Contemporary Music Review

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Spectral music

Joshua Fineberg

To cite this article: Joshua Fineberg (2000) Spectral music, Contemporary Music Review, 19:2,
1-5, DOI: 10.1080/07494460000640221
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07494460000640221

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Contemporary Music Review 9 2000 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N.V.
2000, Vol. 19, Part 2, p. 1-5 Published by license under
Photocopying permitted by license only the Harwood Academic Publishers imprint,
part of Gordon and Breach Publishing,
a member of the Taylor & Francis Group.

Spectral Music
Joshua Fineberg

KEY WORDS: Spectral Music; Murail; Grisey; French M u s i c

Introduction

Through the articles of this issue as well as those in an upcoming

issue dedicated to the aesthetics and music of spectral composers
(Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 19, Pt. 3), I hope to provide a broad
overview of spectral music: its historic roots, composers, aesthetics and
techniques. The musical school referred to as 'Spectral Music' was begun
in France in the early seventies by Tristan Murail and G6rard Grisey and
has become one of the most important schools of composition in contem-
porary music. Its composers now cover three compositional generations
and a large variety of styles. They write for all types of instrumental
groupings and often take advantage of new technological possibilities
for enriching their musical palettes. The musical approach is profoundly
different from both structuralist (post-serial) approaches and hybrid
(neo-romantic or postmodern) aesthetics; however, the pieces remain
intimately linked to the interpretive tradition of Western instrumental
music. While tape pieces have been written by some 'spectral'
composers, their goal is not electro-acoustic music, but rather a new type
of instrumental music with different sounds, textures and evolutions.
The spectral movement has been centered in Paris and, as a result,
much of the material written about it is in French. I hope that these two
issues will provide English readers w h o have not been previously
exposed to the ideas of this movement with a coherent introduction while
still enlarging the knowledge of those already familiar with the music.
As with all schools of composition, spectral music has defined itself
slowly - - over the last 25 years - - and therefore most of the material
2 Joshua Fineberg

written about it has focused in isolation upon one or another of the com-
posers, without trying to trace the outline of a broader movement. While
individual authors in these two issues will still speak in personal terms
about specific subjects, the variety and juxtaposition of their views, along
with the recurring themes and ideas, should allow the reader to form an
image of the overall trend.

What is spectral music?

As with any purely musical classification, it is not really possible for a

textual definition to clearly define a musical context. Only through
extended familiarity not just with a type of music, b u t also with its
milieu, can one hope to develop meaningful categories that are more
than mere simplified labels. As will be seen, not all of the contributors
completely share m y definition of spectral music, and some have even
felt the need to create n e w subcategories. It is my hope that the totality of
these two issues will serve the reader as a means of approaching a more
accurate definition than an introduction can offer.
The term spectral music was coined by Hugues Dufourt. However, the
most pertinent remark for understanding its meaning was made by
Tristan Murail when he referred to spectral composition as an attitude
towards music and composition, rather than a set of techniques. This
attitude takes on broad aesthetic consequences instead of specific stylistic
ones. Thus spectral composers may have vastly different styles and some
might even prefer to reject the label. H o w e v e r , what these composers
share is a central belief that music is ultimately sound evolving in time.
Viewing music in this way, as a special case of the general phenomenon
of sound, facilitates these composers" use of the available knowledge in
the fields of acoustics and psychoacoustics within their music. They can
refine their understanding of what sound is, h o w it m a y be controlled
and what, ultimately, a listener will be able to perceive. This information,
w h e n applied musically, provides powerful n e w compositional tools.
Musical works, as a result, may be conceived much more closely to the
manner in which they will ultimately be perceived than would otherwise
be possible. Sounds and musical colors (timbres) can be sculpted in time
to produce musical effects. The panoply of methods and techniques
needed to create these effects and to manipulate sound in this w a y are,
however, secondary. They are simply the means of achieving a sonic end
and not a discourse with intellectual pretensions in their its right.
Combining and manipulating spectral materials in the same abstract
w a y s in which intervallic materials are treated (without taking into
account the precise nature of these materials and a listener's perceptual
 Spectral Music 3

capacities) does not yield music that I would classify as spectral. Spectral
composers may, in fact, choose points of departure or make use of mater-
ials that are not directly related to sonic phenomena. The manner in
which a spectral composer treats and develops his or her material will,
however, constantly take into consideration the sonic entity that is being
generated.
A score created by a composer with this spectral attitude serves simply
as a means of communicating the composer's sonic intentions to the
musicians. The score is not the actual musical work and any notational or
other innovations that may be present in spectral scores are attempts to
express the composer's intent more clearly with regards to the final real-
ization; the actual piece of music is the sonic result or at least would be in
an ideal performance. Thus, since neither the technical manipulations
used to generate and manipulate the musical material, nor the procedural
means of notating the score is central or indispensable to spectral compo-
sition (these aspects are in fact in constant mutation), we must instead
return to Murail's observation that, in fact, spectral music is neither about
techniques nor styles but, at its core, is simply a question of attitude.
Readers may still be convinced that I have avoided defining spectral
music, by discussing what the music is not, rather than what it is. The
affirmations that I might make (that the music has made color into a
central element of the musical discourse, often elevating it to the level of
the principal narrative thread; that orchestral fusion is often a main
feature of its surface texture, so that individual voices are subsumed in
the richness of the overall texture and color; that the basic sonic image is
often sonorous and resonant giving the music a sort of acoustic glow that
comes from the coherence - - in the domain of frequencies - - of the dif-
ferent constituent pitches; and even that this music simply sounds pro-
foundly different from other musics) are all both true and false. While
examples can support every one of these assertions, counter-examples
could certainly be found. These issues will treat composers whose music
is too diverse for any kind of blanket assertion to be true. The only true
constant for all these composers is that they consider music to ultimately
be sound and see composition as the sculpting in time of those sounds
that a listener will hear. All other shared attributes might change with
time, but this attitude towards music and musical perception is the true
hallmark of a spectral composer.

