The ''Ensemble l’Itinéraire'' is one of the main European ensembles dedicated to the performance of contemporary music, known in particular for its performances of spectral music works. Spectral music alters “timbres by assembling orchestral ...

, by composers such as

Gérard Grisey Gérard Henri Grisey (; ; 17 June 1946 – 11 November 1998) was a twentieth-century French composer of contemporary classical music. His work is often associated with the Spectralist Movement in music, of which he was a major pioneer. Biograp ...

and

Tristan Murail Tristan Murail (born 11 March 1947) is a French composer associated with the "spectral" technique of composition. Among his compositions is the large orchestral work ''Gondwana''. Early life and studies Murail was born in Le Havre, France. His fa ...

. Hugues Dufourt is commonly credited for introducing the term ''musique spectrale'' (spectral music) in an article published in 1979. Murail has described spectral music as an aesthetic rather than a style, not so much a set of techniques as an attitude; as Joshua Fineberg puts it, a recognition that "music is ultimately sound evolving in time".

Julian Anderson Julian Anderson (born 6 April 1967) is a British composer and teacher of composition. Biography Anderson was born in London. He studied at Westminster School, then with John Lambert at the Royal College of Music, with Alexander Goehr at Cambri ...

indicates that a number of major composers associated with spectralism consider the term inappropriate, misleading, and reductive. The Istanbul Spectral Music Conference of 2003 suggested a redefinition of the term "spectral music" to encompass any music that foregrounds timbre as an important element of structure or language.

Origins and history

While spectralism as a historical movement is generally considered to have begun in France and Germany in the 1970s, precursors to the philosophy and techniques of spectralism, as prizing the nature and properties of sound above all else as an organizing principle for music, go back at least to the early twentieth century. Proto-spectral composers include Claude Debussy, Edgard Varèse, Giacinto Scelsi, Olivier Messiaen,

György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century ...

Iannis Xenakis Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde c ...

, La Monte Young, and

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th and early 21st-century ...

. Other composers who anticipated spectralist ideas in their theoretical writings include

Harry Partch Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century com ...

, Henry Cowell, and

Paul Hindemith Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ' ...

. Also crucial to the origins of spectralism was the development of techniques of sound analysis and synthesis in

computer music Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ...

and acoustics during this period, especially focused around IRCAM in France and Darmstadt in Germany.

considers Danish composer Per Nørgård's ''Voyage into the Golden Screen'' for chamber orchestra (1968) to be the first "properly instrumental piece of spectral composition". Spectralism as a recognizable and unified movement, however, arose during the early 1970s, in part as a reaction against and alternative to the primarily pitch focused aesthetics of the serialism and post-serialism which was ascendant at the time. Early spectral composers were centered in the cities of Paris and Cologne and associated with the composers of the

and the Feedback group, respectively. In Paris,

and

were the most prominent pioneers of spectral techniques; Grisey's ''Espaces Acoustiques'' and Murail's '' Gondwana'' were two influential works of this period. Their early work emphasized the use of the overtone series, techniques of spectral analysis and ring and frequency modulation, and slowly unfolding processes to create music which gave a new attention to timbre and texture. The German Feedback group, including

Johannes Fritsch Johannes Georg Fritsch (27 July 1941 – 29 April 2010) was a German composer. At the age of seven, Fritsch found a violin in the attic of his uncle's house in Bensheim-Auerbach, Germany, and began lessons with a village music teacher named Kna ...

, Mesías Maiguashca, Péter Eötvös,

Claude Vivier Claude Vivier ( ; baptised as Claude Roger; 14 April 19487 March 1983) was a Canadian contemporary composer, pianist, poet and ethnomusicologist of Québécois origin. After studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne, Vivier became an in ...

