*** Excerpts of the this lecture-recital with Maria Aloupi were given on: February 20, 2013 ***

Transcription

1 For ABOUT: CULTURAL SPACE & Full-Fire Tribute to Tristan Murail The Three-Day Festival formed in collaboration with ABOUT, Institut Français, Onassis Cultural Center and Megaron (17, 19, 20, February 2013). *** Excerpts of the this lecture-recital with Maria Aloupi were given on: February 20, 2013 *** Tristan Murail and Spectralism sighted through Les Travaux et les jours By Keith Moore Assistant Professor & Assistant Chair of Music Department University of Indianapolis Athens Campus Murail s Biography and Full-Fire Tribute to Tristan Murail Welcome to the final concert of this extraordinary festival celebrating the music and artistic influence of Tristan Murail and thank you for asking me to speak on this occasion. I m deeply honored to deliver remarks tonight about Tristan Murail and his music, and about the rise and development of spectral techniques in general. Tristan Murail was born in Le Havre in 1947 and came of age as a composer in late 1960s and early 1970s Paris. During this period he studied composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur with acclaimed composer and pedagogue Olivier Messiaen ( ) and quickly began writing provocative works like Couleur de Mer (1969) and Altitude 8000 (1970). In 1973 Murail, together with a group of like- minded musicians, formed ensemble L Itineraire. Their mission was to explore and champion a music not immediately comprehended by many performing and cultural organizations and Murail composed his most distinctive early works in this context, including Mémoire/Erosion (1976), Treize Couleurs du soleil couchant (1978) and Ethers (1978). The mission of L Itineraire was a resounding success. By the end of the decade they fostered and promoted a new approach to music composition spectralism and the roots of spectralism that now enjoyed recognition in Europe and beyond. In the 1980s Murail had increasing contact as composer and researcher with IRCAM (an internationally known institute at Centre Pompidou founded by Pierre Boulez and the French Ministry of Culture and Communication in 1977 and dedicated to the technological exploration of music and acoustics.) This relation of composition and research at IRCAM deepened in the 1990s with Murail also co- developing the seminal software package Patchwork and teaching on the aesthetics and techniques of electronics and computation in music. Compositions Désintégrations ( ) and L Esprit des dunes (1994) are representative of these fertile decades in Murail s output. In 1997 Tristan Murail became Professor of Composition at Columbia University in New York City, a post he held until

2 2011 when he retired and was named Professor Emeritus. Recently (2012), having returned to Europe, he was appointed Professor of Composition at the Universität Mozarteum of Salzburg. I had the pleasure to come to know Tristan in New York, where I studied with him at Columbia University. I also worked closely with Tristan in a university related project mounting public performances of large- scale compositions utilizing spectral techniques and an array of electronic and computer technology that had not been heard live in New York. Again, as it had been with L Itineraire, Tristan wanted musicians to comprehend the distinctive intentions and challenges of his music and related works, and to have these compositions heard publically in knowledgeable performances. His efforts were a success once more and the New York new music scene, which in many respects sets the bar for contemporary music activity in the United States, has not been the same since. This festival has a similar goal. The performers are well versed in Murail s music: Ensemble 2E2M plays many works involving spectral techniques and they are champions of earlier composers important to the rise of that tradition; Murail s Treize Couleurs du soleil couchant (1978) was amongst the first works in the young Ergon Ensemble s repertoire; and Pianist- composer Maria Aloupi has a strong dedication to the work of Murail and has performed his piano compositions extensively. Over the last days we ve witnessed Tristan Murail s music in the context of related composers, both younger and older. From Murail himself we ve heard compositions from the recent and ongoing Portulan Cycle; tonight we hear excerpts from his piano collection Les Travaux et les jours (2002), which dates from the same period, and we glimpse the development of Murail s style through three important earlier works. Quotations and Reminisces Most of you will be happy to know this isn t an academic lecture on Murail s work. So let me begin with a couple quotes from Tristan and three anecdotes you might enjoy. First Tristan has always insisted: there is no spectral music; there are only spectral techniques. I may slip up and speak of spectral music tonight, but it s important I get that idea out there first. Tristan is correct for insisting that composers envision their own music, and spectral techniques do not limit the musics one can imagine. What spectral techniques do is allow composers to seize on some aspect of sound itself as an organizing principle; and it is likely that in some corresponding way large or small this moves the composer away from handling the traditional elements of musical notation as organizing principles. Tristan, very simply, puts it like this:

