This thesis presents the musical composition Elucide, scored for a chamber ensemble of ten players. The work builds upon concepts and compositional methods that are central to the spectral approach to composition, established by such composers as Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Hugues Dufourt. This musical genre is characterized by a focus on the acoustic properties of sound, a concern that is typically reflected both in rich and colourful musical textures, as well as in the conceptual foundations of compositional processes. It is often the case that spectral composers will refer to computer analyses of acoustic phenomena during the pre-compositional stages of a work’s development, using these data to generate the piece’s raw materials and to inform structural decisions. Although the spectral approach is rooted in the perceptual appreciation of sonic phenomena, the manner in which analysis data are obtained and applied can encourage a range of listening postures, potentially leading the listener towards both perceptually- and semantically-oriented hearings. Furthermore, this music displays varying symbolic facets stemming from the poetic idea of a musical composition unfolding from the internal structure of sonic materials. The interplay of these dynamics raises a number of issues that are inherent in the compositional application of spectral information; this thesis first examines the spectral endeavor from a philosophical perspective, and then goes on to demonstrate the ways in which Elucide develops from and comments upon these issues. In order to explicitly engage these dynamics in a musical composition, I developed a set of software tools using the graphical programming environment "OpenMusic". These tools provided raw musical materials that were employed at various levels during the compositional process. While the early stages of the work aim to draw aural connections between the overtone structures of source sounds and musical structures, individual spectral elements are progressively divorced from their acoustic origins and woven into musical semantic patterns over the course of the piece. In its elucidation of the relationships between perceptual phenomena and musical semantics, therefore, Elucide represents a broader exploration of the mechanisms by which the human mind finds meaning in sensory information.

This thesis presents the musical composition Elucide, scored for a chamber ensemble of ten players. The work builds upon concepts and compositional methods that are central to the spectral approach to composition, established by such composers as Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Hugues Dufourt. This musical genre is characterized by a focus on the acoustic properties of sound, a concern that is typically reflected both in rich and colourful musical textures, as well as in the conceptual foundations of compositional processes. It is often the case that spectral composers will refer to computer analyses of acoustic phenomena during the pre-compositional stages of a work’s development, using these data to generate the piece’s raw materials and to inform structural decisions. Although the spectral approach is rooted in the perceptual appreciation of sonic phenomena, the manner in which analysis data are obtained and applied can encourage a range of listening postures, potentially leading the listener towards both perceptually- and semantically-oriented hearings. Furthermore, this music displays varying symbolic facets stemming from the poetic idea of a musical composition unfolding from the internal structure of sonic materials. The interplay of these dynamics raises a number of issues that are inherent in the compositional application of spectral information; this thesis first examines the spectral endeavor from a philosophical perspective, and then goes on to demonstrate the ways in which Elucide develops from and comments upon these issues. In order to explicitly engage these dynamics in a musical composition, I developed a set of software tools using the graphical programming environment "OpenMusic". These tools provided raw musical materials that were employed at various levels during the compositional process. While the early stages of the work aim to draw aural connections between the overtone structures of source sounds and musical structures, individual spectral elements are progressively divorced from their acoustic origins and woven into musical semantic patterns over the course of the piece. In its elucidation of the relationships between perceptual phenomena and musical semantics, therefore, Elucide represents a broader exploration of the mechanisms by which the human mind finds meaning in sensory information.

