About - "The Role of texture in French spectral music" by Kari E Besharse

Chapter 1

'For centuries, composers have been manipulating the element of texture as a means of shaping formal development in there works. For many twentieth century composers, timbre and texture have become fundamental elements in the shaping of form and structure. The composers of the French spectral school have created an unprecedented situation in the history of Western classical music, where the minute acoustical details of a given sound become the basic materials of their works. By analysing the acoustic qualities of a pre-existing sound, an entire piece can be “composed out” of this data. The element of texture in French Spectral Music expresses the structure of an analysed sound both vertically and temporally, and is closely linked with the exploration and deployment of spectral data. Each composer builds a variety of “textures types” from these basic spectral materials, some which are standard types in the Western classical tradition and others that are unique to the twentieth century.

Critics of spectral music often complain that spectral composers simply “orchestrate” a set of data from an analysed sound file. However, the reality of spectral composition is much more  complicated than this, and any close examination of a spectral score will demonstrate the true compositional skill of the composer and the complexity of ideas that they put in play. Previous analyses of spectral music haver focused on an approach that emphasises the pitch-entered notion of a sound to create spectral harmonies While incorporating spectral data is an important aspect of spectral music, not enough emphasis has been placed on the way these individual sounds are grouped together into globally perceived textures, and how these textures are shaped in time. Gérard Grisey (1946 - 1998) and Tristan Murail (b. 1947) wanted the listener to be able to follow the progressive unfolding of sound in their works from moment to moment. This gradual unfolding of spectral sonorities causes minute changes in listener perception, which are tracked globally. Composers of the spectral movement have done this by creating textures that evolve slowly or by effecting transitions between different textures types.” (p. 1 & 2)

"Often spectral music moves between a world of pure sound and timbre which us perceived globally, and a world of more traditional musical textures emphasise groupings of voices in familiar ways. In works by second-generation spectral composers such as Philippe Hurel (b. 1955) and Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952), texture exist on a continuum between these levels, and movement between the two extremes ultimately affects the evolution of their works.” (p. 3)


“The spectral movement began in several different locations in Europe during the 1970’s, with independent investigations simultaneously occurring by many different composers. In the most basic sense, the spectral movement representes a body of techniques and methods that explore the acoustic properties of sound such as time, partial content, intensity and duration. Most of the composers of the spectral school do not particularly care for the spectral label, but it is commonly used to describe composers who use spectral techniques in order to analyse the inner details of sound and compose with that data. Tristan Murail frequently refers to the spectral label as an attitude rather than a style or school. Gérard Grisey, preferred the term liminal, to emphasise the crossing of perceptual thresholds in his music. In spectral music, the boundaries between traditional musical parameters (pitch, timbre, intensity and duration) are blurred, and techniques that draw attention to the transitory zones between parameters create Manu local and large scale processes in spectral works. For example, due to the ability to analyse specific sounds, the overlap between harmony and timbre has become visible and the composers of the spectral movement manipulate this perceptual threshold.

The roots of the spectral movement can be traced down there main paths: (1) an investigation of the relationship between music and the physical laws of acoustics, (2) an interest in using timbre as a primary element in music composition, and (3) the development of new technologies.” (p.4 & 5)

"The Craft of Musical Composition (1942) by Paul Hindemith, has been cited as a direct influence on Gérard Grisey. Hindemith grounded his harmonic system on a series of scales derived from the overtone series and used the concepts of sum and difference tones. Hindemith felt that the use of natural acoustic phenomenon made his system vastly superior to the artificiality of the twelve-tone system." (p. 6)

"Oliver Messiaen directly influenced the spectral movement because of his role as reacher and mentor to Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey. Messiaen was also interested in linking musical ideas with natural phenomena, and his ideas more than likely influenced the young composers associates with spectral music. Messiaen was also one of the first to emphasise the connection between timbre and harmony through his transcription of bird song. He realised that in order to transcribe bird song accurately, it was necessary to notate a complex of sounds, rather than just a single melodic line. Additionally, Messiaen emphasised harmony in his compositions, which placed his teachings in direct contradiction with the teachings of post-serialist composers. Some of his harmonies were created from the harmonic series; for example, ‘the resonance chord’ consist of the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th and 15th partials of a fundamental pitch.” (p. 7)

