Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!usc!merlin.usc.edu!aludra.usc.edu!alves From: alves@aludra.usc.edu (William Alves) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: Re: spectral composition Message-ID: <6066@merlin.usc.edu> Date: 27 Oct 89 18:10:18 GMT References: Sender: news@merlin.usc.edu Reply-To: alves@aludra.usc.edu (Bill Alves) Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA Lines: 38 In article cornicel@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Cornicello) writes: > >I have been recently getting into the music emanating from France, >i.e. Murail and Grisey. I am basically aware of their concept, which >is to use the spectre produced by acoustic instruments as the basis >for the harmonic aspect of thier pieces (I think), but I am not >totally aware of the entire process. I would like to know if anyone >has seen any articles relating to this topic, or knows of any sources >one could go to in reference to this. > I'm afraid I can't help you too much on the sources, but I thought I'd ven- ture what I know (as well as an opinion). *Research* in acoustics as a basis for art seems to be a foundational idea for the Boulez school (whence IRCAM), and one way they have come up with realizing this is by attempting to repro- duce complex acoustic spectra orchestrationally or using the spectral content as the basis for pitch sets. The pieces I've heard which do this do it one of two ways: 1) by analyzing complex timbres such as bells (as in Jonathan Harvey's IRCAM piece), gongs, etc., but not those with harmonic spectra, as that would yield a static pitch set (theoretically); 2) by recreating orches- trationally electronic effects such as ring modulation. Now, I think these are great ideas, especially the first, but, personally, I think they went about it all wrong. In order to reconcile these spectra to equal temperament and hence twelve-tone music and serialism, the works I've heard "round off" the frequencies to the nearest semitone. I brought this question up briefly to Marc Batier of IRCAM when he was here, but he didn't see the contradicton that I did. To my ear, the "fusion" of partials that is so fascinating in these complex timbres is ruined by restricting it to semitones. The tuning is crucial to this effect. Of course, that is very difficult to achieve in a standard or- chestra, but worth the effort to me. Or else you can get a tunable Yamaha synth and leave the orchestra and parts-copying behind. Let's hear it for just intonation! Bill Alves USC School of Music / Center for Scholarly Technology