POV - Spectralism

Just revived yesterday - Gérard Grisey

My favourites in this 'style' are (no partic order):

Stockhausen "Stimmung" (it's cited as an early source for Spectral music), James Dillon "Helle Nacht", Gerard Grisey "Quatre Chants..", Claude Vivier "Lonely Child" and one from Kaija Saariaho, I think "amers" is my fave.

(think all of the above apart from Vivier have at least one thread on them)

Yes, Stimmung is one of my fave pieces ever, although it often makes me physically nauseous (something weird about the tones, I dunno)

Plenty of schooling to download here:

http://differentwaters.blogspot.com/2006/09/spectralism-and-related-13-albums.html

most of those albums are in print if you want to hear them full fidelity (and at risk of skipping, I'd pick the version of grisey's 'les espaces acoustiques' on accord over the one on kairos

this list is in progress, I don't know saariaho well enough yet

gérard grisey - les espaces acoustiques
iancu dumitrescu - galaxy (alternate: medium III for fernando grillo)
tristan murail - ethers (alternate: désintégrations)
radulescu - 4th string quartet "infinite to be cannot be infinite, infinite anti-be could be infinite" (this takes a while to get going, but once it does)
scelsi - uaxuctum (another pre-spectral influence, more intuitive than scientific, but the piece is huge. murail plays the martinot on the recording.)

Thanks everybody for the recommendations - these titles seem to be a pretty good place to start

Yes to Radulescu and Dumitrescu. The latter can be very physical, which I'd say is quite uncharacteristic of spectral music.

Haven't looked at that blog for a while. Massive giveaway..from reading a cpl of write-ups the need for Spectral music arose out of questions (criticisms of serial music) such as "we've got complex music (Gruppen, etc.) but can we (ppl who play it as well the concert audience) perceive it's complexity".

Not sure about Globokar belonging there..it seems like 'multi-tracked tapes and acoustic instruments'- type pieces pieces!= spectral music. And he has said he doesn't really care for how his compostions sound, which isn't something you'd think a spectral composer would ever say. He usually composes sets these Kagel-esque ensemble games, highly-expressive pieces for thrombone (that sounds scarily like free improvisations even though he has stated a dislike for improv) and so on..

(though I think he's linked the Kairos version of les espaces acoustiques so you're pretty much stuck buying the Accord version if you really want to hear it)

awesome.

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