3 Why do we always have to think of music in terms of notes? We work with sounds, for which notes are simply symbols notes and sounds are not the same thing. We ll see and hear the implications of this kind of thinking tonight in the works of Tristan Murail. But first, as we miss Tristan s presence tonight, let me give you a few stories. Tristan is surely the only composer of his stature I ever found myself alone with, wrapping cables late night in a grungy session room after two long rehearsals. It was one of those warehouses spaces just off 42 nd street, called Rick s or Mick s, 11:37 pm and counting. The fact of it hit me on the spot, spooling a greasy XLR cable around my wrist and elbow. This wasn t at all because Tristan is humble. It was because from his early days he respected and knew exactly and completely what it took to get something right; and he was still on the job, like me, one rehearsal to go and a critical performance just around the corner. Now for you young performers and composers out there don t expect Tristan to be wrapping cables with you! He won t speak to me again! But it s a great example of how to handle your own show. Regarding the Portulan Cycle, I always remember how Tristan dreaded the cult of the composer. In lessons and weekly composition seminars he plainly stated a piece of music s interest was in the music, that it had nothing to do with the maker of the work. Accordingly, he showed great displeasure with the design of Ensemble Intercontemporain s new composer portrait CD series each a composer against a white background; leaning on an invisible wall, or stooping and waving; shirt tucked in, or shirt not tucked in. Tristan went through great lengths to ensure his Intercontemporain CD, when released, had no image at all: just his name and the titles, and a white background. Yet, at the time, he was quietly building Portulan, a series of works comprising indirect autobiography; each about noun some person, place or thing important to the composer. This is a great example of Tristan s creative and surprising response to obstinacy. If query keeps coming up, he finally fixes it with his own unique reply. In those same lessons and seminars, Tristan spoke with brutal but polite honesty about what he perceived as the weakness of compositions made from short unconnected movements. (Looking at his works list, it was certainly clear Tristan was a fan of single movement compositions.) Whether the presenter was a student or guest, you could see the remark written across Tristan s face. Sometimes he wouldn t say it, but usually he would. And so it was one Tuesday we students all sat together in Miller Theatre with jaws dropped at the premiere of Les Travaux et les jours (2002), which we hear tonight a large piano work formed from nine short separated movements! Again, it seems Tristan decided to say, OK, look. This is how it s done! Spectralism

4 Let s quickly put spectralism in context and then explore some particulars from Les Travaux et les jours (2002). When Murail was starting out serialism or post- serialism still held sway in most corners of Europe and America. (Even his teacher, one of the great originals of the day and not a serialist recommended the technique to his students.) Young composers received a one- dimensional aesthetic framework: a path with one direction for conservation, and the other direction for progress. Though dominant serialism had already received two influential schools of critique, both of which were important to the rise of spectralism. First were the sound mass composers, such as Iannis Xenakis ( ), György Ligeti ( ) and Friedrich Cerha (b. 1926) who from the late 1950s began writing musical works with densely figured events meant to be taken in their totality, rather than for their precise internal construction or contrapuntal relations. The second wave of critique came from minimalist composers Terry Riley (b. 1935), LaMonte Young (b. 1935), Steve Reich (b. 1936) and Philip Glass (b. 1937) who in the mid 1960s began writing pieces with radically limited materials that often developed through clear and gradually unfolding processes. For some spectralists, including Gerard Grisey ( ), the minimalist lesson of discrete process was deeply influential. In Murail s music, however, we rarely encounter a vestige of gradual process in the minimalist sense. If we need a new term, perhaps it s better to speak of progressive or continuous development: in any case Murail resists didactic formal patterning. His organic approach to large- scale form was influenced more by the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi ( ), whose music was championed by L Itineraire and who Murail dubbed the first de- composer, and by the legendary modernist Edgar Varèse ( ), who wrote relatively little but managed to be a precursor to much of the 20 th Century. But resting behind sound mass and minimalist composers, lays the broader influence of technology. Composers in each movement worked directly with the tools of technology as electronic music first took shape in the 1950s and 1960s. Both took concepts from technology such as the possibility of infinite sonic sustain, or mechanical and independently unfolding metrics that ultimately found metaphoric partners in their music for musicians. The lessons of electronic music technology were radical and abrupt; waves of influence beyond its material basis were surely inevitable. But, the tools of early electronic music were also brittle and for this reason too many composers ultimately felt it easier to take their ideas into the domain of concert music. The concepts of electronic music also found their ways into general theoretical writings, most immediately and conspicuously they informed Karlheinz Stockhausen s seminal article how time passes which managed to influence the serialists and any number of it s critics including the spectral school. Spectralism gained from all the musicians, ideas and materials we have mentioned, but regards technology they were in a unique and much different

