Playing the unplayable - Horatiu Radulescu

Abstract

Romanian/French composer Horațiu Rădulescu (1942–2008) might superficially be thought of as part of the French spectral group with Grisey, Murail and others, but spectralism is a very broad church and Radulescu’s work, as he states, radically transforms compositional technique away from treating sound from the outside, organising sounds produced in traditional ways; rather, he explores the possibility of sound’s autonomy, of ‘entering the sound’. Rădulescu’s music from the late 1960s onwards is built from sound situations created by different treatments of fundamentals, the spectra produced by these treatments, and the isolation of individual spectra. The music evolves ‘naturally’ from the initial organisation of sound sources and formal structures, its interest lying in the interaction of the resulting harmonics, difference tones, sub-tones, rhythmic beats, and so on. The material of music is no longer the manipulation of pitch and rhythm but a ‘living matter’ that Rădulescu calls ‘sound plasma’. As an example of Rădulescu’s work, this exposition presents an analysis from the performer’s point of view of The Inner Time for solo clarinet (1983), illuminating the challenges posed by attempting to realise this score in performance. The piece, lasting 28 minutes, is composed in 137 modules or ‘aural filters’ notated as microtonal frequencies. The clarinettist uses multiphonics, harmonics and what Rădulescu calls ‘yellow tremoli’ (trills on one pitch, colour trills, bisbigliando) following notated rhythmic patterns where pitches are split apart and the harmonics explored individually, then building and layering on top of each other.