Contemporary Music Review © 2000 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N.V. 2000, Vol. 19, Part 2, p. 115-134 Published by license under Photocopying permitted by license only the Harwood Academic Publishers imprint, part of Gordon and Breach Publishing, a member of the Taylor & Francis Group. APPENDIX IL Musical Examples Joshua Fineberg KEY WORDS: Spectral Music; techniques; algorith armony; frequency; analysis. The preceding appendix presents many ideas and techniques used in or relating, to spectral music. However an abstract presentation without examples is insufficient and the examples in this section should serve as illustrations of the preceding explanations. It 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 composers. The examples should be used to help readers make the transition from an abstract idea or technique to a con- crete realization — without implying that this is the only possible use of the idea or technique. The pieces grouped under the label spectral cover an enormous range and while many composers are influenced by the same ideas, they rarely 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 techniques as well as helping to illustrate the special balance between calculation and intuition, theory and experimen- tation, that is so important to understanding spectral composition. Instrumental Spectra as a Model for an Orchestral Synthesis One of the best known and earliest examples of a composer using an instrumental anal; to create a harmonic and gestural model which is then realized by an instrumental ensemble is Gérard Grisey’s Partiels (1975) for 18 instruments. Personal computers were, of course, not an116 Appendix tt option for Grisey at the time that he wrote the piece, so he used an elec- tronic sonogram device to analyze the attack of a low E2 on the trom- bone. The analysis of this attack became the model for 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 still the generation of a sonogram showing the attack of the low E on a trombone played forte. (In a sonogram, the x-axis shows the time, the y-axis shows frequency in Hz and the dark- ness shows 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 partials appearing later. Secondly, the lowest partials — including the fundamental — are 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 harmonic series. When this is transcribed into musical notation of pitches (approximated to the nearest quarter tone) and dynamics, the following series is produced — see Figure 1. (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 score — see Figure 2. It should be noted that the analysis presented above and, in fact, the sound analyzed are not identical to those used by GriseyMusical Exanypites 117 15ma 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 21 22 15ba Figure 1 (although I have tried to mimic Grisey’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 impor- tant difference is that the low bass which seems to be presenting the fun- damental 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 role in the entire Les Espaces Acoustiques cycle of which Partiels 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 synthe- sis is reflected in its exclusion from the composer's annotations of partial rankings for each of the other pitches. While it is generally not very helpful to write a textual commentary on the effect of a musical passage, I think it is important to note how strik- ing this moment is. 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 trom- bone 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 transfigura- tion 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 toa vast 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 Partiels as having caused their initial interest in the musical potential of sonic phenomena.18 Appendix IP con soedine (plun gee) alto sel ponticetle © 1976 by Casa Ricordi - BMG Ricordi SpA. Used by permission Figure 2 Non-Harmonic Spectra as both Sonic Material and Structural Models As was discussed in appendix I, many naturally occurring spectra are non-harmonic. One class of non-harmonic spectra which has often been used in musical works is bell sounds. A piece which makes extensive use of a bell spectrum is Jonathan Harvey’s Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980) for 8-track tape. The piece uses 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 (theMusical Examples 139 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 shown below: ee ope a te ote be ete & Pee x = - The structure of the piece is divided into eight sections, each of which is based on a different one of the lowest eight main partials, in the order shown below. The length of each section is inversely proportional to the frequency of the pivot pitch. e Basing the material and structure on this bell spectrum was designed to create (in the composer'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 young boy flies freely.’ The result is a piece with a very distinctive and resonant sound, that shows a remarkable degree of cohesion. Instrumental Use of a Non-Harmonic Spectrum In Philippe Hurel’s piece Legon de choses (1993) for ensemble and live electronics, a sound with a non musical origin finds itself as an important source of sonic material. In the piece, realized at IRCAM, a percussive blow toa pie tin furnishes the following spectrum shown both in musical notation, and as a list of numbers representing the frequencies, ampli- tudes and bandwidths needed to re-synthesize the sound with a bank of resonant (second-order) filters. #| no freq ampl band niveaux 1 71.54214 4.64553 -16.26926 (&.'5): 2 177.5591 —48.40823 3687118 (6) 3 211.7093 -28.17762 .7381668, (5.5) 4 219.4644 —41.87737 1.456143 (6)120 Appendix It 250.7578. 316.5064 331.4685, 343.7867 405.1301 422.4349 436.5004 443.2291 471.851 705.6046 716.9838 770.3143 845.6451 915.051 924.6711 996.4263, 1960.5 1968.515, 2846.417 3604.161 4631.062 —53.34579 —46.85297 —65.35985, —42.27544 -17.32634 —51.02982 —42.04011 —41.91204 —42.1386 —35.67068 ~28.40648, -29.44712 —34.53889 -26.57337 —34.00823 -30.70481 35.02991 —33.50926 —43.67721 -32.83813 —43.13357 -9408484 -9115471 -6500856 1.175043, 1.174562 1.202811 1.350037 -9650687 .9096196 1.501041 2.587212 12.74884 3.355728 8.370476 1.146358 3.786161 1.457937 2.115762 -9451075 3.623578 4.892985 (6) GB.Musicat Examples 121 26 7565.542 —64.64258 57.34783 (l.. 5) 27 9148.045 —66.8896 58.06667 (1. 5} The way in which this model is used for the generation of both electronic and instrumental material is typical of many pieces of spectral music. In the following excerpt from the score, the instruments play a realization of the pie tin spectrum simultaneously with a synthetic realization of a hybrid between the pie tin sound and another sampled sound (a percus- sively struck tape reel). a © 1993, Gérard Billaudot Editeur, Paris. Used by permission.Appendix I Natural and Artificial Distortions of Harmonic Spectra In his piece L'esprit des dunes Tristan Murail makes extensive use of several sounds whose natural spectra show a significant amount of dis- tortion. The following spectrum from the piece is that of a Tibetan trump: 1sma 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 15ba 15ma 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 95 36 37 38 39 40 15ba Figure 3 A ‘compression’ of the partials can easily be observed here 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 amplifies that natural distortion with the addition of varying amounts of artificially added distortion (see Figure 4). These newly generated spectra form the opening progression of the section (see Figure 5). In another one of his pieces, Désintégrations (1982-1983) for 17 instru- ments and tape, Murail also makes use of progressive changes in the amount of distortion to generate the harmonic progression for a section. The section VIII of the piece begins with a harmonic spectrum built on C- sharp. This spectrum is gradually stretched so as to produce specific pitches for the third and twenty-first 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 reinforce the color of the composer seeks to highlight (see Figure 6).123 Musical Examples pamfyy 68 SIP: i Ss ORR EESKERKEREEEEKEZEEHKHAKHAD %8Zh_ISIP. %81 SIP: =e 1g vowoas ‘seung sep yids3,7 Spare seraors aa PG ee rnraecredaAuasnhadia seLss ez =f a =124 Appendix ID B! -13- Silxe 1 AL 2 vt, = [_ "Wee on. ea = ze == D>, aS mf es -~ oe l= «ps oF ke - ~ |B ~ i a a) —=- — Ealtions Una Conta, Paris, Used by permis Figure 5 Tristan Murail’s L’esprit des dunes: opening of section B Virtual Fundamentals and Spectral 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 fundamental and a stretched spectrum will seem to raise it. In the following stretched and transposed voice spec- trum (see Figure 8) built on the fundamental G 3/4 sharp, the fundamentalMusical Examples 125 the gs. o z > ty pS foe = == Pamictaction S & = $ 5 3 c j Sa Ware a ea a afl g. x Z z é 3 : i 50 : t=, it =i - actually perceived is the slightly raised A-sharp marked below the spectrum. This can have important consequences in real pieces. Take for example another section from Murail’s L'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. Identifying the126 Appenitix I p sap it INA URIS] wosy aycuuexg “Te|UaUTEpUTY partaoiad ayy Ut YpIy expads 0} suonzoysiq z amnB1y | SS == 4 | OeeeenneneneekEEKEZedanusasnhadanaeerssrert %@ =UoJsIOIsIP dene 9joBUOW xI9A Sl ee ee eee = ORR ESKER TERR RREEKETZIEHHAHAGHaAUTHO 6 % = UOIsIOISIP dene oure}eqN Sdwo1L eed soung sep yds3.7Musical Examples 127 may 2 4 5 7 B 9 1011 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 27 28 29 30 