Gtlijkl1l/Jorary Music l~t'r'ieiJl

200U,Vo'l. 19'Part2.p, U5--1M T'hQto~opYlng permitted by license only

@2000 OPA (Overseas Publishers Assodatitm) N',:V, Publfshed bylicense under th~ Harwood Academic PLibl'tsl\ers imprint, part of Gordon'and Breru-hPublishing, a member-of the 'Iaylor & Frand&C'oLlp,

APPENDrXn

Musical Examples
Joshua Fineberg

KEY WQRDS;

Sp~ct1;alMusic: techniques: ?Jgl:ldthin; harmony; freque.n'Cy; analysis

The preceding appendix presents many ideas and techniques used in or relating to spectral music. However anabstract presentafion without examples is insufficient and the examples in this section should serve as Illustrations of the preceding explanafionaIt is not my intention to create any kind of comprehensive catalog of analytical examples, but simply to show a few of the techniques as they have been applied in different pieces by different composel~? The examples should be used to help readers make the transition from an abstract idea or technique to 'a €Oncrete realization - without implying that this is the only possible use- of the idea or technique, Th.e pieces grouped under the Labelspectral cover an enormous range and while many composers axe influenced by the same ideas, they tarely manifest that influence in the same way. The examples should help show how a range of musical forms can grow out of spectral ideas and techniquesas well as helping to illustrate the. special balance between calculation and intuition, theory and experimentation, that is so important to understanding spectral composition. Instrumental. Spectra as a Mod~'[1M an OrchestmlSY11thesis One of the best known and earliest examples of a composer using an Instrumental analysis to create a harmonic anclgestural model whichis then realized by an instrumental ensemble is Gerard Ccisey's Partiels (1975) for 18 Inatrurnents. Personal computers were, of course, not an
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option for Geisey at the time that he wrote the piece, so he used an 'electronic sonogram device to analyze the attack f a low E2 on the trornhone. The analysis of this attack became the model fox the opening of the piece_ While the specific analyses and devices he used are no longer available, we can very easily approximate the steps he took with, current tools, The first step is stilt the ge11e.ratiOll of a sonogram showing the attack of the 10w E on a trombone played forte. (In a sonogram, the x-axis shows the time, the y-axis shows frequency in Hz and the darkness haws amplitude.) Several things can be seen immediately in the above sonogram, First, the partials enter one after the other with lower partials entering earlier and higher partiaJs appearing later, Secondly, the lowest partials including the fundamentalare not the darkest (Loudest) ones, the fifth and ninth partials are louder . .Finally, the partials above this louder region gradually trail off in amplitude. From this sonogram it, thus, becomes possible to generate a musical model of the relative amplitudes of the partials in the harmonicseries. When this is transcribed into musical notation of pitches (approximated to the nearest quarter tone) and dynamics, the following series is produced - 'ee Figure L (The numbers above. the top staff represent the partial rankings.) This series, coupled with a rhythmic modeling of the successive entrance of the partials, was then used to produce the instrumental core - see Figure 2. It should be noted that the anal)' IS presented above and, ill. fact, the sound, analyzed are not identical to tho e used by Grise)'

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(although I have tried to mimic Crisey's procedures as much as possible) and thus there are several differences in the details of the realization. For example, the loudest partial in Grisey's realization is the fifth, whereas in mine it is the ninth. (This is probably due to the sound I analyzed being more fortissimo than the one used by Grisey; with brass the louder the note is played, generally the higher in the overtone series the loudest partials will be ..This is what creates the 'brassy' sound.) Another important difference is that the low bass which seems to be presenting the fundamenta 1 along with the trombone is, in fact, an octave too low. However, this note is in that octave for separate formal (the lower octave El has a pivotal. rolein the entire Les Espaces Acoustiques cycle of which Partlels is one part) and gestural reasons (the aggressivity of the attacks is much greater on the open string E than for a fingered pitch). This note's separation from the other pitches of the instrumental synthesi is reflected. in its exclusion from the composer's annotations of partial rankings for each of the other pitches. Whilei.t:is generally not very helpful Eowrite a textual commentary on the effect of a musical passage, I think it is important to note how striking this moment i . At the very start of the piece one hears the trombone attack forte with the double bass repeating the attacking gesture with less and less determination. This allows the sound of the sustained trombone to gradually emerge. Just as this happens the sustained note which has been performing a decrescendo begins to give way - through a cross-fade - to an instrumentally synthesized imitation of itself. This instrumental timbre does not seek to present an indistinguishable copy of the original, but rather to generate an amplification and transfiguretion of the trombone note. The listener can still sense the underlying trombone color of the sound while at the same time a doorway is opened up to a ast new domain of sound found within the original sound. This particular musical moment, especially at the time it happened, was to have an enormous impact, Many of the second. and third generation spectral composers have cited their first hearing of Partials as having caused their initial il1terestin the musical potential of sonic phenomena.

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Non-Harmonic Spectra as both Sonic Material and Structural Models As was discussed in appendix 1,. many naturally occurring .spectra are non-harmonic. One class of non-harmonic spectra which has often been used in. musical works is bell sOUJ,1ds. piece which.makes extensive use A of a bell spectrum; is [onathan Harvey's Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980)for 8-track tape. The pieceuses the sound of the great tenor bell from Winchester Cathedral as a. source of both harmonic and temporal structure for the piece, along with its role as a central sonic object (tb

other main feature of the piece is the voice of the composer's - then choirboy - son). The main partials of the bell's spectrum are ShOWIl below:
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Basing the material and structure on this bell spectrum was designed to create (in the compo er's words) the -illusion of 'the walls of the concert hall enclosing the public like the side of the bell around which the soul of the yOWlg boy flies freely.' The result is a piece" with a very distinctive and resonant sound, that shows a remarkable degree 'of cohesion. Instrumenial Use of a Non-Harmonic Spectrum

In Philippe. Hurel's piece Lecon de choses (1993) for ensemble and live electronics, a sound with a nOB musical origin finds itself as an important s urce of sonic material. In the piece, realized at lReAM, a percussive blow to a pie tinfumishes the following spectrum shown both in musical notation, and as a list of numbers representing the frequencies, amplitudes and bandwidths needed to re-synthesize the sound with 01 bank of resonant (second-order) filters.