H o w to use t h e s e t w o i s s u e s

The structure of these two issues is different from that of usual journal
issues and requires a brief explanation. I have tried to create a useful
4 JoshuaFineberg

progression of articles, so that, while individual articles may be read sep-

arately, the effect of the two volumes will provide a coherent approach to
the breadth of the spectral movement. The division between the two
issues is in some sense arbitrary, but serves the purpose of allowing more
musical discussions to be freed from the burden of the historical or tech-
nical diversions, which form the necessary preamble to a meaningful dis-
cussion of the music. It additionally permits those important discussions
to be presented in a more organized and less repetitive manner.
The first of the two issues is dedicated to the history and techniques of
the spectral movement, it begins with an article by Julian Anderson
which presents an overview of the spectral movement, from its forebears
through its evolutions. Horia Suranu expands this perspective with an
article concerning the developments by Romanian composers of a music
which shares many aspects with the spectral music defined above and
has received little discussion in English-language journals. Steve
McAdams and Daniel Pressnitzer then place the acoustic and psychoa-
coustic ideas of the spectral movement in a scientific context, which
confirms some of spectral music's empirically derived notions while
refuting others. The last of major article of this first issue looks at an asso-
ciated issue: technology. Eric Daubresse and G6rard Assayag trace the
influence that technological developments have had on spectral com-
posers as well as the role of spectral composers in guiding those develop-
ments. Their article then looks in some detail at four pieces, realized at
IRCAM, by four different composers, that are revealing, both as to the
composers' use of technology within the context of instrumental music
and as to the creation of the electronic or electro-acoustic portions of
pieces for mixed formations.
What will be noticeable in all of these articles as well as those of the
second issue, especially for those acquainted with the existing literature
in French, is the lack of lengthy details in the explanations of spectral
techniques and calculations. While I believe that anyone truly interested
in this music must understand something of these calculations, I feel that
the larger picture of musical and aesthetic motivations can often become
lost in the minutiae of frequency calculations and conversions. Thus,
rather than have each contributor to treat the problem piece-meal, I have
provided two technical appendices. The first is a guide to the basic con-
cepts, ideas and techniques of spectral music. In this appendix, I have
tried to provide concise definitions of the concepts and techniques most
often used by spectral composers, including their calculational aspects.
This section gathers together many of these different aspects into one
location for easy reference when consulting any of the articles in either
issue or, more generally, for those desiring a more precise knowledge of
h o w these techniques are used. This appendix is complemented by a
 Spectral Music 5

second one which provides didactic, analytical examples of various tech-

niques, described in the first appendix, taken from works b y spectral
composers. These examples are often self-explanatory and I have tried to
minimize the textual commentary.
A third appendix is a bibliography for these issues and for spectral
music in general. Rather than print the often overlapping individual bib-
liographies that accompanied each article (almost all of the articles
referred back to many of the same sources, the majority of which are in
French and require some minimal annotations for English-speaking
readers), an overall bibliography has been compiled for the two issues
with some annotations concerning the commonly cited sources and sub-
sections for the sources relating to only one of the articles.
The second issue is dedicated to the aesthetics and music of the spec-
tral movement. It begins with very short prefatory articles, by the
eminent composers G6rard Grisey, Tristan Murail and Jonathan Harvey.
These short essays focus on general trends without the distractions
inherent to a longer, more detailed text. Grisey and Murail, as the
founders of the spectral movement, have a unique perspective concern-
ing its historical evolution and future directions. Jonathan Harvey's
article is important precisely because he is not a part of the movement,
but has been an interested observer since its very beginnings. His article
addresses the importance of the spectral ideas to composers who have no
interest in, or desire to embrace, the details of spectral music, but w h o
nonetheless must confront their implications (albeit within the contexts
of their own musical worlds).
An article by Claudy Malherbe offers a unique perspective - - tracing
the parallels that exist between the impressionist movement in painting
and the spectral movement in music, in spite of the century that sepa-
rates them chronologically. The next group of articles are more strictly
musicological and are more detailed, referring at some length to specific
composers and specific pieces. The two progenitors of the movement
Murail and Grisey are the subjects of the articles by Claude Ledoux and
Pierre-Albert Castenet, respectively. These articles trace the aesthetic
origins and evolutions of these two central figures. Damien Pousset's
article discusses the diversification of the movement as it moves down to
new generations of composers and becomes less personally identified
with Murail and Grisey. He even goes so far as to suggest the emergence
of a 'post-spectral' movement. (For me, however, this is simply a ques-
tion of how narrowly one defines the term spectral.)
Relevant portions of the bibliography are also printed in the second
issue.