Spectral music - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Spectral music is a musical composition

Musical composition

Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...

practice where compositional decisions are often informed by the analysis of sound spectra. Computer-based sound spectrum analysis

Spectrum analysis

Spectrum, also known as emission spectrochemical analysis, is the original scientific method of charting and analyzing the chemical properties of matter and gases by looking at the bands in their optical spectrum...

using tools like DFT

Discrete Fourier transform

In mathematics, the discrete Fourier transform is a specific kind of discrete transform, used in Fourier analysis. It transforms one function into another, which is called the frequency domain representation, or simply the DFT, of the original function...

, FFT

Fast Fourier transform

A fast Fourier transform is an efficient algorithm to compute the discrete Fourier transform and its inverse. "The FFT has been called the most important numerical algorithm of our lifetime ." There are many distinct FFT algorithms involving a wide range of mathematics, from simple...

, and spectrogram

Spectrogram

A spectrogram is a time-varying spectral representation that shows how the spectral density of a signal varies with time. Also known as spectral waterfalls, sonograms, voiceprints, or voicegrams, spectrograms are used to identify phonetic sounds, to analyse the cries of animals; they were also...

s. The spectral approach focuses on manipulating the features identified through this analysis, interconnecting them, and transforming them.

The spectral approach originated in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

in the early 1970s, and techniques were developed, and later refined, primarily at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique

IRCAM

IRCAM is a European institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organizationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris...

, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, with the Ensemble l'Itinéraire

Ensemble l'Itinéraire

The Ensemble l'Itinéraire is one of the main European ensemble of contemporary music, known in particular in spectral music. Spectral music alters "timbres by assembling orchestral masses." It was founded in January 1973 by Michaël Lévinas, Tristan Murail, Hugues Dufourt, Gérard Grisey and Roger...

, by composers such as Gerard Grisey

Gérard Grisey

Gérard Grisey was a French composer of contemporary music.-Biography:Gérard Grisey was born in Belfort, France on 17 June 1946. He studied at the Trossingen Conservatory in Germany from 1963 to 1965 before entering the Conservatoire de Paris...

and Tristan Murail

Tristan Murail

Tristan Murail is a French composer. His father, Gérard Murail, is a poet and his mother, Marie-Thérèse Barrois, a journalist. One of his brothers, Lorris Murail, and his younger sister Elvire Murail, aka Moka, also write, and his younger sister Marie-Aude Murail is a French children's writer...

. Murail has described spectral music as an aesthetic rather than a style, not so much a set of techniques as an attitude – that "music is ultimately sound evolving in time". Julian Anderson

Julian Anderson

Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.-Biography:Anderson studied at Westminster School, then with John Lambert at the Royal College of Music, with Alexander Goehr at Cambridge University, privately with Tristan Murail in Paris, and on courses given by Olivier Messiaen,...

indicates that a number of major composers associated with spectralism consider the term inappropriate, misleading, and reductive. More recently (2003) the Istanbul Spectral Music Conference redefined the term "spectral music" to encompass any music that foregrounds timbre

Timbre

In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...

as an important element of structure or musical language.

Composers

The term "spectral music" was coined by Hugues Dufourt

Hugues Dufourt

Hugues Dufourt is a French composer and philosopher associated with the Spectral school of composition. Born in Lyon on September 28 1943, Dufourt studied piano and composition at the Geneva Conservatory....

in an article written in 1979 and first published two years later. Dufourt, a trained philosopher and composer, was the author of several important articles on spectral music.

The term was initially associated with composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

s of the French Ensemble l'Itinéraire

Ensemble l'Itinéraire

, including Dufourt, Gérard Grisey

Gérard Grisey

, Tristan Murail

Tristan Murail

, and Michael Levinas, and the German Feedback group, principally Johannes Fritsch

Johannes Fritsch

Johannes G. Fritsch 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 Knapp...

, Mesias Maiguashca

Mesías Maiguashca

Mesías Maiguashca , is an Ecuadorian composer, an advocate of the new music, especially electroacoustic music.-Biography:...

, Peter Eötvös

Peter Eötvös

Péter Eötvös is a Hungarian composer and conductor.Eötvös was born in Odorheiu Secuiesc/Székelyudvarhely, Szeklerland, Transylvania . He studied composition in Budapest and Cologne. From 1962, he composed for film in Hungary. Eötvös played regularly with the Stockhausen Ensemble between 1968 and...

, Claude Vivier

Claude Vivier

-Biography:Born to unknown parents in Montreal, Vivier was adopted at the age of three by a poor French-Canadian family. From the age of thirteen, he attended boarding schools run by the Marist Brothers, a religious order that prepared young boys for a vocation in the priesthood. At the age of...

, and Clarence Barlow

Clarence Barlow

Clarence Barlow is a composer of classical and electroacoustic works.-Biography:Barlow was born in Calcutta, a member of the anglophone minority, of British and Portuguese descent...

