Contemporary Music Review © 2000 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N.Y. 2000, Vol. 19, Part 3, p. 41-65 Published by license uncer Photocopying permitted by license only the Harwood Academic Publishers imprint, part af Gordon and Breach Publishing, a member of the Taylor & Francis Group. From the Philosophical to the Practical: An Imaginary Proposition Concerning the Music of Tristan Murail Claude Ledoux Translated by Joshua Fineberg It happens in certain moments, when the ear seems to want to encom- pass all the sounds of the whole world, as if trapped in the ultimate sacrifice of a magical perception — that has come to us from ancient times. At these very instants, the ear ends up swallowed in the volup- tuousness of sonic outbursts. This happens without clearly understand- ing the origin of the transcendence, whereby this organ, refined for listening to the external world, is transformed into an open window to the intimate imagination of our being. Thus, discovering the music of Tristan Murail is, in a way, like redis- covering this ancient, shaman-like sensation, giving body to sonic space. Moreover, although music is external to us and can even be produced without anyone to listen, its essence is only revealed inside of us. We are, in effect, sensitive receivers which take their form from the energies feeding our senses. This discussion could go on forever, restrained only by the limits of anthropology, philosophy and mysticism. Tristan Murail’s works are so evocative that it is difficult for the listener to orient himself on first hearing. Do they want to be the direct expression of musical techniques or a metaphor for the miraculous, do they communicate with scientific eloquence or bubble over with a poetry of subtlety? Distant horizons are always fascinating and listening to a piece like L’esprit des dunes opens a doorway to faraway places. Moreover, its poetry is too lyrical and yet too critically analytical in its poetics to avoid conscious realization of the extreme rational coherence. The piece nourishes a sense of marvel, but 442 Clauie Ledoux the latter is, itself, nourished by the cohesion written into a score and which belongs to the realm of the magical. However, the magic of L’esprit des dunes is no longer that of a sor- cerer, even if it resonates to cosmic rhythms. No. It is the magic of the illusionist whose goal is to try and ‘make you believe.’ Listen, believe in the magic enough to allow yourself to be enchanted by the sonic material, but also to know that if the unfolding sounds teach us to per- ceive differently, and to accept the irrefutable existence of what had seemed impossible, then the one who manipulates these perceptions shows his extreme mastery of the materials being used and his extra- ordinary knowledge of the limits in which can be created these new relations that are so quick to amaze. Through this procedure, percep- tion is renewed. The listener believes in the magic of what he is hearing, while still being aware that behind the amazing sonic dis- course is hidden the sophisticated dexterity of a remarkable manager of acoustic substance. Further, creating these illusions requires knowledge of the basic building blocks of sound, their many attributes and the for- midable potential that they contain. The role of the magician stops here, where that of the thinker begins: of the musician driven to perfect his mastery, going deep into the hidden nooks and crannies in which his musical ideas are hidden. No dreams without mastery. Approaching the development of Tristan Murail ultimately will bring us back to the history of the eternal back and forth between the poetry of knowledge and the deep structure of musical poetics. This creates an imaginary construction which owes little to the major developments in linguistics and structuralism — two fields disavowed by the composer as playing a part in or furnishing useful information about his works — which have so often shed light on the major artistic works of the XXth century. In the end, traditional analytical tools show their weaknesses and limitations when confronted by the ideas and concepts of what we must, a bit coarsely, call ‘spectral thought.’ In truth, analysis does offer, in this case, a myriad of strategies useful for unmasking the composer, to extract his concrete manifestation from within the musical work. Discoveries made in this way are seen as the result of pre-existing knowledge without any concern for the way i which that knowledge was elaborated. In this sense, analysis expresses itself as a tautology of its own experience: analysis analyzes itself in order to extirpate its analytical ability on the pretext of better under- standing the world being examined. As to its opposite, this offers no more promise. Tautology is replaced by paraphrase, a grandiloquent out- pouring of words forming a straight line to subjectivity. This creates a mocking pseudo-knowledge itreparably fixated on the surface. Each word deserves another and the phraseologic redundancy does notFrom the Phitesophical to ne Practical: 43 succeed in the least bit at opening the world to an understanding of reality, even if only a small fraction thereof. Moreover, comprehension cannot help but be subdivided and frag- mented. Short of a utopic awakening,' limited to a small elite, or an improbable transubstantiation of the creator’s spirit — and even the work’s creator may not be able to understand his own work since it is subjectively ‘stuck inside his neurons’ — the composer’s approach can at best be glimpsed in a rudimentary approximation. We must now forget this technocratic will of the XXth century, this desire to separate out the elements of these complex networks whose output can, in fact, only lead to the realization that they are truly complex networks. Only then can we try to discover the strategic ‘threads’ that lead to the birth of this type of artistic creation. For the last several years, Tristan Murail’s music has been causing sighs of relief. For admirers of well run strategies, the composer seems to have rediscovered the special qualities of the sacrosanct écriture and the virtues of a discursive style. It is true that many ambiguities emanated from the works written in the seventies: if the new sonorities shook up the canons of the avant-garde, the way they were formulated offered little resistance to the arguments of their critics. Their target was mainly the tendency of Murail to use relatively simplistic procedures flowing out one from another without discontinuities for long stretches of time. Predictability seemed to emphatically dominate and boredom menaced to strike out at any point from within the long seconds; although the threat never seems to actually materialize. Twenty-five years later, the processes are more complex and the ruptures bespeak of a discourse whose twists and turns move adroitly between surprise, marvel and the serenity of a well controlled language. The case is easily made. It complements — and sensibly so — the many and excellent articles [editor's note: mostly in French] describing the historical evolution of the ‘spectral’? movement. Rather than providing a new paraphrase of this argument, it might be more interesting to focus on certain ideas which have allowed the works of Tristan Murail to come into being and to develop. Not, however, in the antagonistic composi- tional relation described above, but rather in a progressive continuity whose basis is established on the symptomatic and dialectic position of the composer in relation to the world that surrounds him. 1. In the sense of certain Eastern philosophies: comprehension coming from the interior of the being, allowing the emergence of transcendentally acquired, ultimate, knowledge 2. Cf. Eittretemps n° 8, September 1989. A special issue on Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey.44 Claude Ledoux Seen from the inside, the musical output of the French composer draws its richness and refinement from a conceptual argument in rela- tion to a generative idea. Here, concepts cannot in any way be equated with ideas since, as the artist willingly admits, during interviews, that the latter often come from extra-musical sources, visual experiences or from anything else our senses might teach us. From that point the metaphoric interplay manifests its presence as a filigree on the musical work whose discourse cannot simply be transposed empirically. Instead it is fed by an adequate musical material manipulated through a set of relations constructed in the world’s image. Tt is here that the Murail’s output is marked by a universal which has worked its way into the his music. The titles given to the pieces are like so many clues to the special relationship that exists between the com- poser and a particular vision of the world. One has but to listen to Sables or L’esprit des dunes, and the desert appears. On one hand, the marine- like spaces tremble with the chaotic waves of Serendib, Couleur de mer, or even in his most recent orchestral piece, La partage des eaux; on the other hand, the Earth expresses its tectonic roughness through Gondwana or again in La dérive des continents. Beyond these earthly images, materiality becomes blurred to make room for the waves that flood Les couraits de lespace, unless they must make room for the spiritual universe of the Sept Paroles du Christ en Croix. Far from any programmatic intentions, these few examples, chosen arbitrarily from a large body of works, shows the composer's attachment to a certain type of ‘Nature’ that is undoubtedly linked to wide open spaces. These spaces creates a sense of wonder even while developing suspicion toward the misleading details and illusions of perception. Oriental wise-men have said that there is only one thing in the universe that does not change: the unchanging principle of change. Thus the open spaces present this same lesson. Behind every wave is born another wave with attributes which are, at first view, analogous to the first. Surprise is born of the formal transformations, and, for all observers, the similar and the dissimilar differentiate, interpenetrate and end up fusing in the same temporal continuity: creating a new dynamic for the world. The Earth and its tellurian phenomena are not left aside. Tristan Murail has often visited the desert himself. In the same way as the move- ment of the oceans, form plays with illusion. Its undulating aspects are replicated, as if to help speculations concerning infinite reflections, where each replication is organized according to obscure hierarchic rules linked to the different scales at which they operate. Thus, what is nothing other than an expression of becoming, a preface to the complex reality of a network interlaced with distinct similarities. In the desert each dune expresses its completeness, the absolute borders of a territoryFront the Philosophical tothe Practical 45 which quickly dissolve into a mirage once we reach what we had thought to be the horizon. In this state where things are ‘the same but always different,’ is created, what we must timidly dare to call, ‘natural beauty.’ Further it is thanks to these recurrences, marked by transgres- sions and distortions’ that are routinely accepted by the perception, that fascination is felt. This type of world vision teaches one to make use of everything with its constituent parts, from instantaneous perceptions to the existence of reality that is ‘not yet visible,’ but nonetheless is already in a perpetual state of becoming. Grasping the material is equivalent to considering its heuristic aspects. Returning, once again, to our metaphor: the dune does not exist without its infinite projection, chaotic but nonetheless with a structured potential. Inversely the desert loses all of its signification without that unique wave of sand which, by simply being there, confers the unique right of existence. Moreover, the structural dynamic invoked has difficulty being satisfied with classical models. It is not the least bit surprising that only math- ematics was able to get beyond the constraints imposed by these type of relations. ‘Beauty’ could finally find a theoretical formulation and invoke the expressivity of the equation; coming directly from the new theories which are characterized, since the early 80's, as either fractal or as inher- ent to the fleshing out of chaos. Putting aside these aesthetic ideas, the rigor of scientific thought provides a justification for the absolute neces- sity of analyzing the world, not so much in the profound understanding of its constituents as in the intimate relations that they preserve outside of all directed conscience. ‘Spectral’ music fully participates in a close relationship with the the spirit of the late XXth century. Never before has science so overturned the épistémé * of an epoch as during recent years. Thus, new rigorous theoret- ical models are continuously inducing new technologies which shake-up our relation to the nature of things. Far from placing itself in an anthro- pocentric absolutism, new science confirms intuitions and opens the way to introspection: leading to new possibilities and mirroring the ‘Nature’ already discussed above. As a result, technology today promises to become one of the most wonderful tools for exploring the possibilities of imagination. Murail completely understood this context. The composer 3. In the same way that tectonics tries to study the deformations and distortions of terrain. 4. translator's note : the French term épistémé denotes the configuration of knowledge in a given culture ata given moment; this is the basis on which the diverse forms of science and culture ofa particular epoch and society are created.46 Claude Latour from the line called ‘spectral,’ goes beyond this simple notion of an art which would infer the composition of musical pieces from an intimate understanding of sonic phenomena, within the limits of a material, making it possible — through the progress of acoustic analysis — to know all of its physical, parametric and behavioral specificities so as to allow the formulation of models which are useable for musical construction. To go beyond these limits, the composer has had help from the com- puter. This has turned out to be a remarkably precise tool for the detailed analysis of causal relations. Already in the Seventies, Murail was as inter- ested in the analysis of sonic production (starting from a reflection on spectra and their specificities) as with the causal representation of these relations (using the simplistic models of equations linked, for example, to ring modulation or frequency modulation). Starting with intuition, then moving to hand calculation, Tristan Murail’s use of the computer blos- somed in the 80's. His will was motivated by a need to distance himself from the systematism that limits many overly simple models. The com- puter, through its computational power which has increased enormously in recent years, has allowed him to get closer to ‘Nature’ and its equivo- cal subtleties that are written into the very heart of the deformations/ transformations that effect the objects from which it is made, Through the proliferation of objective data coming from these complex models, computers allow the composer to discover things that are ‘beyond’ the imaginable, in which the artist transcends his personal tastes and their risk of limiting him to a strictly subjective set of choices and, conse- quently, limiting the selection of possible processes. Thus the computer allows him to think about multiple procedures and even to verify them in real-time situations; thereby allowing him to chose the one which best fits his compositional project. What is interesting, in this type of position, is that the composer rein- vents his way of thinking and working with the interstices between the different concepts of the ‘project,’ the ‘material,’ ‘science,’ and the ‘cre- ative act;’ all this, without neglecting the artistic emotion borne of such a procedure. Intuition spars with mental rigor, granting the finished product a strategy well suited to producing a result in the listener’s con- science that can be ordered and classified by the human brain. Applied to the idea of process, this allows the comprehension of one of the basic aspects of the musical works of Tristan Murail. Globally, a ‘process’ is a “way of getting from one point to another ... not necessarily in a straight 5, Duchez, Marie-Elisabeth, ‘L’évolution scientifique de la notion de matériau musical’ in Le Timbre, métaphore pour la composition, Christian Bourgois Editeur, Paris, 1991.From the Philosophical ta the Practical 47 line.”