5 historical position. Eventually, with the rise of computing in the 1970s and 1980s they were able to keep the dialog with technology ongoing and explicit, even in the realm of purely instrumental music. Chief amongst the spectral tools made available by computers was the spectral analysis the ability to look into sound itself and finely discern its material and unfolding. Referring to all this history to Varèse, to his appropriation by the serialists, to composers of early electronic music and to his own formal- musical ambitions in the face of the new computer analysis and computation, Murail states: the sound object does not exist any more it is subsumed in pure development. Works of Murail The early works of Tristan Murail combine calculation, aural sonic analysis, and formal concepts that bare metaphoric relations to electronic technology, like those discussed earlier. Mémoire/Erosion (1976) for horn and nine instruments provides a clear example of such a formal relation. The work is based on the re- injection loop, a studio technique involving tape loops and more than one magnetic tape machine. In this process sound is recorded and plays back before traveling a certain physical length (which also means a particular length of time, i.e. the tape loop) and playing back once more, therefore being recorded and played back again, with the process continuing. In Mémoire/Erosion the horn introduces all the new material, which enters the other instrumental parts in a similar fashion. But Tristan goes further. In the physical process unavoidable noise also enters the system, from the grit of the machinery. Rather then rid himself of that worldly fact, Tristan actually orchestrates the noise in, thereby taking up the passage from harmonicity, to inharmonicity, to noise one of his principle sonic interests. With a humorous nod, the piece through with a giant clicking that switches off the work and the imaginary tape machines in one touch! C est un jardin secret, ma soeur, ma fiancée, une source scellée, une fontaine close (1976) for solo viola, which we ve just heard in a marvelous performance from Krystalia Gaitanou, displays these passages from pitch to noise, here achieved by applying various levels of finger pressure in the left hand and bow pressure in the right hand. The compressing and dilating tempi of the work have their origins in sounds of the natural world, clearly revealed to the composer through the means of electronic technology. Such rhythms pervade Tristan s music and are highly characteristic in Les Travaux et les jours (2002). One of Murail s most often played works, Treize Couleurs du soleil couchant (1978) for flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello has a relation to technology much like Mémoire/Erosion, but here it is to the process of ring modulation. [Ad lib. ring modulation and Tristan s process of deriving pitches]