. Features of spectralism are also seen independently in the contemporary work of Romanian composers Ştefan Niculescu

Stefan Niculescu

Ştefan Niculescu was a Romanian composer.Niculescu was born in Moreni, Dâmbovita. He was credited with introducing his own brand of heterophony, a technique based on superimposing melodic material onto variations of itself in order to create textures that are propelled by thematic energy as well...

, Călin Ioachimescu, Horatiu Radulescu

Horatiu Radulescu

Horaţiu Rădulescu was a Romanian-French composer, best known for the spectral technique of composition.-Biography:Rădulescu was born in Bucharest, where he studied the violin privately with Nina Alexandrescu, a pupil of Enescu, and later studied composition at the Bucharest Academy of Music ,...

, and Iancu Dumitrescu

Iancu Dumitrescu

Iancu Dumitrescu is a Romanian avant-garde composer.- Life and works :Dumitrescu received a master's degree in composition in Bucharest; Alfred Mendelssohn was among his teachers...

.

Composers building on the spectral idea today include Joshua Fineberg

Joshua Fineberg

Joshua Fineberg is an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Biography:Joshua Fineberg was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He began his musical studies at the age of five...

, Magnus Lindberg

Magnus Lindberg

Magnus Lindberg is a Finnish composer and pianist. He is currently the composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic.-Education:...

, Ana-Maria Avram

Ana-Maria Avram

Ana-Maria Avram is a Romanian composer affiliated with the spectral music style. She represents with Iancu Dumitrescu the Hyper-Spectral trend in contemporary avant-garde music....

, Kaija Saariaho

Kaija Saariaho

Kaija Saariaho is a Finnish composer.Kaija Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she has lived since 1982. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by...

, Phillippe Leroux, Phillippe Hurel, Fabien Lévy

Fabien Lévy

-Biography:Lévy was born in Paris, France. After having been a jazz pianist, he studied composition with Gérard Grisey, orchestration with Marc-André Dalbavie and ethnomusicology with Gilles Leothaud at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1996 to 2000. In 2001, he went to Berlin on the DAAD Artist...

and Julian Anderson

Julian Anderson

Origins

Early traces can be found in Hermann von Helmholtz

Hermann von Helmholtz

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science...

's On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music. Early in the twentieth century, Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...

published in 1907 "Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst" (later translated as "Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music"), describing (amongst other things) microtonal music

Microtonal music

Microtonal music is music using microtones—intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave.-Terminology:...

. Along similar lines, Henry Cowell

Henry Cowell

Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...

published in 1930 New Musical Resources, establishing a relation between acoustics, perception and composition.

Proto-spectral composers include Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy

Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

, Edgard Varèse

Edgard Varèse

Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....

, Giacinto Scelsi

Giacinto Scelsi

Giacinto Scelsi , Count of Ayala Valva was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French....

, Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

, György Ligeti

György Ligeti

György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...

, Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...

, and Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

. Theoretical predecessors include some of the composers mentioned and Harry Partch

Harry Partch

Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.-Early...

, Henry Cowell, and Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

.

Romanian folk music, as collected by Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

(1904-1918), with its acoustic scales derived directly from resonance and natural wind instruments like "buciume", "tulnice", and "cimpoi" inspired several spectral composers: Vieru, Stroe, Niculescu, Dumitrescu and Nemescu .

This music began to emerge in the 1970s both in France amongst the composers of the Groupe de l'Itinéraire, influenced by work of composers such as Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

and Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

, in Germany amongst the members of the Feedback group in Cologne, and in Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

, with composers around Hyperion Ensemble

Hyperion Ensemble

Hyperion Ensemble is a chamber music ensemble from Romania, based in Bucharest. It was founded in 1976 by composer Iancu Dumitrescu and specializes in the performance of contemporary classical music, more particular it is the main promoter in Romania of the Spectral Music trend.Hyperion performed...

, all of whom created harmonies and orchestrations based on the harmonic and inharmonic partials contained in complex sounds, such as multiple-stop organ tones, bell

Bell (instrument)

A bell is a simple sound-making device. The bell is a percussion instrument and an idiophone. Its form is usually a hollow, cup-shaped object, which resonates upon being struck...

sounds, and bird song

Bird song

Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear. In ornithology and birding, songs are distinguished by function from calls.-Definition:The distinction between songs and calls is based upon...

.

Spectral music represented an alternative to the prestige of the serialists

Serialism

In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...

and post-serialists as the vanguard of serious musical composition and compositional technique.

Julian Anderson

Julian Anderson

considers Danish composer Per Nørgård

Per Nørgård

Per Nørgård is a Danish composer.-Biography:Nørgård studied with Vagn Holmboe at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and subsequently with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. To begin with, he was strongly influenced by the Nordic styles of Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen and Vagn Holmboe...

's Voyage into the Golden Screen for chamber orchestra (1968) to be the first "properly instrumental piece of spectral composition".

A further development is the emergence of hyper-spectralism in the work of Iancu Dumitrescu

Iancu Dumitrescu

Iancu Dumitrescu is a Romanian avant-garde composer.- Life and works :Dumitrescu received a master's degree in composition in Bucharest; Alfred Mendelssohn was among his teachers...

and Ana-Maria Avram

Ana-Maria Avram

Ana-Maria Avram is a Romanian composer affiliated with the spectral music style. She represents with Iancu Dumitrescu the Hyper-Spectral trend in contemporary avant-garde music....