® It can appear in a harmonic construct as progressive distortions; in a rhythmic construct as accelerations or decelerations or as any other agogic combination. Other parametric dimensions of music can also be implicated in this type of treatment which belongs, from a scientific per- spective, to a mathematical “function.” Additionally, this notion of process takes on its full meaning only within its temporal relationships, micro-formal as well as macro-formal, from cellular events to musical manifestations in extenso. Although the composer's earliest works made use of mono-directional processes, requiring long stretches of time,* he quickly realized the limits of such an attitude, which is more closely related to fiction than to the organic reality of daily life. From then on the simple processes developed through a complex set of ideas: which tried to make them more dynamic, to place them in a hierarchy based on the relation between the simultane- ous and the delayed, to integrate them in a denser, more concise dis- course so that things which were already known can be newly rediscovered. In this way and only in this way can the miracle of the similar/dissimilar be reproduced in a piece of music. This allows the projection of forms of knowledge that listeners apply to the world around them to validate the artistic production through a symbolic trans- ference, performed by the public’s ears: from the exteriorness of ‘Nature’ to the interiorness of the work that has, thus, been created. However, attaining this level of compositional refinement has given Murail no choice other than using (yet one more time) the computer. This positions him definitively within the épistémé: that complex configura- tion of knowledge typical of the end of the XXth century. Moreover, the simple positioning of the composer is not enough for him, by himself, to establish this type of postulate. Other conditions are essential to under- standing the ‘why’ of his music. While the preceding paragraphs con- centrate on the dialectic between the interiorness of an individual creator and the exteriorness of a certain manifestation of the world as a struc- tured object, it would now be useful to reverse the roles; to observe the 6. Excerpt from a lecture given by Tristan Mural at the Festival Ars Mu , Brussels, 1989. 7. From this perspective, a progressive rallantardo can be considered a logarithmic math- ematical function applied to a discrete temporal scale. 8. One example is given by the orchestral piece Sables (1974-1975). The piece is based on a spectrum in a slow evolution, that lasts throughout the entire piece. This use of rela- tively simple processes implies a certain style of writing and a kind of textural develop- ment from which can emerge a sense of stasis; this is what led the first theorists of ‘spectral’ music to claim that it was a music of ‘transitions,’ which resulted directly from the specific strategies used.48 Claude Ledoux interiorness of the world as the sum of many individuals in relation to the exteriorness of a composer in the form of his musical output. In fact, the 20th century carries with it a set of paradoxes. Discussing ‘spectral’ music is equivalent to studying sonic phenomena, and conse- quently hearing. On this level, declaring that the ears of one of Beethoven’s contemporaries and the ear of our contemporaries have nothing in common is a complete banality. However, the history of hearing, at this end of the millennium, continually impinges on the artis- tic conscience. A few composers have tried to orient it in a way that will open up its perceptual potential. Just take Giancinto Scelsi’ and his intro- spective method of working with the sound in and of itself. His ideas have inspired much posturing. Forget about the many epigones and remember only, on the one hand, the composers of the so-called ‘spectral’ school and, on the other hand, an artist such as Luigi Nono. Our intention, here, is not to link together the aesthetic positions, but to highlight the convergences concerning hearing in order to achieve a better comprehension of the paradox of this end of the century. Thus Luigi Nono cries out, not without reason, for the Tragedia dell‘ascolto;"' the daily drama of those who have forgotten the virtues of the sensitive ear and taken refuge in the outbursts of noisy illusions. To remedy this situ- ation, the Venetian composer gave the ear the subtle inflections of a dis- course placed at the very edge of where breaths begin. The listener learns anew to listen and rediscover the marvelous qualities that can be dis- cerned when you dare to sculpt your hearing within the sonic mass.” 9. It is irrefutable that his thoughts about ‘sound’ and the subtle way he treated it as a fused energetic ‘object’ — whose specific characteristics are well suited to transforma- tion into music — influenced the composers who met him in Rome in the 70's during their residence at the famous Villa Medicis. Among them were Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey. The later said without hesitation, during an interview with the Belgian Radio in 1992, the following: ‘Scelsi was a prophet ... or more truly a ‘real’ false- prophet. His thoughts were correct, but only for himself." 10. The term must be taken with circumspection. While many composers make references to sonic phenomena, coming either from new technologies related to acoustics or from an intuitive knowledge garnered by the composers invoking it, the musical strategies characterizing the actual realization of the associated compositional idea can take radi- cally different directions. This is the reason for the great skepticism with which a label that too easily encompasses too different musical realizations must be viewed. 