Abstract
This paper wants to highlight the creation process in the spectral music of Tristan Murail that supposes a special sound design. The spectral music uses the sound spectrum, i.e. the sound components (overtones) as material that give to a sound its timbre. The spectrum is based on the frequencies, which can be calculated with the computer. The aim of this paper is to describe some aspects of the work of Tristan Murail, which are in connection with the design, notions that himself uses describing his compositions, as material, models, modeling, object, process. The material is the sonority itself. The models are the technological ones taken from the electronic music as echo, reverberation, frequency modulation, etc. and translated in the instrumental (or/and electronic) music. After the analysis of a sound, which is decomposed in sine waves, follows the sound modeling through recombining the sound components, doing distortions or other effects borrowed from the electronic music. In this way new sounds are synthesized, which can be seen as more complex and sophisticated objects. The composer deals with an amount of sounds, therefore the computer is important in the compositional process to calculate a great number of sound combinations. The compositional conception of Murail has changed with the development of the computer technology and music informatics. In this way, I should mention the role of computer in the sound design of Murail. The process is an integral part both of the composing and of the composition. The composition evolves over time as the sound does: it is in a continuous changing. Sound evolution is also a model for Murail to shape the form of his compositions.
Highlights
The composer Tristan Murail (*1947) is an important exponent of the Spectral Music (Musique Spectrale), a composition technique that appeared in the 70s in France, which has used the harmonic series of a sound, its harmonic or inharmonic components
The spectral music is based on the sound timbre, one of the sound parameters besides pitch, duration, and amplitude, which gives the color in the music
Concerning the material, Murail has as starting point the given natural harmonic spectra, which he shapes regarding to acoustic laws. Both analysis and synthesis are based on numbers
Summary
The composer Tristan Murail (*1947) is an important exponent of the Spectral Music (Musique Spectrale), a composition technique that appeared in the 70s in France, which has used the harmonic series of a sound, its harmonic or inharmonic components (partials). The spectral music is based on the sound timbre, one of the sound parameters besides pitch, duration, and amplitude, which gives the color in the music. The most common method used by the spectralists is the additive synthesis, which consists in building up complex sounds recombining sine waves. Francois Rose notes the difference between the model and the realization in the fact that in the spectral music “each component is played by a musical instrument rather than being a sine tone.” [2]
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