DUFOURT+HARVEY+GRISEY LP MUSIQUE CONCRETE-SPECTRAL-RARE

$

38

HUGUES DUFOURT / JONATHAN HARVEY / GERARD GRISEY

ANTIPHYSIS / MORTUOS PLANGO, VIVOS VOCO / MODULATIONS LP

Erato 71544

w/12"-sized insert 

Necessary french album on the Erato label presenting electroacoustic, concrete and spectral pieces by 3 of the main representatives of the "spectral school".

Some info on the release:  Original pressing on french Erato label. Are featured the 3 main representatives of the spectral music "school": Hughes Dufourt, Jonathan Harvey & Gerard Grisey. Jonathan Harvey's "Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco" is for concrete sounds processed by computer. Grisey's work "Modulations" uses electroacoustic transformations, while Dufourt's "Antiphysis" is a spectral piece. Instruments are performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain directed by Pierre Boulez. The record comes together with the original booklet.

Grisey was amongst the "founders" of the spectral music musical style. Spectral music (or spectralism) refers to a musical composition practice where compositional decisions are often informed by the analysis of sound spectra. Computer based sound spectrum analysis using a Fast Fourier transform is one of the more common methods used in generating descriptive data. Using FFT analysis, features of a particular sound spectrum can be visualized using a spectrogram. This particular style of composition originated in France in the early 1970s and the techniques were primarily developed, and later refined, at Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, Paris, by composers such as Gerard Grisey and Tristan Murail. Murail has described Spectral music as an attitude towards composition rather than a set of techniques, an aesthetic rather than style. This attitude being that "music is ultimately sound evolving in time". The term "spectral music" was coined by Hugues Dufourt in an article published in 1979. Dufourt, a trained philosopher as well as composer, was the author of several interesting flagship articles associated with this movement, although the relationship of his own music to this trend has remained ambiguous. In any case, it was the better part of a decade before the term was in very wide circulation. It was initially associated with composers including Dufourt, Horatiu Radulescu, Iancu Dumitrescu, Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, Michael Levinas, and the late Claude Vivier. Since the mid eighties, the movement has broadened out into one of the most important contemporary compositional trends. Among recent composers building on the spectral idea are Magnus Lindberg, Kaija Saariaho, Phillippe Leroux, Phillippe Hurel, Joshua Fineberg and Julian Anderson. However, it has been suggested that a number of major practitioners of this compositional method consider the term inappropriate, misleading, and reductive

Characteristic spectral pieces include Gérard Grisey's Partiels, Tristan Murail's Gondwana, Stockhausen's Stimmung, and Jean-Claude Risset's Mutation. John Chowning's Stria (1978) and Jonathan Harvey's Mortuos Plango Vivos Voco are examples of electronic pieces that embrace spectral techniques. Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater (2006) is an opera influenced by spectral techniques.

Proto-spectral composers include Varèse, Olivier Messiaen, György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis, as well as André Jolivet, Friedrich Cerha, Giacinto Scelsi, and, to some degree, La Monte Young. Theoretical predecessors include some of the composers mentioned and Harry Partch, Henry Cowell, and Paul Hindemith.

This music began to emerge in the 1970s both in France amongst the composers of the Groupe de l'Itihe, influenced by work of composers such as Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen, both of whom created harmonies and orchestrations based on the harmonic and inharmonic partials contained in complex sounds, such as multiple-stop organ tones, bell sounds, and bird song. Spectral music simply carries this principle much further and with more radical precision, made possible with the aid of computerized FFT analysis. The music of Scelsi, with its concentration on long-held, single tones, continuously mutating in timbre and other parameters, is also another important contribution to spectral music.

Condition: Vinyl lies in mint- condition, looks crystal clear and plays nicely all along with some occasional crackle, while cover lies in very good+ condition with split on top, a sticker removed on top right corner and some corner wear.

Tracklist