11, Cf. the special issue of Contrechanips on Luigi Nono, Paris, 1987, 12. Like a negative of the composer who sculpts the sound to offer us a new discourse growing out of the musical material itself.From the Philosophical to the Practical 49 Next to the psychologistic virtues of (well) oriented listening, reigns the paradox of sonic technology. This technology claims to reveal the auditive world, a perfect doppelganger, to the point that it rivals the original, inasmuch as this original can still boast of a physical existence. Never before, in the history of humanity, could anyone pretend so much value-added technology directed at the restitution of sonic phenomena. Beginning with an event based approximation, under the cover of tran- scription, and passing through the frequencial planing of the first elec- trical receptors, and up to the cutting edge of performance making use of full electronic resources, the musical work, sifted through the prism of transduction, has ceaselessly refined the ear — titillating all its vibrating membranes in such a way as to optimize its receptive functions. The scale of frequencies, thus, achieves the full breadth of its perceptual nobility; instilling in the late XXth century listener the prerequisites for a refined hearing, analytic and dynamic, a thousand miles from general- ized hearing, linked to the rhetoric of preceding epochs. This assertion should be seen positively, if only to highlight the paradox, since next to this ear, which is quick to understand strategies based on even the most sophisticated of frequencial refinements, is the painful emergence of a new generation, 60% of whom suffer the pangs of deficient hearing, destroyed by the excesses of ravaging decibels. In the final analysis, tech- nology offers the ambiguous tools of musical sublimation at the same time that it provokes the annihilation of its audibility through the working of a human perversion of its initial model. The music seems intent on following the same route: to each ear, the aesthetic most appropriate to it. However, in this kind of argument, there is every reason to forget the auditory ill effects and deficiencies so as to avoid completely the barbarism of thought and the planning of too rapidly elaborated contingencies. Murail’s music corresponds to the ‘other’ ear, the one which is trained to listen attentively to musical sub- stance. This is a culturally conditioned state. The sonic models that are finely examined in an act with the virtues of discrimination can be found introjected into the deeper occidental conscience. While this does not necessarily imply a direct access to the information used strategically" in the sonic phenomena, it does, however, reflect the interiorization of the complexes of which it is composed and calls for a richness in all the constructions that it might inspire. In this sense, ‘spectral’ works 13. It is perfectly appropriate to speak of strategies (in plural), functioning at different levels. For example, from the one which controls the internal organization of a compo- nent to the one which defines the orientation of this component in the sonic discourse.30 Cline Ledoux perfectly fill their role, giving, to the occidental ear and spirit an answer to the paradigms that were interiorized, in this way. Thus the interior- ness of the world meets the exteriorness of the creator, the concretization of his thought on the field of proposal /discovery/projection that is a piece of music. This is the source of confusion that has led some critics to accuse Tristan Murail’s music of hedonism. From this perspective, the writing flatters the taste of the listeners, the melodico-harmonic figurations bewitch their ears and provide the author with a guaranty that the work will be a success. However, maintaining this type of position can only show the absence of critical distance in the person maintaining this dis- course; it comes from judging the work from a false perspective that forgets to place Murail’s work within its true épistémé. The ‘beautiful’ chords (or the ‘attractive’ melodies) only find their validation through a doubtful relationship to a past that belongs to a completely different reality. For Murail, there are no ‘beautiful’ sounds, as such; except in opposition to the ‘ugly’ sounds overflowing from his musical output. In order to place ourselves in a more appropriate perspective, it would be helpful to replace the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’ with ‘interesting.’ The sounds need to be ‘interesting’ in their projected potentials. On these potentials depends the fate of the ‘interesting’ piece of music; in other words, a piece which gives the listener the full panorama of auditive experience, growing out of reflection and thought while still drawing on the full complexity of human perception. Thus all sounds can be musical; whether they are expressive, harsh, aggressive, or noise-like. The only truly important thing is the sound’s integration into the musical dis- course. An integration in two senses: either this sound is integrated directly into the work, as a living thing, made noisy by extreme bow pressure in the strings or distorted by unusual fingerings in the winds; or it is subjected to the introspections of sophisticated analytical tools, which lead the musician to understand them from the inside, to model them as an abstract construction and to reproduce them, offering them to the perception, using the specific means placed at the composer's dispos- ition (either the orchestration of the ‘revised and corrected’ construction or its synthesis through electro-acoustic techniques). More than a simple categorization, both types of integration spur each other on and create a new dialectical level between the uses of these two forms of potential possessed by the material. Moreover, since the richness of sonic phenom- ena predates all human experiences, the so-called hedonism mentioned above is, simply, the natural result of the appropriateness of the musical work to the most simplistic symbolic forms found, a priori, within the listener. Thus, the latter rediscovers, through a few musical events con- structed by the composer, a configuration that aligns wonderfully withFrom the Philosophical to the Practical 51 one of the many neural cartographies generated by the more or less intimate perception of natural sonic phenomena. The interest of Murail’s music does not only come from this proposi- tion, but also from the fact that it transcends it. Limiting oneself to hedo- nism is to forget the discursive strategies to concentrate only on the surface, the first immediate semblance. Beyond this lies the domain of imagination. The hedonism only appears in the passing instant, without looking into the depths. Fixating on it shows a lack of comprehension of a discourse rich in its perilous attractiveness. Daring to put forward, once more, a metaphor: this attitude is ultimately equivalent to fixating on the ‘imagery’ subjugated to the cresting wave, without noticing the ‘imagination’ emerging from an intimate, dialectic relationship between that wave and its environment, the sea, the ocean and the underlying natural forces which have given it birth. Leaving behind naiveté, there- fore, becomes imperative for anyone wishing to fully participate in his or her perception and, coming back to the music, go beyond the ephemeral ‘heard’ to live the ‘hearing’ in all its splendor. Toward this end Murail’s music offers a lot of help. The materials from which it is made were inspired by the inherent properties of sounding bodies, natural or artificial. These bodies can be modeled by mathematical rules which, whatever their level of complexity, can be found interiorized within any subject who has enough auditory experience. All these laws limit the materials within constraints which predate the musical creation. The composer's goal, however, is nothing other than freeing himself from these constraints, so as to increase imaginative potential. Further, Murail has concentrated, from his earliest creative activity, on perverting the instances of the figures submitted to these rules, so that the relation between the composer and his material implies not only the discovery of an pre-existing thing, but also the construction of a possibility." This is the reason that while the notion of ‘process’ forms the basis of Murail’s work, that of ‘distortion’ is the foundation of its development. But what really is Murail’s distortion? Clearly, this term implies a deformation of all constructions intrinsic to the sonic events that will be considered as the material for elaborating a musical work, whatever its parameters might be. This can be used to evoke either an isolated phe- nomenon or an organized succession of more or less complex acoustic events. When speaking of spectral music, the first construction to be