This thesis presents the musical composition Elucide, scored for a chamber ensemble of ten players. The work builds upon concepts and compositional methods that are central to the spectral approach to composition, established by such composers as Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Hugues Dufourt. This musical genre is characterized by a focus on the acoustic properties of sound, a concern that is typically reflected both in rich and colourful musical textures, as well as in the conceptual foundations of compositional processes. It is often the case that spectral composers will refer to computer analyses of acoustic phenomena during the pre-compositional stages of a work’s development, using these data to generate the piece’s raw materials and to inform structural decisions. Although the spectral approach is rooted in the perceptual appreciation of sonic phenomena, the manner in which analysis data are obtained and applied can encourage a range of listening postures, potentially leading the listener towards both perceptually- and semantically-oriented hearings. Furthermore, this music displays varying symbolic facets stemming from the poetic idea of a musical composition unfolding from the internal structure of sonic materials. The interplay of these dynamics raises a number of issues that are inherent in the compositional application of spectral information; this thesis first examines the spectral endeavor from a philosophical perspective, and then goes on to demonstrate the ways in which Elucide develops from and comments upon these issues. In order to explicitly engage these dynamics in a musical composition, I developed a set of software tools using the graphical programming environment "OpenMusic". These tools provided raw musical materials that were employed at various levels during the compositional process. While the early stages of the work aim to draw aural connections between the overtone structures of source sounds and musical structures, individual spectral elements are progressively divorced from their acoustic origins and woven into musical semantic patterns over the course of the piece. In its elucidation of the relationships between perceptual phenomena and musical semantics, therefore, Elucide represents a broader exploration of the mechanisms by which the human mind finds meaning in sensory information. / Arts, Faculty of / Music, School of / Graduate

This dissertation considers the music and technical practice of composers affiliated with French spectralism, including Hugues Dufourt, Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, Jean-Claude Risset, and Kaija Saariaho. They regularly described their work, which was attuned to the transformative experiences that technologies of electronic sound production and reproduction could inspire in listeners, using metaphoric appeals to construction: to designing new sounds or exploring new illusory aural phenomena. To navigate a nascent but fast-expanding world of electronic and computer music, the spectralists appealed to physical musical attributes including gesture, space, and source-cause identification. Fascinated by gradual timbral transformations, they structured some of their pieces to invite speculative causal listening even while seeking to push it to expressive extremes. I hypothesize that, much as the immersive technology of the cinema can create the illusory feeling of flight in viewers, electronic music can inspire listeners to have experiences in excess of their physical capabilities. Those feelings are possible because listening can be understood as empathetic and embodied, drawing on a listener’s embodied and ecological sensorimotor knowledge and musical imagery alongside referential, semiotic, and cultural aspects of music. One way that listeners can engage with sounds is by imagining how they would create them: what objects would be used, what kind of gestures would they perform, how much exertion would be required, what space would they inhabit. I cite recent research in psychoacoustics to argue that timbre indexes material, gesture, and affect in music listening. Technologies of sound production and reproduction allow for the manipulation of these tendencies by enabling composers to craft timbres that mimic, stretch, or subvert the timbres of real objects. Those electronic technologies also suggest manipulations to composers, by virtue of their design affordances, and perform an epistemological broadening by providing insight into the malleability of human perceptual modes. I illustrate these claims with analytic examples from Murail’s Ethers (1978), Saariaho’s Verblendungen (1984), and Grisey’s Les Chants de l’Amour (1984), relating an embodied and corporeal account of my hearing and linking it to compositional and technological features of spectral music.

This document provides a short history and analysis of Gerard Grisey's Anubis et Nout, written for Harry Sparnaay in 1983 and dedicated to Claude Vivier, a friend and colleague of Grisey's who was murdered that year. Although Anubis et Nout is originally for solo contrabass clarinet, Grisey also created a version in 1990 for Claude Delangle, to be played on either baritone or bass saxophone. Both versions are published by Ricordi.In the first two chapters, I present a brief introduction to the life and music of Gerard Grisey, as well as an introduction to Claude Vivier. In chapter three, I give a chronology of Anubis et Nout; the history presented here is largely informed by interviews conducted by the author with instrumentalists Jean-Noel Crocq, Claude Delangle, Harry Sparnaay, and Taimur Sullivan. The remainder of the document is an original analysis of each movement of Anubis et Nout. The analysis includes discussion and examples of subharmonicity, harmonicity, time concepts presented in Grisey's essay "Tempus ex Machina" , and Grisey's attention to timbre through diacriticals as they pertain to the work.

Thesis (M.A.)--Edith Cowan University, 2006. / Submitted to the Faculty of Education and Arts, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. Includes bibliographical references.

