Tristan Murail’s Musical Poetics

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines Murail’s music from his late 1960s student works to the highly sophisticated works of the 2000s through the notion of poetics. It draws on Paul Valéry’s concept of poetics, which sought to address how the artist’s aesthetic aims can require the consequent development of an appropriate technical compositional framework. Murail’s musical poetics, as they developed, are shown to have at times a neo-Symbolist character. Through examination of Murail’s music and thinking, the chapter identifies four stages in the development of his poetics: a first, apprentice stage moving away from serialism; a second stage corresponding to the initial emergence of French spectralism; a third stage taking advantage of computers to establish a quasi-systematic spectral harmonic framework; and a final (current) stage using the previous developments to reengage with classical tradition. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of Murail’s turn in his most recent music to the interrelation of sound, psyche, and the self.