effected by this distortion will be the one which controls the components 14, Duchez, Marie-Elisabeth, ‘L’évolution scientifique de la notion de matériau musical’ in ,,métaphore pour la composition, Christian Bourgois Editeur, Paris, 1991, p. 5452 Claude Ledoux of a sound" at a particular moment in its evolution. Thus the initial configuration (the fundamental and its selected partials) will be submit- ted to certain variations which will change some of its components, as symbolized by their mathematical expression. An index of distortion can be defined in such a way as to create a new instance, which can then be transposed from the mathematical to the musical domain. Figure la shows a schematic representation of a spectral distortion in which only the partials are effected, while the fundamental provides a reference. Figure 1b shows another principle of distortion: the composer defines the modifications to certain frequencies (here, the fundamental minus x-cents,° and harmonic 6 (hq6) plus y-cents); the computer then takes charge of proportionally reconstructing the distorted spectrum based on the data initially input. This is an interesting case since, far from any scientific gathering, Murail is proposing through this type of work a new dialectic between the ideas of tension and release and thereby orienting perception onto previously unexplored paths. Thus the composer makes use of the listener’s interior- ed knowledge of spectral models to lead him; using a strategy of sur- prises, unexpected events, recurrence and opening the doors to the possibilities of what is to come. Simply by confronting, a ‘metamorphosed’ model and its interiorized ‘original,’ which can even be seen here as the a priori knowledge of an acoustic reality,” provokes an act of thought which transforms the listener into an active being, given full responsibility by hi desire to participate in an aesthetic event. Using these kinds of metamor- phoses, Tristan Murail’s works find their magical aspect. This magic, however, is no longer something, to which subjects submit. Through the 15. This ‘sonic construction’ — which presents itself as the basic material of a musical work — comes either from an imaginary construction based on rules that have come from musically transposed acoustic models or from the analysis of an existing model Désintégrations’ first measures, for example, are based on a harmonic construct based on the analysis of a low note on the piano. A computer described the components as fre- ing the most pertinent partials, by virtue of their amplitudes. Murail, then, transcribed this analysis to obtain a symbolic musical notation — this notation is necessarily approximate as a result of the scale (in 1/4-tone) used — and to orchestrate it; So as to obtain a harmonic texture which can be integrated into the musical discourse 16. The ‘cent’ represents the hundredths part of an equal tempered semi-tone. Its math- ematical expression results from dividing the octave into 1,200 equal parts.’ (Leipp, E., Acoustique et Musique, Masson, Paris, 1984.) 17. Additionally, itis this a priori knowledge that allow's human being to perceive acoustic phenomena; its coherence and the way all its components typically fuse into a single sonic object, while a sufficiently developed ear can still discern the most pertinent constituents of that same acoustic phenomenon.From the Philosophical to the Practical 53 hq 6 +y cents fund - x cents original distorted original distorted spectrum spectrum speotrum spectrum, Fig 1a Fig tb Figure 1 (a and b) intervention of science, it becomes a part of the subtle knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of those same beings, placing them within the same system in which the world functions, as constituent elements in this magic. Truth be told, Murail does not just offer us things to hear. By dissecting the way our perception works, he uses his knowledge to trans- form it, to open it to our imagination. Moreover, he literally teaches us to better hear music, the world and the universe. This use of distortions has been continually refined from the time of the composer's first pieces. While the early works contained monodirec- tional processes in which repeated events clarified a relatively simple musical strategy in which the distortions were easily understood, the works from the eighties were more sensitive. Their charms, rather than being placed on open display, were allowed to become objects of desire. Ina piece like Vues aériennes, composed in 1986, Murail does not initially reveal all of his original material. He creates ambiguity, expectation and questioning. This project makes use of visual ideas" and offers the 18, In this regard, M referring to the series Cathédrales de Rouen painted by Monet, “in which the same object is seen from different angles and in differ- ent light.” (Julian Anderson in Vues aériennes, liner notes from the Murail CD, Accord 200842)54 Clouile Ledoux invitation to a voyage during which the material (the object, the world that surrounds us, the music ...) first appears deformed and gradually approaches its real form. Once we become conscious of this reality, the trajectory continues, leaving behind this original material as only a deformed trail and allowing, the full expression of the metamorphosis. Musically, Vues aériennes is concentrated around the circumvolutions of a solo French horn around the different distortions revealed by as many procedures of rhythmic writing. What turns out to be truly revealing is the term that Murail uses, starting in this period, to define this distortion: ‘anamorphosis.’ Once again, this reference makes use of the visual. The attitude is symptomatic but revealing of a way of thinking. Concretely, the “anamor- phosis proceeds by an inversion of elements and functions. Instead of being progressively reduced to their limits [...], it projects forms outside of themselves: a destruction for a rebuilding, an escape but one which implies a return. The procedure [...] contains the poetics of abstraction, while still belonging to the world of singularities. The anamorphosis [is al craftily articulated system which occupies a position within a doctrine of knowledge of the world. It is associated to automata around which can be sketched the reasoning about the machines which control forms of life. Thus anamorphose is linked to the theories of doubt [and] does not cease to spread its fantasies.”"’ While this quotation calls upon the visual world, it has no less validity when transposed to the auditory one. However, whereas in the visual domain metamorph Ss remain within the limits of the poetics of an instantaneo! ssible reality, it is not so for sound. This distortion does, in fact, exists within the very nature of acoustic phenomena. The instrumental world overflows with examples based on the deformation of mathematical models, as tangible, from the perspective of psychoacoustics, as pure physics. It is enough to take the example of a piano: its tuning does not correspond exactly to the system of equal temperament, and, even less so, to pure octaves. Thus octaves in the high and low registers are subjected to frequencial distortion so as to give the impression of accurate intonation to the human ear. Moreover, the acoustic spectra of this same instrument is far from corresponding to the perfect relation of natural harmonics*" and makes us aware of the existence of indexes of distortion within these instrumental spectra. 19. Baltrusatis, Jurgis, Anamorphoses, Les perspectives dépravées II, Editions Flammarion, Coll. Champs, Paris, 1996, pp. 7-9. 