Beginning in the 1970s, and aided by the advancement and an increased prevalence of computers, spectral music emerged as an important development in twentieth century music. Spectral composers, as exemplified by Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail, took the harmonic spectra of sounds as the fundamental materials of composition. The resulting music placed an emphasis on texture and gradually evolving forms. The generation of composers immediately following the spectralists assimilated their techniques into distinct and varying styles. Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho uses spectral techniques to create an aesthetic that generates form and progression from a sound/noise axis. In her piece Du cristal…à la fumée, a number of pendulum and half-pendulum gestures build up texture and form. The accompanying original composition Axiom Unearthed employs similar pendulum gestures and uses spectral techniques to generate melody and harmony in an aesthetic divergent from traditional spectral pieces.

Sizhu was written for the standard Pierrot ensemble though with percussion replacing the singer. This particular ensemble is capable of producing a multitude of colors while maintaining the balance inherent to a chamber group. The Chinese name, si’zhu, is a literal and figurative metaphor for these elements of the ensemble. Literally translated “silk” (sī) and “bamboo” (zhú), the word is a generalization for Chinese classical music developed in the Jiangsu province (Jiāngnán sīzhú) that utilizes strings, or “silk” instruments, and flutes, or “bamboo,” instruments in combination. A typical work involves two or more players of either ilk. In reference to the work presented here, Sizhu is a metaphor for the western instruments (flute and clarinet as “bamboo,” and violin and cello as “silk”) that are employed within the piece. It also refers to my use of a Chinese melody in the compositional process. The song, Er Quan Ying Yue (The Moon Reflected In Second Spring), was composed and performed regularly on the streets by the blind erhu player A Bing. The song has been fragmented, stretched, and varied to the point of near inscrutability, though it becomes more comprehensible following the mid-point. It inspires both structural and local events. The work also employs aspects of the spectral style. The first section is a slow distortion and transformation of the A harmonic spectrum; specific partials are emphasized as the spectrum expands and contracts. Additionally, fragments of the Chinese melody appear within the confines of each specific harmonic structure. The second part completely diverges utilizing assimilated pentatonic scale permutations. Finally, the third section synthesizes these two elements of musical material within the piece as the instruments morendo into silence.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:52:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 4458269 bytes, checksum: e26ebc4f8039ff38afd8b1aa41c2f89e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-03-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This work deals with the compositional principles and techniques used to create a cycle of pieces written by the author and named Genesis. This cycle consists of four pieces for Viola de Arame (Brazilian Viola) solo, Viola de Arame and flute, and Viola de Arame accompanied by two instrumental ensembles (Genesis II and Genesis IV). The compositional process applied on the Cycle was a result of a research on the application of the sonority of the Brazilian Viola as sound material, making use of techniques from the so-called Spectral Music. The theoretical groundwork for the comprehension of spectral music was found in Tristan Murail (1993), François Rose (1996) and Joshua Fineberg (2000), among other authors. Based on this set of references, the compositional processes applied to Genesis were analyzed and registered, from the most elementary procedures, such as the usage of the harmonic series applied on the first piece, to the most specific one, such as ring modulation, used in Genesis II and Genesis III. The fourth piece was composed using a computer program for spectral analysis, editing, and synthesis. The resultant material produced by the application of this piece of software on sounds from the Brazilian Viola was used to construct and analyze sound aggregates that were considered raw material of the composition process. / Este trabalho trata dos princípios e técnicas composicionais empregados para criar um ciclo de peças escritas pelo Autor, denominado Genesis. Esse ciclo consiste de quatro peças: viola de arame solo, viola de arame e flauta, e viola de arame acompanhada de dois grupos instrumentais (Genesis II e Genesis IV). O processo composicional das peças que integram o ciclo foi resultado de uma pesquisa sobre a aplicação da sonoridade da