6 Ethers (1978) for flute and five instruments brings the process of frequency modulation literally into the music by delivering them through multiphonics. [Ad- lib.] The combination tones of multiphonics are heard separately, but nonetheless do fuse a degree by emanating through the same resonator and radiator. When Tristan creates and orchestrates these combination tones individually, in different spatial locations, he re- fuses them by adding the subtle swishing noise of maracas. Drawing on psycho- acoustic research, Tristan was well aware that noise binds elements related or not. In Ethers he used those findings to create an intriguing and unprecedented ensemble texture. Gondwana (1980) for large orchestra also uses frequency modulation to create the principle harmonies of the work and at the same time bridge the divide between the extremes of pitch and noise all of which is beautifully orchestrated by the composer. With Désintégrations ( ) computer- assisted instrumental analysis finally comes into the foreground and never leaves the composer s toolbox. Through spectral analysis of the timbres of a various instruments a new kind of instrumental & electronics writing emerges, the two being perfectly fused and the electronics only taking over when the instruments themselves can go no further. Incidentally, these same analyses seem to provide Murail with a material so fecund he is compelled to revisit them repeatedly and different perspectives; and so, as something of a first, a degree of discontinuity and cyclicity begins to enter his formal designs. From here on, these techniques never leave the composers toolbox. Rather in the 1990s his spectral techniques develop further carrying greater detail about the role of time the envelope of sound regarding spectral elements, and he moves on to evermore exotic and intractable sound sources from extended non- Western vocal techniques and archaic instruments in L Esprit des dunes (1994), to the deeply inharmonic sonic fingerprints of water, rain, lightning and thunder in works like Le Partage des eux (1995) for large orchestra and Le Lac (2001) for large ensemble. Les Travaux et les jours (2002) Looking at Murail s work as a whole, Les Travaux et les jours (2002) is a radical return and a radical departure at one and the same time. Murail s basic sound source is more familiar (even having first appeared in the 1977 piano work Territoires de l oubli), but the short movements, formal discontinuity and contrapuntal presentation of ideas, seems totally new. Consider the first figure.

7 Maria p.1 / system 1 As given to us now, the figure sounds like a harmonic series, but one distorted through dilation and compression both familiar techniques in Murail s toolbox. Ultimately we will see this is more of a reference then a generating process, but let s suppose this is how it s made, to familiarize you with the concepts If we remove the distortion of this figure, as it s written in the score, the music will go right off the piano! So let s hear the figure once more, but down an octave, and we ll work on it in this position. Maria p.1 / system 1 / down one octave Can you play the three notes of that figure resting in normal position (F#, A#, C#)? Maria plays example 1. Now let s play the natural version, with no compression or dilation, while keeping those notes in place. Maria plays example 2. OK. That was a normal harmonic series with one exception we ll talk about later approaching, and ascending from, those three central pitches. Now let s add logarithmic compression above those three pitches, bringing the distance of each note increasingly closer together: Maria plays example 3. What s amazing is we see those final repeated notes are actually different pitches! Only the piano doesn t have in between notes to play when the pitches get so close, so Tristan just repeats them and then moves up. Remarkably the idea is so clear we ignore the piano and here the image! There s no better demonstration of Tristan s words We work with sounds, for which notes are simply symbols notes and sounds are not the same thing. Now let s add a static level of dilation below those same three pitches: Maria plays example 4. Finally let s make that dilation logarithmic as well, stretching that final bottom interval just a touch: Maria plays example 5. OK. That s our original figure (but down one octave!)

8 (For the more technically minded, notice regardless of how we derive the object, the bottom octave is still divided, so at this point we know the real fundamental is at least one or more octaves lower. Simply stated, this is because the harmonic series fills in with more notes in each successive octave, and if we know these are higher octaves, these pitches must be a selection from a wider palette of choices. In the work s final measures, the true origin of this figure is revealed when the material is placed into the resonances of the piano s low F.) The next figure in the score is the original one, but minus four notes on top and one on bottom. Selection and re- contextualization of a source are key building techniques in Murail s work. In this example the reduced figure is heard and expands once more. It then begins to descend, and is cut off by a wide trill figure, a second sound object, that pervades the whole work binding it together, while also enforcing harmonic ambiguity. Maria p.1 / system 2, 3, 4. Now we hear recurrences of the original figure compress in the time domain, effectively layering statements against each other and creating for Murail an oddly contrapuntal texture; the trill figure then interrupts once more. Maria p.1 / system 5 though p.2 / system 2. Later in this movement we hear a different approach to temporal compression. After a brief climax the pace of rapid descending arpeggiations begins to slow down and notes to be presented start to pile against each other once more, but this time falling into thicker and thicker chords whose harmonies begin to shift around a common tone B natural (just below middle C.) The space between statements of the final chord begins to widen and finally the opening figure has space to unfold once more. Let s listen to that! Maria p.4 / system 1, 2, 3, 4. Here s the whole of Movement I. Maria Movement I. In Movement II, Murail s selection/re- contextualization becomes proper fragmentation, allowing for poised juxtapositions of the two figures. Maria p.5 / system 1, 2, 3, 4. Movement III takes slow chords into a climax of rapid notes so far afield of the previous movements character that after two final low, crashing chords the opening figure returns to remind us the very distance of the travel perhaps it s just me, but I can t resist hearing it as the memory of the lost just as it appears to Berlioz s fallen hero just before the drop of the guillotine.