20. This equation (hq (n) = fund * n) defines each harmonic as corresponding to the fre~ quency of the fundamental multiplied by a whole number corresponding to the ranking of that harmonic.From the Philosophical to the Practical 55: Applying an acoustical anamorphosis can no longer be seen as a com- plete perversion of natural models. This principle can also be found directly in nature. Using them as a means of structuring an artistic project grows out of a perfect equilibrium between the intimate knowl edge of sonic realities and the imaginary projections coming from their evolving potential. As to its practical realization, it cannot help but show the expressive force of a series of operations applied to an original mater- ial, operations which are continuously pertinent from a perceptive point of view. All distortions need to be heard. They create by their specific positions a new dialectic between the material and its organization and confer an independent sense of directionality on the discourse. However, wanting to limit the distortion to the category of spectral anamorphosis would be taking a reductive perspective. Working on/with a spectrum implies more than the simple treatment of a single operational variable, the frequency. A spectrum is also dynamic and mul- tidimensional, it cannot be seperated from its temporal evolution. The qualitative aspect of a spectrum — and its corollary a timbre — cannot do without its internal articulations. In this way an instrumental event expresses the qualities of its transitories, the tingling continuation of its vibration and its resonant properties. All sounds live through the specificities of their internal structure which are in perpetual mutation. Its order seems to emerge from the apparent chaos of the interlacing of subtle relations, lying beyond simple human comprehension. While the quantitative spectrum is only a momentary construction, an infinitely thin slice, scanned from a sonic life that is easy to model, it is, however, difficult to control within a discourse that avoids combinatoriality in favor of operations which are linked to perception, the qualitative spec- trum is a “secret calculation that the soul makes unknowingly.”?! Thus allowing sensory information to be perceived in its full temporality. Through this idea, simple constructions make way for ‘musical mor- phologies,’ an ensemble of complex constructions strategically stacked one inside of the other. At this level of comprehension, the material defined in this way already presents itself as a musical form, in its own right. This constitues the musical project of many of Murail’s pieces. Vues aériennes, already seen briefly in the preceding paragraphs, does not fail to present a global form corollary to the processes of distortion invoked in the title, while still inspired by the articulations of sonic phenomena. 21. Leibnitz, as quoted by Jean-Claude Risset, “Calculer le son de contraintes: sical: un nouveau champ in La Musique depuis 1945, materiau, esthétique et perception, texts col- lected by Hugues Dufourt and Joél-Marie Fauquet, Pierre Mardaga Editeur, Coll ique et Musicologie’, Sprimont, 1996,56 Claude Ledoux The microscopic examination finds itself infinitely multiplied, bent to the imperatives of musical macro-form: from the birth of the sonic event in the sound of breath to the instability of attack transients, from the rich- ness of the sonic experience to its disappearance in the rarefaction of events caused by a lack of new excitation. Thus the four sections can be subdivided, in turn, into three phases: starting the vibration (growing tension); a sustained central expression, rich in micro-events (the sustain of electro-acousticians); and the final decay, the resonance into which the construction, placed in the foreground of the section concerned, decom- poses. It’s not the least bit surprising that this kind of infinite recursion opens the way to a more fractal view of artistic creation. Serendib, composed in 1992, refers to various properties of the new geometry invented by Benoit Mandelbrot. In this way, Tristan Murail tries to ‘fractalize’ the temporal structure using — starting from a fractal series of five abstract terms” (8; 1.8; 9; 6; 11) —a principle of similarity that could be applied at various levels in the elaboration of the piece. While there is no utility in explaining, here, the generation of the math- ematical results that give a real coherence to the series, it is important to recognize their musical implications. Toward this end, Serendib can be divided into five sections whose durations result from an operation per- formed on the five abstract terms in such a way as to obtain five values which were effected to the temporal domain. In order to create a formal similarity, these large sections are, in turn, subdivided into five sub-sections which are once again sub-divided into shorter sequences. This procedure continues in this manner, section after section up until the smallest musical expression which can sustain a recognizable morphology. As a sort of example, the first sections are subdivided in the following manner: 22. Mandelbrot, Benoit, Les objets fractals, hasard et dintension, Flammarion, Paris, 1975 23. The fractal calculations used in Serendib were calculated with the help of the computer program PatclhWork, developed at IRCAM. Tristan Murail was part of the group that worked on this CAC (Computer Assisted Composition) project. 24. For example, the first of these terms is multiplied by a constant: 8 * 37 = 296 seconds, in other words 4’ 57”. The same thing is done to the other elements in the fractal seriesFrom the Philosophical tothe Practical 37 ‘Section I IA BIC Al A2 AB A4 AS cl c2.C3 C4 C5 Alabcede Clab cde (Section I - etd.) ID IE D2 D4 DS D3 DI El E2 E3 D2abcdef Ddabede Elabede EMabede EMbede (Section T- etd.) (E - etd.) 4 ES E4abede BSabede Section II AZ A2 AL Ad AS A5a boc d dI (42) d3 d4 ds [Section Ill... (ete.) Figure 2 At the same time, the interesting part of this kind of formalization is not limited to this little game of mathematical calculation. The formal struc- tures created, in this way, would have no sense if they did not provide a valid support to the perceptual strategies. On this level, each of the five parts — whatever their macro-formal level (I; H; II; IV; V), micro-formal level (a; b; ¢; d; e), or their intermediate state (A; B; C; D; E / 1; 2; 3; 4;5) — is distinguished by an appropriate morphology. Moreover, each of these correspond to a state, read a musical behavior immediately recog- nizable auditively. Thus, the first element is characterized by an intro- ductory aspect, placing in ‘vibration’ the sonic elements; the second, temporally brief, uses noise-like sounds as well as particular sounds, conferring on this element a perturbatory function; the third element appears as a thesis, a moment of strength developed through a rich texture; the fourth element is identifiable through its use of high frequen- cies (according to Murail, its behavior is marked by fast harmonic changes and “creates the sensation of a chaotic mass””); as for the last element, the katalexis, presents a perfect state of poetic desinence, as it returns progressively to silence — the absence of vibration. 