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The way in which this model isused for the generation of both electronic and instrumental material is typica,l of many pieces of spectral music. In the following excerpt from the score, the instruments playa realization of the pie tin spectrum simultaneouslywith. a synthetic realization of a. hybrid between the pie tin sound and another sampled soundja percussively struck tape reel).

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Natural and A,·t:llicial Distortions ef l1a.rmo1tic Spectta In his piece L'esprit des dunes Tristan Murail makes extensive use of several sounds whose natural spectra show a significant amount of distortion. The following spectrum from the piece is that of a Tibetan
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A 'compression' of the partials can easily be observed be:l,'e by looking at the shrunken octaves between partial 1 and 2, as well as 3 and 4, In the second section of that piece, the composer amphfies that natural distortion with the addition of warying amounts of artifieia lly added distortion {see Figure 4)'. These newly generated spectra form the opening progression of the section (see Figure 5). . In another one ofhis pieces, Desintegrations (1982-1983) for 17 instruments and tape, Murailalso makes use of progressive changes in the ameunt of distortion to geneJ:<1te the .harmonlc progression for asection, The section VIII of the piece begins with a: harmonic spectrum built on Csharp. This spectrum is gradually stretched so as to. produce specific pitehes for the third and twenty-rust partials. In the final step the order of the chords is permuted, some pitches are eliminated from the spectra and a few new pitches are added by hand to reinforee the color 0.£ the composer seeks to highlight (see Figure. (J).

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Virtual.fundamentals

'aHdSpectral Distortion

One side effect of spectral distortion is that it creates the impression of a fundamental which is different form the actual fundamental. A compressed spectrum will seem to lower the fU!ldamental and a stretched spectrum wUJ seem to raise it. In the following stretched and transposed voice spectrum. (.ee Figure 8) built on the fundamental G 3/4 sharp, the fundamental

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This can have important con equence in. real pieces. Take for example another section from Murail'sL'espirt des' dunes. In this section there are two different stretched spectra built on a low D which is played by the double bass (see Figure 7). The composer discovered in rehearsal that for the bass to sound in tune it had to play nearly a.quarter tone sharp. It was so natural to hear it this way that it turned out the Instrumentalist had been partially correcting the intonation by ear already. Tdentifyi,ng the

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Controliing Material 'With Virtual.Fu.nd~l1I~enJals Another use of virtual fundamentals 1:1<18 been as an ad-hoc measure of harmonic tension in order to organize the complex material ge~lerated by spectral analyse:;;. One piece which clearly demonstrates this is my own Stre,alll1ines (.1994).1]).this piece for nine instruments a large portion of the harmonic material resulted from analyses of various moments from a pitch played on the double bass' with a rapidly fluctuating vibrato and bow pressure. The resulting spectra: are then filtered so as to leave only partials within a specified region of frequencies far removed fromthe fundamenta L The chords areall different yet revolve arounda sort of musical 'strange attractor ' created. by the normal spectrum of the double bass.

Finding reference points within this type of homogenous material can be difficult SO I calculated virtual fundamentals fOl' all of these chords (givinga.gerreralIndicatton of their harmonic tension).

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Once this basic ordering has been g.enerated, it facilitates orientation within the sequenceand allows the construction of harmonic sequences that follow Val-ions tension contours such as the following:

This tension curve when mapped. onto the chord positions within the sorted chord ordering produces the following harmonic seqLlence from the piece:

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Insirumensal Harmonies Created frO'11'1 a Moc:teling of Frequency Modulati(j)/1 Synthesis

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Harmonies Created from aModelingof

Ring modulation is another electronic technique which spectral composers have often used. as a model for instrumental composition. This techniques can be seen as early as Crisey's Partials which has been discussed above. On the following page from the score, the composer's annotations show how the lettered harmonies at the top of the page create the sum tones in the middle of the page and the difference tones at the bottom.

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DY'>ldmic

.Analysis Windmvs

As was discussed in the preceding appendixcomplex, rapidly moving sounds require frequent analysis windows to approximate the dynamic character of these sounds. In Murail/s piece BoisfloUe (1995}for five instrumentsand electronic sounds, the composer needed to capture the dynamic flux of cascading water. Even after an initial reduction in the amount 0.£ polyphony and the elimination of very weak partials, the mass of-information is intposing::

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Musical- Exatnple«

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Rhythtn:ic Interpolation The last example of this appendix is from Marc Andre Dalbavie's piece Diademes (1986) for viola, instrumental ensemble and electronics. In this example taken hom page 43, measure 14, a rhythm which has been establi hed is slowly pulled apart into two groups (the first with four notes and the second with five) which continu to s parate until they form two homophonic entities of equal length and set up a harmonic oscillation. TIle following figure shows the various steps of the rhythmic interpoIation. The numbers under the notes reflect the various pitch entrances ill the realization - when multiple numbers are under the same rhythmic value more than one pitches enters irnultaneously at the indicated rhythmic point.

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