French Spectral Music: an Introduction

Abstract

The composers belonging to what would later be called the ‘spectral music movement’ started their careers in an unstable political period in France. Between 1962 and 1974, under the presidency of Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou, France (the 5th Republic) was what we can call a ‘Gaullist Republic’. But in the middle of the 1960s the economic policy of the government aroused the hostility of the French people. The ‘Stabilization Plan’ of 1963 induced unemployment for the first time since 1945, and the authoritarian character of a government which, in 1967, legislated in the form of ordonnances, turned the people against the presidential policy in every domain.