viola de arame como material composicional, utilizando técnicas oriundas da chamada música espectral. A fundamentação teórica para a compreensão da música espectral partiu de autores como Tristan Murail (1993), François Rose (1996) e Joshua Fineberg (2000), entre outros. Com base nesses referenciais, foram analisados e registrados os processos composicionais aplicados na composição do ciclo, desde os procedimentos mais elementares, como a utilização da série harmônica em Genesis I, até procedimentos mais específicos, como a técnica de modulação em anel utilizada em Genesis II e Genesis III. A quarta peça foi composta usando um programa de computador para análise espectral, edição e síntese. O material resultante produzido pela aplicação desse programa em sons oriundos da viola de arame foi usado para construir e analisar agregados sonoros que foram considerados matéria-prima do procedimento composicional.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:52:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 4583182 bytes, checksum: 7092aec5837cf773623e51e9b86f4661 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-03-23 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / After more than a quarter of century since the creation of ensemble L Itinéraire, the works created and the thought developed by its members remain as a highly fertile ground for musicological research and an essential reference for today's compositional practice. Among these composers, founders of the aesthetic trend so-called 'spectral', stands out Gérard Grisey (1946-1998) who left us a cohesive and preeminent work, admittedly one of the most influential of the past century s last decades. What we discern in his works is the concern with the thresholds of musical perception ( threshold in Latin is the origin of the term "liminal music" which he described his own music) and especially the notion of different musical 'temporalities'. Hence, we started from the conjecture that 'time' is the bedrock underlying the musical discourse used by the composer of Vortex Temporum. Aiming broader understanding of his music, without confining ourselves to the basic aspect of arithmetic operations on frequencies, we also examine the cardinal resources and ideas used by the French composer concerning the structure of instrumental timbre. This approach enabled us to distinguish how and which aspects of his language directed the development of many of his pieces, revealing, contiguously, the legitimate role played by time in his work. Thus, the core of this study presents the full formalization elaborated by Grisey regarding time and duration, anchored in the concepts of "skeleton", "flesh" and "skin of time." This formalization has led to considerations, albeit concise, about the influence of electronics, psychoacoustics and information theory. Likewise, in the light of the concepts elucidated during the research, we discuss Partiels, a key piece of the cycle Les Espaces Acoustiques and one of the pinnacles of contemporary repertoire. / Passado mais de um quarto de século desde a fundação do coletivo musical L Itinéraire, as obras criadas e o pensamento desenvolvido pelos seus integrantes permanecem como um terreno ubertoso para a investigação musicológica e referência essencial para prática composicional hodierna. Dentre estes compositores, inauguradores da tendência estética dita espectral , destaca-se Gérard Grisey (1946-1998) que nos legou uma obra coesa e proeminente, figurada entre as mais influentes dos últimos decênios do séc. XX. Primordialmente, o que nele discernimos é a preocupação com os limiares da percepção musical (origem do termo música liminar , preferido pelo compositor) e máxime a noção de diferentes temporalidades musicais. Destarte, partimos da conjectura que o tempo é o alicerce que fundamenta substancialmente o discurso musical do compositor de Vortex Temporum. Objetivando compreensão mais ampla de sua música, sem atemo-nos ao aspecto elementar das operações aritméticas sobre frequências, examinamos também os recursos e idéias cardinais utilizados pelo compositor francês concernente à estruturação do timbre. Esta abordagem nos habilitou a distinguir como e quais aspectos da sua linguagem direcionaram a elaboração de muitas de suas peças, descortinando, contiguamente, o papel lídimo desempenhado pelo tempo em sua obra. Assim, o núcleo deste trabalho apresenta integralmente a formalização elaborada por Grisey a respeito do tempo e das durações, ancorado nos conceitos de esqueleto , carne e pelo do tempo . Esta formalização ainda implicou considerações, embora concisas, acerca da influência da eletrônica, da psicoacústica e teoria da informação. Da mesma sorte, sob a luz dos conceitos elucidados durante a pesquisa versamos sobre Partiels, peça chave do ciclo Les Espaces Acoustiques e um dos pináculos do repertório contemporâneo.