25. Perraud, Edward, Approche de la personnalité musicale de Tristan Murail, et analyse de ta modélisation fractate de sa pitce Serendib, DEA thesis, Paris, 1995,58 Clauie Levioux The preceding lines trace the strange kinship between the main musical articulations and the sonic phenomena that inspired them, such as could be found in Vues aériennes (a piece composed six years earlier). Only one new element appears in Serendib (though this could still very well be integrated into the modeling of an unstable sonic phenomenon) which is traversed by a dialectic between the expression of its equilib- rium and its need for a state of flux where unique precariousness gives life to the imagination. Serendib expresses, in this way, the exegesis of a thought that can only find an outlet in the perpetual renewal of chaos, and its beauty only in the most complete destruction. Thus fractal theory does not give Murail a final solution. His propositions are nothing more than a prolegomenon to the deep and detailed examination of musical substance linked to sound. By highlighting its most intimate specificities, as never before in his compositional output, the theory gives the musical construction a poetic reality that comes as close as possible to musical nature at its most sensitive; with its infinite variety of coherent metamor- phoses, far from any simple recurring system, it opens up a new field to the imagination. While Serendib opens the way to a more refined conception of musical technique for Murail in the early nineties, the works of the preceding decades must not be forgotten, but rather accepted as so many indicators of the expression that was still to come. Therefore, a short overview of the work titled Mémoire-érosion will show that behind all the simplistic processes are hidden important implications relating to compositional strategies. Asa reminder, Mémoire-érosion was composed in 1975-1976. Its struc- ture is inspired by the electro-acoustic procedure known as a ‘re- injection-loop.’ This analog model begins with a microphone capturing a sonic source; a first open reel tape machine would, then, record the sound onto tape and a second machine, placed near the first and con- nected to a speaker, then replays the sound. This sound is ‘re-injected’ into the loop, written again by the recording device and replayed by the play-back — this process marches on indefatigabl It goes without saying that in this model, the initial event will be re- recorded indefinitely, placed into the loop and superposed onto itself, dependent on the delay that can be calculated as a function of the vari- able ‘d’2° This system also results in the phenomenon of entropy, the 26. This variable is defined by the distance that separates the record head of the first device and the play head of the second. The event recorded will be re-inje ing’ device with a variable delay determined by the velocity ‘v’ of the tape speed. For example, if d = 76 em and v = 38 cm/sec., the delay will be d/v; in this case, 2 seconds.From the Philosophical to the Practical 39 reinjection Q9 ‘Recording’ ‘Play-back’ device device variable «d» Figure 3 Analog/acoustic model accumulation of events recorded and re-recorded creates, in fact, a rela- tively complex polyphony. A different interest comes from the ‘defects’ of the technology itself: it is impossible to indefinitely re-record a sound without observing a long term erosion of the sound, resulting from the nature of magnetic tape and entropy. From this erosion/distortion emerge secondary phenomena, which can either be noise-like or which can highlight certain frequency bands that appear progressively to the detriment of the initial spectrum’s stability. From this observation, Murail constructed a model which could be transposed to the instrumental domain. This is a major undertaking since this kind of attitude pushes the composer to go beyond traditional musical gestures and instrument speci lichés. The result of this detour is that the instrumental writing is considerably enriched, whether in the distinctiveness of timbre — as seen, for example, in the incredible rich- ness in the succession of string effects — or in the complex articulations of the instrumental texture. In Mémoire-érosion, the actual modeling begins with the soundings of the solo French horn, first occasional, then more and more melodically elaborate. The rest of the ensemble models its behavior on an instrumental transposition of the ‘re-injection loop’ procedure, described above. Thus, the piece works as a succession of processes of re-iteration and spectral erosion, linking stable sonic events to their entropic image — distorted and chaotic. Different from the actual, acoustic/analog, procedure, static and unchanging, Mémoire- érosion emphasizes the qualities of its instrumental writing. In this instru- mental model, the composer goes beyond the original model and effects constantly changing numerical values to the variable ‘d.’ These values60 Claude Ledoux were drawn from a simple process of dilation-contraction proceeding through continuity or rupture and are associated to the variations in the figures coming from the solo horn and define the important formal articulations: 300 250 200 sotto an 150 100 50 oO+ T T T sect " sec2 " sec3 " sec4 ' secS \ soc6 ' sec? " sec8 sections vsr-@es0- Figure 4 Realizing a musical project in this way has certain repercussions that will reappear in Murail’s output. The preliminary step allows us to hear the progressive ‘erosion’ of a single pitch”’ played by the solo French horn; presenting an opportunity for exploring the interior of the emerging scale of natural harmonics and for using, micro-distortions of the fre- quencies ‘a la Scelsi.’ This is equally true, however, in the following sec- tions which deal with more developed melodic sequences containing a growing number (although still limited) of pitches. In this configuration, the processes of erosion simultaneously effect spectra built on different fundamental frequencies are enriched by their interpenetration and gen- erate inharmonic phenomena through the subtle mixing of elements coming from these different spectra. This opens the route to complex 27. While the contingencies of the musical act force musicians to always use ‘musical notes,’ it is evident that the composers of ‘spectral’ music work more, in the prelimi- nary steps, with numerical values representing values in the frequency domain,From the Philosophical tothe Practical 61 spectra, poly-spectrality”* and to the refined harmonic reflections” that can be derived from them. From Mémoire-érosion and the work with the intimate nature of sonic phenomena have come two main observations. Firstly, there is every reason not to draw too hasty conclusions as regards sonic constructions of and for their own sake, but to replace these latter within their own environment. A spectrum, whether harmonic or inharmonic, distorted or not, only finds its qualitative value from being truly understood within the framework of the new dialectic which is developed through the artic- ulations of the discourse. Mentioning harmonicity or inharmonicity implies a reference to numerical values and their relationships in a purely mathematical sense. The same is true for distortions defined by a numerical index. The music, though, is elsewhere, beyond the numbers. However, Mémoire-érosion put into play processes effecting different domains within the same musical strategy. The processes of erosion only take on their full meaning through their relation to the processes of tem- poral distortion based on the values effected to the variable ‘d.’ Moreover, while in this piece there is no hierarchy of processes, but simply complementarity (one cannot function without the other), their very coexistence can be seen as a first step towards a more developed reflection on the interactions between processes of different types. Two years after Mémoire-érosion, Murail composed the Treize couleurs du soleil couchant. Already in this piece there are fragments which have developed into the seeds of a hierarchy in which different simple processes manifest their influence and occur simultaneously. For example, rehearsal number seven of the score presents a process of rhythmic dilation linked to another process which explores a harmonic construction of spectral origin and moves progressively towards its fundamental at the same time as certain components are filtered to modify their perception (Figure 5). 28. Cf. the introduction to spectral work in the article by Julian Anderson, ‘Dans le con- texte’, in Entretemps, N° 8, September, 1989. Issue on Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail, pp. 13-23. 