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Spectralism 1

Jonathan Harvey

KEYWORDS: Spectral Music; ElectronicMusic;harmony; timbre.

I w o u l d not w a n t to echo Boulez's famous 'inutile' w h e n he described

those not acquainted with serialism; nevertheless, I find those composers
w o r k i n g today w h o are completely u n t o u c h e d by spectralism are at least
less interesting. History seems grand, for once; spectralism is a m o m e n t
of fundamental shift after which thinking about music can never be quite
the same again. Spectral music is allied to electronic music: together they
have achieved a re-birth of perception. The one w o u l d scarcely have
developed w i t h o u t the other. Electronic music is a w e l l - d o c u m e n t e d
technological breakthrough, spectralism in its simplest form as color-
thinking, is a spiritual breakthrough.
Linguistics has m a d e it a b u n d a n t l y clear that language is a s o m e w h a t
limiting symbolic system: those, like Julia Kristeva, w h o have brought
psychoanalysis into the picture, s u p p l e m e n t the "symbolic' world with
the 'semiotic' world, a world prior to the dictates of the constitution of
the speaking subject. The survival of the 'infant' within us can be seen in,
a m o n g s t other things, certain literature such as the poetry of Mallarm6:
'Indifferent to language, enigmatic and feminine, this space u n d e r l y i n g
the written is rhythmic, unfettered, irreducible to its intelligible verbal
translation; it is musical, anterior to j u d g m e n t , but restrained by a single
guarantee: syntax. 2'

1. Material in this article has appeared previously in Jonathan Harvey: In Quest of Spirit - -
my musical thought (University of California Press, 1999).
2. Kristeva, Julia, 'Revolution in Poetic Language,' in A Kristeva Reader, trans. Toril Moi,
Blackwell, 1986, p. 97.
11
12 JonathanHarvey

Spectral music's equivalent for poetry's 'mysterious rhythm' is largely

timbre, the non-discursive element underneath the discursive arguments
of rhythmic form-shaping. Wagner too spoke of 'the sea of Harmony,' the
'Mother-element' an 'inmost dream.., belonging to neither Space nor
Time [which] remains the inalienable element of music, [whereas]
through the rhythmic sequence of his tones in point of time the musician
reaches forth a plastic hand, so to speak, to strike a compact with the
waking world of appearances. 3' The symbolic mediator of the semiotic
world is 'rhythm' in Wagner and "syntax" in Mallarm6.
Wagner the master of h a r m o n y himself developed into a proto-
spectralist; for instance in Parsifal, where the real vision, it always seems
to me, is one of timbre: the transcendence offered by the Holy Grail is not
couched in terms of developed harmony (that is reserved for suffering,
by and large) but of timbre, of orchestration based on chords magically
transmuted to harmonic series, to spectra.
Here, for the first time, there is no distinction between harmony and
timbre. Harmony is timbre; timbre is harmony.
Spectralism, like harmony, is in essence outside the world of linear
time. In music time is articulated by rhythm, in psychology time is artic-
ulated by language, which separates us from the primary world and
joins us to the symbolic order in which the linear movement of language
chops up experience and places it in temporal sequence.
The tonal system, unlike spectralism, exists in a temporal context. The
imperatives of a tonality confer a sense of temporal drive, however weak
the rhythmic dimension, towards the goal of resolution, the goal of
return after deviation. This is because the hierarchy of components is so
compelling: the nature of dominant, subdominant, mediant is so easy to
understand.
There is, however, a hierarchy of spectra - - something that I have been
composing with - - but it is not quite so easy to understand and has yet
to be taken on board by more than a minority of listeners. Its exploration,
nevertheless, is one of the most exiting adventures of present-day music.
Using the 1994 IRCAM analysis-resynthesis program (in m y work
Advaya) it is very simple to analyze an instrumental pitch (or sequence of
pitches) and re-synthesize it with up to 40 oscillators, which can subse-
quently be re-tuned or altered in any way. Working with pitches of the
harmonic series (played by the cello in the case of Advaya) one has a basis
for a cogent hierarchy: the natural series is an equivalent to the tonic in
tonality: any child can hear it. A d d the same number to each of the (first