, and Clarence Barlow, was primarily associated with students and disciples of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and began to pioneer spectral techniques around the same time. Their work generally placed more emphasis on linear and melodic writing within a spectral context as compared to that of their French contemporaries, though with significant variations. Another important group of early spectral composers was centered in Romania, where a unique form of spectralism arose, in part inspired by Romanian folk music. This folk tradition, as collected by Béla Bartók (1904–1918), with its acoustic scales derived directly from resonance and natural wind instruments of the

alphorn The alphorn or alpenhorn or alpine horn is a labrophone, consisting of a straight several-meter-long wooden natural horn of conical bore, with a wooden cup-shaped mouthpiece. Traditionally the Alphorn was made of one single piece, or two par ...

family, like the ''buciume'' and ''tulnice'', as well as the '' cimpoi'' bagpipe, inspired several spectral composers, including

Anatol Vieru Anatol Vieru (; 8 June 1926 – 8 October 1998) was a Romanian-Jewish music theoretician, pedagogue, and composer. A pupil of Aram Khachaturian, he composed seven symphonies, eight string quartets, concertos, and chamber music. He also wrote t ...

, Aurel Stroe,

Ștefan Niculescu Ștefan Niculescu (July 31, 1927 – January 22, 2008) was a Romanian people, Romanian composer. Niculescu was born in Moreni, Dâmbovița County, Dâmbovita. He was credited with introducing his own brand of heterophony, a technique based on ...

Horațiu Rădulescu Horațiu Rădulescu (; 7 January 1942 – 25 September 2008) was a Romanian-French composer, best known for the spectral technique of composition. Life Rădulescu was born in Bucharest, where he studied the violin privately with Nina Alexandres ...

Iancu Dumitrescu Iancu Dumitrescu (born 15 July 1944) is a Romanian avant-garde composer. Life and works Dumitrescu was born in Sibiu, Romania. He received a master's degree in composition in Bucharest, where his teachers included Alfred Mendelsohn. Later, ...

, and Octavian Nemescu. Towards the end of the twentieth century, techniques associated with spectralist composers began to be adopted more widely and the original pioneers of spectralism began to integrate their techniques more fully with those of other traditions. For example, in their works from the later 1980s and into the 1990s, both Grisey and Murail began to shift their emphasis away from the more gradual and regular process which characterized their early work to include more sudden dramatic contrasts as more well linear and contrapuntal writing. Likewise, spectral techniques were adopted by composers from a wider variety of traditions and counties, including the UK (with composers like

and Jonathan Harvey), Finland (composers like Magnus Lindberg and

Kaija Saariaho Kaija Anneli Saariaho (; ; born 14 October 1952) is a Finnish composer based in Paris, France. During the course of her career, Saariaho has received commissions from the Lincoln Center for the Kronos Quartet and from IRCAM for the Ensemble Inte ...

), and the United States. A further development is the emergence of "hyper-spectralism" in the works of Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram.

Compositional technique

Spectral music focuses on the phenomenon and acoustics of sound rather than its potential semantic qualities. Pitch material and intervallic content are often derived from the harmonic series, including the use of

microtones Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones— intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of t ...

. Spectrographic analysis of acoustic sources is used as inspiration for orchestration. The reconstruction of electroacoustic source materials by using acoustic instruments is another common approach to spectral orchestration. In "additive instrumental synthesis", instruments are assigned to play discrete components of a sound, such as an individual partial. Amplitude modulation,

frequency modulation Frequency modulation (FM) is the encoding of information in a carrier wave by varying the instantaneous frequency of the wave. The technology is used in telecommunications, radio broadcasting, signal processing, and computing. In analog fre ...

, difference tones, harmonic fusion, residue pitch, Shepard-tone phenomena, and other psychoacoustic concepts are applied to music materials. Formal concepts important in spectral music include

process A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management *Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...

and the stretching of time. Though development is "significantly different from those of minimalist music" in that all musical parameters may be affected, it similarly draws attention to very subtle aspects of the music. These processes most often achieve a smooth transition through interpolation. Any or all of these techniques may be operating in a particular work, though this list is not exhaustive. The

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

n spectral tradition focuses more on the study of how sound itself behaves in a "live" environment. Sound work is not restricted to harmonic spectra but includes transitory aspects of

timbre In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voices and musica ...

and non-harmonic musical components (e.g.,

rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular re ...

tempo In musical terminology, tempo ( Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (ofte ...

, dynamics). Furthermore, sound is treated phenomenologically as a dynamic presence to be encountered in listening (rather than as an object of scientific study). This approach results in a transformational musical language in which continuous change of the material displaces the central role accorded to structure in spectralism of the "French school".