transposed and distorted voice spectrum BEE _ perceived fundamental 15d Figure 8 phenomenon allowed the bassist to comfortably adjust to the perceived fundamental. Controlling Material with Virtual Fundamentals Another use of virtual fundamentals has been as an ad-hoc measure of harmonic tension in order to organize the complex material generated by spectral analyses. One piece which clearly demonstrates this is my own Streamlines (1994). In 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 from the fun- damental. The chords are all different yet revolve around a 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 for all of these chords (giving a general indication of their harmonic tension).128 Appendliv It aes ba These virtual fundamentals were then used to sort the chords into an order of ascending tension (descending virtual fundamentals). Once this basic ordering has been generated, it facilitates orientation within the sequence and allows the construction of harmonic sequences that follow various tension contours such as the following: This tension curve when mapped onto the chord positions within the sorted chord ordering produces the following harmonic sequence from the piece: Instrumental Harmonies Created from a Modeling of Frequency Modulation Synthesis Along with Partiels, another of the defining pieces of the spectral move- ment is Tristan Murail’s Gondwana. The opening of this piece for large orchestra is a series of enormous orchestrally synthesized bell sounds which are gradually transformed into an orchestrally synthesized brass sound. These bell sounds are constructed without using, a real bell spec- trum. They are, instead, built upon a Frequency Modulation (FM) syn- thesis of a bell. This is achieved by using, a series of five carriers: ———Musical Examples 129 Asingle modulator affects all the carriers: ——— This produces five different modulation-based harmonies which are played by the orchestra: 1Sma 1S5ma_ = = = = te = = = Ss ———— ch. 1 ch. 2 iSma 15ma In the piece, these chords are completed by other chords which were generated through interpolations between some of these FM chords. Instrumental Harmonies Created from a Modeling of Ring Modulation Ring modulation is another electronic technique which spectral com- posers have often used as a model for instrumental composition. Thi techniques can be seen as early as Grisey’s Partiels which has been dis cussed 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.130 Appendix td 2 G@ 8 AK. # nf pe Po © 1976 by Casa Ricordi - BMG Ricordi SpA. Used by permission. Later works and other composers often go much further in generating complex harmonies with ring-modulation, but the technique remains essentially the same.Musical Examples 131 Dynamic Analysis Windows As was discussed in the preceding appendix complex, rapidly moving sounds require frequent analysis windows to approximate the dynamic character of these sounds. In Murail’s piece Bois flotté (1995) for five instruments and electronic sounds, the composer needed to capture the dynamic flux of cascading water. Even after an initial reduction in the amount of polyphony and the elimination of very weak partials, the mass of information is imposing: 16 ete.Appendix I In order to simplify and stabilize the harmonic color, Murail reduced the number of chords by effectively re-sampling the sequence — group- ing the chords two by two. He then performed a sort of vocoding of the sequence. Correcting each pitch in the sequence to the nearest pitch in the following harmonic reservoir (which captures the global harmonic color of the entire sequence): 16 : eld This more manageable sequence then undergoes a progressive rallen- tando to produce the final sequence which will be produced by a combi- nation of instrumental and synthesized sounds:Musical Examples 133 Rhythmic Interpolation The last example of this appendix is from Marc André Dalbavie's piece Diadémes (1986) for viola, instrumental ensemble and electronics. In this example taken from page 43, measure 14, a rhythm which has been established is slowly pulled apart into two groups (the first with four notes and the second with five) which continue to separate until they form two homophonic entities of equal length and set up a harmonic oscillation. The following figure shows the various steps of the rhythmic interpo- lation. The numbers under the notes reflect the various pitch entrances in the realization — when multiple numbers are under the same rhythmic value more than one pitches enters simultaneously at the indicated rhythmic point.134 Appendiv t) ere Si aS i y | = TTL) J. FRATAL) 7 4 we ee as ————s a 2 $< f ; ——— a] / ARAL ) FAll_i a 2F - > sey F 3 ——, —| TALL . Dm ! Aue ge ON ET | | | | “y : : ! | | ene — _. | os Rhythmic interpolation from Mare André Dalbavie’s piece Diadémes