“Varèse’s philosophies and ideas forecast many of the concepts that continued to develop later in the century in various movements, including spectral music. He was one to the first to envision music based on the interactions of timbres and textures. In the The Liberation of Sound (1936) Varèse wrote of a music based on ‘the movement of sound-masses, of shifting planes…which take the place of linear counterpoint.’ Varèse was also a proponent of the harmonic series and the basic nature of sound including inharmonic noise and acoustical phenomena. << Not only will the harmonic possibilities of the overtones be revealed in all their splendour, but the use of certain interferences created by the partials will represent an appreciable contribution. The never-before-thought-of use of the inferior resultants and of the differential and additional sounds may also be expected. An entirely new magic of sound! >>” (p. 9)

“After hearing Scelsi’s Anahit for violin and orchestra, Grisey states that he ‘immediately liked his music in which I saw a confirmation of my own discoveries concerning the internal tension of sound and the extreme dynamics that results from it.’ Scelsi explored timbre by use of extended techniques and microtonal pitch inflections. By using extremely limited pitch material, Scelsi was able to draw attention to the timbral surface of his music, and to create a type of music where perception of small timbral surface of his music, and to create a type of music where perception of small timbral differences is essential to understanding the unfolding of the piece. Scelsi’s Trio a Cordes (1958), Four Pieces for Orchestra on a Single Note (1959), and several of his string quartets emphasise slow timbral development and use extremely limited pitch material. Murail has notes ‘this style of playing tends to allow the fusion of instrumental timbres (or at leas very precise control of tribes and dynamics), which was necessary in our music to build a global sound from many individual sounds.’ In Scelsi’s music, the duration of events and process is more important than rhythm and meter.  Murail calls this smooth time, a time based on continuous transformations and without abrupt changes or sections.” (p.10 & 11)

“Where Scelsi’s music provided a more introverted way of sculpting sound in time, Ligeti’s music exemplifies a macrocosm - a way of combining many individual timbres into large-scale textures which are heard and shaped in time by changes in their global qualities rather than by the interplay of individual lines. Ligeti was a proven source of inspiration for Gérard Grisey, and Ligeti’s textures and micro polyphonies provide a direct percursor to the spectral technique of orchestral synthesis. According to French composer and musicologist, Jérôme Baillet, “the music of Ligeti continues the privileged model and the decisive influence on the first mature works of Gérard Grisey. The slow rates of change that are present in parts of Ligeti’s works and the development of textures also inspired Tristan Murail and Kaija Saariaho. (Julian Anderson, “ A provisional History”) The surface characteristic of much ‘soundness’ music and early spectral music have a lot in common. As Paul Griffiths has written, one important innovation in Ligeti’s music is the cluster, “the static band of sound in which volume and instrumentation stay for a long time the same, and in which the sense of harmony is largely destroyed by having every note within a certain range sound at once” (Paul Griffiths, György Ligeti - London: Robson Books, 1983 page 22). Besides the cluster developed in Atmospheres, Griffiths describers several other textures in Ligeti’s music including: << Most of these early pieces made use of simulations of electronic systems such as ring-modulation and echoes or the harmonic displacement or compression of abstract harmonic series. In the first piece that captured my personal style - Mémoire-érosion (1976) for French horn and instrumental ensemble - the main model is a feed-back system. The piece is not really spectral, in that there are no spectral in it. However I tried to take into account spectra and timbres of the instruments in constructing the harmony for certain passages…. And to develop an auditory continuum between timbre and harmony.” (Tristan Murai, “After thoughts” contemporary music review 19, no 3 (2000) pages 6 - 7).

“Julian Anderson also points out that the works of Ligeti and Cerha were still based ‘on traditional forms of contrast: low/high, loud/soft, slow/fast, etc’, parameters that the spectralists would prefer to smooth over through gradual transition rather than sudden change.” (p. 13)

“In 1948, Henri Schaeffer created the first work of musique concrète, which were based on the use and manipulation of recorded sounds, without the use of a musical score. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768 - 1830) discovered that any periodic waveform could be broken down into one or more sine waves. In the early days of spectral music, before efficient computer algorithms were available to generate complex, detailed analyses, other means were used to get at the data within sound. For example, Grisey used a sonogram of a trombone playing a low Eb in his composition Partials (1976). Currently, most people involved with spectral analysis on the computer use the Fast Fourier Transform, which can effectively analyse the frequency information in a small selected portion of an audio file.” (p. 14 & 15)

“Many others techniques have been borrowed from electronic music to manipulate spectral information. Grisey, Murail and many others composers have employed techniques of filtering, ring-modulation, and frequency modulation in their works from the seventies and beyond. For example, Grisey used the technique of filtering in Modulations (1976-77), by analysing the effect on the spectrum of a trombone playing a low E while using different mutes. Grisey also uses the techniques of ring-modulation in Partiels and Modulations. The technique of frequency modulation is the basis for generating formal development in Tristan Murail’s Gondawana.