Composers

France

Spectral music was initially associated with composers of the French

, including Dufourt,

, and Michaël Lévinas. For these composers, musical sound (or natural sound) is taken as a model for composition, leading to an interest in the exploration of the interior of sounds. Giacinto Scelsi was an important influence on Grisey, Murail and Lévinas; his approach with exploring a single sound in his works and a "smooth" conception of time (such as in his ''Quattro pezzi su una nota sola'') greatly influenced these composers to include new instrumental techniques and variations of timbre in their works.

Germany and Romania

Other spectral music composers include those from the German Feedback group, principally

, Mesías Maiguashca, Péter Eötvös,

, and Clarence Barlow. Features of spectralism are also seen independently in the contemporary work of Romanian composers

, and

United States

Independent of spectral music developments in Europe, American composer

James Tenney James Tenney (August 10, 1934 – August 24, 2006) was an American composer and music theorist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microto ...

's output included more than fifty significant works that feature spectralist traits. His influences came from encounters with a scientific culture which pervaded during the postwar era, and a "quasi-empiricist musical aesthetic" from John Cage. His works, although having similarities with European spectral music, are distinctive in some ways, for example in his interest in "post-Cageian indeterminacy".

Post-spectralism

The spectralist movement inspired more recent composers such as

, Ana-Maria Avram, Joshua Fineberg, Georg Friedrich Haas, Jonathan Harvey, Fabien Lévy, Magnus Lindberg, and

. Some of the "post-spectralist" French composers include Eric Tanguy, Philippe Hurel, François Paris, Philippe Leroux, and Thierry Blondeau. In the United States, composers such as Alvin Lucier, La Monte Young,

Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for ...

Maryanne Amacher Maryanne Amacher (February 25, 1938 – October 22, 2009) was an American composer and installation artist. She is known for working extensively with a family of psychoacoustic phenomena called auditory distortion products (also known as dis ...

Phill Niblock Phill Niblock (born October 2, 1933 in Anderson, Indiana) is an American composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia,Alan Licht, ''Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians 1995-2020'', Blank Forms ...

, and

Glenn Branca Glenn may refer to: Name or surname * Glenn (name) * John Glenn, U.S. astronaut Cultivars * Glenn (mango) * a 6-row barley variety Places In the United States: * Glenn, California * Glenn County, California * Glenn, Georgia, a settleme ...

relate some of the influences of spectral music into their own work. Tenney's work has also influenced a number of composers such as Larry Polansky and

John Luther Adams John Luther Adams (born January 23, 1953) is an American composer whose music is inspired by nature, especially the landscapes of Alaska, where he lived from 1978 to 2014. His orchestral work '' Become Ocean'' was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize ...

. In the US, jazz saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman, and in Europe, French composer , have both introduced spectral techniques into the domain of jazz.

Notable works

Characteristic spectral pieces include: *

: ''Les espaces acoustiques'' (''Périodes'' and '' Partiels'') (1975) *

: '' Gondwana'' (1980) *

: '' Lonely Child'' (1980) Other pieces that utilise spectral ideas or techniques include: * Per Nørgård: ''Voyage into the Golden Screen'' (1968) *

: ''

Stimmung ''Stimmung'', for six vocalists and six microphones, is a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968 and commissioned by the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Köln. Its average length is seventy-four minutes, and it bears the work nu ...

'' (1968) *

: ''Clang'' and ''Quintext'' (1972) * Michaël Lévinas: ''Appels'' (1974) *

: ''Mémoire/Erosion'' (1976) *

: ''Vortex Temporum'' (1994-96) Post-spectral pieces include: *

John Chowning John M. Chowning (; born August 22, 1934 in Salem, New Jersey) is an American composer, musician, discoverer, and professor best known for his work at Stanford University, the founding of CCRMA - Center for Computer Research in Music and Acou ...

: ''Stria'' (1977) * Jonathan Harvey: '' Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco'' (1980) * Georg Friedrich Haas: '' in vain'' (2000) ''Stria'' and ''Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco'' are examples of

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...

Definition

Origins and history

Compositional technique

Composers

France

Germany and Romania

United States

Post-spectralism

Notable works

See also

Notes and references

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

External links