9 Maria Movement III. Movement VI revisits the opening of Movement I. But here the original figure appears descending, and already in spiral- contrapuntal form; it dominates the movement. Maria p.27 Movement VII is a compressed and climactic stretto of all ideas previously presented. Maria excerpt pages 32 & 33. Movement VIII is long work that presses into new ground while also recycling previous figurations, such as the descending opening of Movement VI and the final low crashing chords of Movement III. The final movement, Movement IX, begins with the quizzical B- C trilling figure. The composition s opening figure is heard and gradually relaxes into the position of its primary resonance above low F. Maria excerpt pages 46 & 49. Now let s step back a minute and look at Movement V, which brings back the thick low chords we encountered in Movement I. Let s hear them, first played normally; then again with just the repeated Bbs that lead to B natural followed by the final high chord for reference; and again with all the notes back in and the Bbs and B natural emphasized. Maria p.24 / system 3 example (normal; monophonic; and normal with the Bbs and B natural emphasized.) One may be tempted to think of Messiaen s modes of limited transposition with these repeating Bbs. Here is Messiaen s way of handling a similar texture; the example comes from the work we heard earlier tonight. Maria Messiaen example. Let s listen to Messiaen s example the same way with just the repeated upper common tone, and then again the full excerpt with those notes emphasized. Maria Messiaen example, 2 & 3. Low rich chords like these are more common in Messiaen s piano and orchestral music. In Les Travaux et les jours (2002) Murail has the harmonic colors of his former teacher in mind, but Tristan clearly has a different generating source. For Murail these repeated notes are shared resonances amidst contrasting fundamentals, the analogy for how he uses them is surely something closer to

10 formant frequencies, which keep a color constant against shifting chordal and spectral content. The rising bass and rising inner voices in Murail s chords seem to push the Bbs up, with the Bbs finally breaking their threshold and reaching up to B natural. (Similar chords sequences are conspicuous in Murail s recent Terre d ombre ( ) for large orchestra and electronics.) What I d like you to appreciate is how unusual these sonorities are for Tristan. Evidently he s using the lowness of the chords as a kind of fusion a fusion he often goes out of his way to avoid. By way of demonstration consider Cloches d adieu, et un sourire in memorium Olivier Messiaen (1992) which was heard earlier this evening. This work has only one chord below F3 with an interval smaller than a minor sixth, and that chord is also the only chord below F3 with more than 2 notes! It appears at the climax of the composition, and after three consecutive articulations, it thins out and dies down to a solitary repeated B3 closing the piece. Listen to these two excerpts from Cloches d adieu, et un sourire in memorium Olivier Messiaen. The first presents the composition s typical usage of the bass register and the second shows the exceptional case discussed above, which forms the climax of the work. Conclusion Maria Murail Cloches examples, 1 & 2. I hope this brief tour has provided you a general context with which to appreciate the work of Tristan Murail. By highlighting a few of his principal concerns as a composer and listen to individual passages from his piano music, I hope the basic organizational strategies of his music and these works were revealed to you in greater detail. Friends, enjoy the rest of the concert, and thanks again for inviting me to be here with you tonight.