3. Wagner, R., 'Beethoven,' in Richard Wagner's Prose Works, volume V, trans. W. A. Ellis,
1895, p. 75.
 Spectralism 13

40) partials' frequencies and the series is distorted, compressed. If f = the

fundamental frequency, then f added to each partial replicates the same
harmonic series, but starting from the second partial, with the funda-
mental missing. Thus, in tonal terms, one has m o v e d up an octave.
Again, any child can hear it. So in between adding zero and adding f to
all the partials there is an unlimited area between two firm poles. This
area is chartable. The simple values, as in tonality, give the smoothest
spectra, the most harmonious sounding, the closest to the natural series.
A d d 1/2f and an incomplete series whose fundamental w o u l d be an
octave lower than the original's results - - a very close relative, like a
dominant in tonality, very smooth. Add 1/3f and an incomplete spec-
trum based one octave and a fifth below the original fundamental
appears. Add 1/4f and a mediant-like fundamental is possible, on the
major third. Outside the simplest ratios (2/7f, for example) the spectra
sound less stable and more complex. All this is possible to hear (without
training) and hierarchical like the tonal system. A measurable kinship
distance is perceptible between a sound and its fundamental state,
similar to that between the tonic and another degree.
In Advaya there are modulations from one spectrum to another by
means of pivots - - the 17th partial became the 5th partial, for instance.
So one modulates to a new hierarchy of consonances and dissonances
based on a new fundamental, a new center.
By subtracting the same frequency from each partial one expands the
spectrum, of course, and the same criteria apply. In Advaya addition and
subtraction are balanced, a concept which harks back to ring-modulation
techniques. Ring-modulation produces pitches on either side of a central
pitch which are equidistant in terms of frequency but, of course, a larger
intervallic distance below the center and a smaller distance above.
(Stockhausen's Mantra is a classic example of hierarchical structure in
ring-modulation.)
To retrace my steps: this type of vertical sound-sculpture had its per-
sonal origins in Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco for 4-track tape (IRCAM
1980). There, the spectrum of a bell was treated with Schenkerian hierar-
chical thinking by means of modulatory partial-pivots. Such manipula-
tion are, of course, only possible with computer synthesis. In Ritual
Melodies for 4-track tape (IRCAM 1990) computer-simulated instruments
play entirely in one spectrum, the simplest, throughout. This was to
reflect in the form of the piece as a whole the structure of the instruments'
timbre. But it was curious that one easily lost the sense of spectrum in
the discourse's melody and polyphony.
Indeed, the fascination of spectral thinking is that it can easily turn into
melodic thinking: there is a large borderland of ambiguity to exploit. It is
not a question for me of forsaking harmony and regarding everything as
14 JonathanHarvey

timbre, rather that harmony can be subsumed into timbre. Intervallicism

can come in and out of spectralism, and it is in the ambiguity that much
of the richness lies. In several works, to take a simple example, violins
provide upper harmonics to a louder, lower fundamental and at a given
m o m e n t they cease to fuse, begin to vibrate, begin to move with
independent intervals and then again return to their previous state. The
images of union and individuation are powerful ones which have both
psychological and mystical implications. 'The Many and the One.'
It is this aesthetic of hide and seek with spectralism that has preoccu-
pied what I have written in recent years. For instance, in One Evening
(WDR 1993) for two singers, instruments and electronics, the first move-
ment is constructed intervallicaliy - - on the principle of symmetrical
inversion round an axis. This principle gives a poised, floating stillness to
the harmony, which changes but yet remains still around a central point.
The music is then repeated with the addition of very deep, soft notes on
a synthesizer. In these pitches I found the most plausible fundamentals
for a reading of the (symmetrical) harmony as partials, i.e. spectrally. So
the floating harmonies acquire a ghostly hierarchisation: intervallicism
seen in a spectral light, the symbolic world seen in the larger perspective
of the semiotic one, 'enigmatic and feminine.'
In a recent piano and tape work, Tombeau de Messiaen (1994) (homage
to a proto-spectralist!) the tape consists of 12 pianos all tuned in har-
monic series, each on one of the twelve pitch-classes. The solo piano
itself remains normally tuned, but w h e n the balance is good (so that
taped and live pianos are indistinguishable) the piano has the role of pro-
viding the grit, the resistance to the spectra without seeming to be alto-
gether outside them, partly because it often plays the same, or nearly the
same, spectral pitches. The fact of partly not fitting makes the discourse
interesting for me, as it changes constantly from spectral fusion to micro-
tonal polyphony and back. Either of these principles without the other
seems a less rich and attractive option for composition as I see it at this
point in time.