29, In Murail’s music reigns a profound ambiguity in the hearing of a sonic aggregate. Are we hearing a chord or a timbre resulting from the orchestration of frequencies selected ‘so as to exhibit relations identical to those found in the acoustic nature of the world’s sonic elements? This is a complex question which raises other questions, especially those relative to the weighting of the notes within the aggregate played by the instru- mental ensemble. Based on the character and mastery of the instrumentalists, a fused or differentiated sonic agglomerate can be obtained.Frown the Philosophical tote Practical 63 Murail’s works are full of examples like this. The compositional pro- jects of the composer are so inspired by the principles behind this kind of construction that they make it the basis of their foundation. Allégories, written in 1990, forms a pinnacle of achievement in this direction. While in the preceding works, the process was an element of the discourse, beginning, with Allégories Murail has used a more rigorous control of the ‘processional’ successions that could eliminate the rigidity of the internal articulations of the processes and offer a more varied external articula- tion of the discourse, closer to natural reality. Murail calls this a ‘proc of processes’ and along with the ‘anamorphosis’ it is one of the essential aspects of his music. All of Murail’s works from the nineties are effected by this idea of ‘process of processes.’ Within this idea is the cohabitation of multiple processes in a hierarchical relationship. It would only be slightly daring to describe a process as an atom of the discourse, ready to be ‘molecularized’ through the action of another process. However, whether atom or molecule is not what matters since what we perceive is the result; the accumulation of musical processes forming the very matter of the music offered to the auditory perception of the listene Sometimes these ‘processes of processes’ are extremely compact, reduced to almost negligible proportions. Taking one whose expression can only be validated over several minutes and shortening it to several seconds creates a musical gesture which functions as an ellipsis of the discourse, an ‘allegory’ of the procedures in use. Thanks to these allegories, the piece avoids the linearity of slow, process controlled, transformations and benefits from a more discursive form, richer with its dialectic between predictability and unpredictability; a form more open to expect- ations, projections and ‘flashbacks.’ A direct result of this type of think- ing is that Murail’s form of expression is more and more direct, dense, concise and, thanks to the inter-relations between different, more or less complex, musical processes, forces anyone wanting to understand the work, to approach musical material from a more heuristic angle. Toward this end, the already discussed notion of ‘musical morphology’ seems to fill the need. This term encompasses, with equal facility, the spectral aspect, its temporal evolution, its texture, its internal articulation and many other attributes that can be individually analyzed. One of the composer’s most recent pieces, L’esprit des dunes, makes wonderful use of this idea. Already in the very first event (Figure 6) the conditions for the existence of this morphology are present. A traditional analysis of this figure would focus on its association to the great tradition of associating the arsis and thesis, Accepting it as a morphology requires studying it through its complex relations: This morphology has a special attribute in that it contains the germ of all the different categories that will be treated within the processes of64 Claude Ledoux Figure 6 temporal distortion which underpin the entire work. Without going into the details of its generation,” L’esprit des dunes derived some of its mater- ial through the use of recent technology — partial tracking — which allows composers inspired by acoustic phenomena to analyze their most dynamic aspects. In fact, the arsis from the example in Figure 6 empha- es the progressive reevaluation of knowledge intrinsic to the sonic object, helping to call attention to its complexity and itself pre-defined by the ‘environment’ created by the simultaneously sounding synthesized tones. This rising figure certainly does not correspond to the musical gesture as it might lead you to believe, at first glance, but instead con- tains within it the germs of the later melodic developments. Returning to the articulation of the morphology being examined; the arrival point of the ‘arabesque’ is doubled instrumentally. However, far from being a simple coloristic addition, this treatment enriches all the microscopic aspects linked to the articulation of the spectrum and prefigures the enormous harmonic proliferation of the piece. The third part of the figure, the decay, is characterized by its spectral rarefaction and the calming of its vibration. Analyzed in this way, this ‘morphology’ prefigures the evolution of the piece revealing the richness of a figure which a priori seems simple and also confers validity on this typology. , can be found in the 105212, 30. This generation, as well as a more detailed study of the pie: booklet accompanying the recent CD of Murail’s music released by Adi 1996.Front the Philosophical tothe Practical 65 By accepting this kind of attitude, Murail’s music teaches us to think of musical creation as going from the exterior of its figures toward the inter- ior of its structure. The compositional technique is positioned outside of conventions and force the analyst to discover new concepts in order to understand them. There is still the great danger of wanting to limit the sonic signals to simple operational markers when they are, in fact, part of a vast complex system: conceived in the image of the world to create, in turn, a new ‘world.’ There is still a lot that could be written about Tristan Murail’s work. However, the aim of this essay is not so much the in depth analysis of his musical output as to provide the means for under- standing its conceptual specificities. In summary, Tristan Murail’s entire body of work — as was already mentioned in the first part of this essay — teaches us to hear, or to hear better. With time, it has become more refined, revealing its more and more surprising potentials. It also teaches anyone who tries to under- stand it from the inside, to better understand the strategies which control the elements that are subjected to them. In an era when specialization is king, it reminds us that only a heuristic position allows us to understand the richness of a type of thought, from which emanates true artistic emotion. This type of thought teaches us to comprehend more clearly the formidable exuberance of the world which surrounds us. Moreover, by teaching us to perceive and manage information — this management will probably become one of the major issues of the 21st century*! —, by exposing us to forms in constant becoming, this body of work prefigures the world of tomorrow,” in which only the poetry and richness of knowledge can fight against the exacerbation of self-centeredness. In this way, Murail’s works fully participate in the construction of the world. They proudly hold on to their identity without using false affectations or narcissistic emotions; a mirage which has continuously haunted the art tic domains of our time. These works offer one of the most beautiful mes- sages of hope possible, addressed to the deepest part of ourselves. 31. Ley rauss, Claude, interview with France Culture, 1993, 32, Music prefiguring the world of the future is one of the ideas in Jacques Attali’s book, Bruits, Librairie Arthéme Fayard, Paris, 1982.