Compositional technique

The "panoply of methods and techniques" used are secondary, being only "the means of achieving a sonic end" . The composition of spectral music is concerned with timbral

Timbre

structures, especially when decisions about timbre are informed by a mathematical analysis known as a Fast Fourier Transform

Fast Fourier transform

(FFT). FFTs can be used to provide graphs that illustrate details about the timbral structure of a sound, which might not be initially apparent to the ear. FFTs can also be used in creating sounds with computers, in order to transform the timbre of a sound in various ways, such as creating hybrid timbres through a collection of processes known as cross-synthesis, or applying a room reverberation to a sound through a process known as convolution

Convolution

In mathematics and, in particular, functional analysis, convolution is a mathematical operation on two functions f and g, producing a third function that is typically viewed as a modified version of one of the original functions. Convolution is similar to cross-correlation...

. If the music is to be performed by live musicians (as opposed to being played electronically via computer through speakers), then these novel effects must be translated into an extended traditional notation that can be read and executed by a human being with some additional training. The fine gradations of pitch are usually rounded off to the nearest quarter-tone or even eighth-tone—dividing the octave

Octave

In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...

into 24 or 48 discrete pitches, instead of the usual twelve

Musical scale

In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...

for Western music

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

. Temporal aspects and dynamics are subject to similarly fine controls, creating additional notational hurdles.

Formal concepts important in spectral music include process, though "significantly different from those of minimalist music

Minimalist music

Minimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School....

" in that all musical parameters may be affected . These processes most often achieve a smooth transition through interpolation

Interpolation

In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, interpolation is a method of constructing new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points....

.

The Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

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

Timbre

and non-harmonic musical components

Aspect of music

An aspect of music is any characteristic, dimension, or element taken as a part or component of music.-European music:The traditional musicological or European-influenced aspects of music often listed are those elements given primacy in European-influenced classical music, so 7 basic elements of...

(e.g., rhythm

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

, tempo

Tempo

In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...

, dynamics

Dynamics (music)

In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic or functional . The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics...

). Furthermore sound is treated phenomenologically, i.e. NOT as an object of scientific study but as a dynamic presence to be encountered in listening. 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'.

Notable works

Characteristic spectral pieces include Gérard Grisey

Gérard Grisey

's Partiels
Partiels
Partiels is a defining piece of Spectral music by Gérard Grisey whose opening is derived from an electronic sonogram analysis of the attack of a low E2 on a trombone. This spectrum is orchestrally synthesized through the assignation of different instruments to each partial in such a way as to...

, Tristan Murail

Tristan Murail

's Gondwana
Gondwana (composition)
Gondwana is a defining musical composition of spectral music for large orchestra composed by Tristan Murail using simulated synthesis to create a harmonic interpolation between an orchestrally synthesized chord derived from a simulated bell sound and a chord derived from a trombone sound...

, Stockhausen's Stimmung
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 number 24 in the composer's catalog...

, and Jean-Claude Risset

Jean-Claude Risset

Jean-Claude Risset is a French composer, best known for his pioneering contributions to computer music. He is a former student of André Jolivet and former co-worker of Max Mathews at Bell Labs....

's Mutations (1969). John Chowning

John Chowning

John M. Chowning is an American composer, musician, inventor, and professor best known for his work at Stanford University and his invention of FM synthesis while there.-Contribution:...

's Stria (1977), and Jonathan Harvey

Jonathan Harvey (composer)

Jonathan Harvey is a British composer. He has held teaching positions at universities and music conservatories in Europe and the USA and is frequently invited to teach in summer schools around the world.-Life:...

's Mortuos Plango Vivos Voco (1980), are examples of electronic pieces that embrace spectral techniques. The timbral and spectral explorations of the Romanian school are represented by Iancu Dumitrescu

Iancu Dumitrescu

Iancu Dumitrescu is a Romanian avant-garde composer.- Life and works :Dumitrescu received a master's degree in composition in Bucharest; Alfred Mendelssohn was among his teachers...

's Cogito/Trompe l'Oeil, Ioachimescu's Concerto for Trombone, Contrabass, and Orchestra, Horatiu Radulescu

Horatiu Radulescu

's Clepsydra and Octavian Nemescu

Octavian Nemescu

Octavian Nemescu is a Romanian composer of orchestral, chamber, choral, electroacoustic, multimedia, metamusic, imaginary, and ritual works that have been heard throughout Europe and elsewhere. He is the father of Romanian film director Cristian Nemescu.-External links:*...

's Quinde cimor tuoram.

External links

French Wikipedia article on Spectral music (or the "Spectral school", as they tend to call it)
IRCAM page on Dufourt
IRCAM page on Joshua Fineberg
IRCAM page on Philippe Hurel
IRCAM page on Philippe Leroux
IRCAM page on Marco Stroppa

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Composers

Origins

Compositional technique

Notable works

See also

External links