As mentioned above, Gérard Grisey was especially concerned with the ideas of time and duration. He makes a distinction between macrophony, the exterior details of sound, and microphony, which can only be heard if a sound is slowed down or stretched out. Grisey has used the metaphor of a zoom lens on a camera. By zooming in on an object, you can see details that were hidden when viewed from a distance. Grisey notes the importance of electronics and computer technology in making this possible: ‘Form some years, electronics have allowed us to listen to the interior details (microphonique) of sound. The same interior of sound, which, was hidden and clouded by several centuries of essentially macrophonic musical practice, is finally delivered to our wonderment. On the other hand, the computer allows us to approach timbres unheard of until this day and to analyse their composition very finely… it is finally possible to explore the interior of sound by stretching out its duration and to voyage from the macrophonic to the microphonic at variable speeds.

This philosophy on time has had a great impact on the formal flow of world and on the shaping of textures in spectral music. In Philippe Hurel’s Six miniatures, textures of slow timbral blocks speed up and become polyphonic textures. Such a process exemplifies Grisey’s voyage from stretched-out time (the microphonic) to normal time (the macrophonic).

Stockhausen’s use of ‘spectral’ ideas in Stimmung (which influenced Grisey), and Per Norgaard’s Voyage into the Golden Screen (1968) predating the French spectral movement.” (p. 16 to 19)


As has been mentioned above, spectral composers saw harmony and timbre as two aspects of the same phenomenon and wanted to control the finest degrees of change by blurring the division between timbre and harmony. Instead of pointillism, spectral music featured long sections of slow continuous development and contained few ruptures and interruptions. However, Murail notes that small amounts of contrast and discontinuity exist even in Grisey’s Partials, considered the most orthodox spectral piece. Over time, this trend toward introducing more complexity has only continued. According to Murail, ‘in Gondwana (1980) for orchestra, which is considered a typical piece from this period, there is continuity, but there are also ruptures and many other types of transition: passing of thresholds. Reversing the direction of motion, triggering of ‘catastrophic’ changes, abbreviate processes where only some of the steps in a process are present.” (p. 19 & 20)



"French theorist Damien Pousset strongly proposes the label of post-spectral to specify the works of this younger generation writing ‘and some people, indeed, speak of a Second generation of spectral music. However, it seems to us rather arbitrary, if not incorrect, to label this trend today as <<spectral music>> which, although undeniably drawing on the same sources as spectral music, differs significantly in its contrapuntal re-appropriation of timbre.’

Nevertheless, I believe that composers such Marc-André Dalbavie, Kaija Saariaho, and Philippe Hurel are part of the spectral tradition because they incorporate much of the same ideology as Murail and Grisey.” (p. 21 & 22)

“Philippe Hurle says, ‘more than the harmonic problems of the spectrum, of stretched or contracted time, of microphony or of macrophony, of thresholds, which are the mark of Grisey, it is the melodic, rhythmic, and formal consequences of the spectral adventure which stimulate the younger composers.” (p. 23)

“Although one can point to instances of ‘spectral polyphonies’ in the music of Grisey and melodic lines in Murail’s work, in general this type of writing was avoided. So, during the eighties, Grisey and Murail began to reincorporate melody counterpoint and rhythm. The younger composers allowed these elements from the start and also welcomed other influences outside of orthodox spectral ideology. Their works also show the influence of serial music, as well as the incorporation of over techniques and stylistic influences, as opposed to being radically different or new. For example, Philippe Hurel was trained in serialism, and incorporates jazz rhythms into abstract contexts. Hurel sites jazz as a major influence and borrows ideas from it to shape the rhythmic development of a work.

<< Like many composers of recent generations, I have also passed through the ‘filter’ of other music and was influenced by it. If certain composers have learned a great deal from ethnic music, for me it is jazz instead that has played and continues to play this role. It doesn’t directly affect my work, but I need to listen to it to “recharge my batteries”, if I may say, in the domain of rhythm. I do not use jazz to write my rhythmic polyphony, that is the result of a detailed, patient calculation, but its influence is apparent for the work with rhythmic patterns that destined to be perceived as such. >>

Hurel also enjoys the spontaneous vibrancy and energy of jazz that was absent from early spectral music.
Spectral music has become a long way from where it began in the mid-seventies. However, throughout the evolution of spectral music, timbre and texture have remained of central importance to the composers working within the style, and are essential to the perception of spectral music by the listener.” (p. 25 & 26)