The Spectral Piano: From Liszt, Scriabin, and Debussy to the Digital Age (Music since 1900)
Cambridge University Press, 3/13/2014
EAN 9781107018549, ISBN10: 1107018544
Hardcover, 210 pages, 24.4 x 17 x 1.3 cm
Language: English
The most influential compositional movement of the past fifty years, spectralism was informed by digital technology but also extended the aesthetics of pianist-composers such as Franz Liszt, Alexander Scriabin and Claude Debussy. Students of Olivier Messiaen such as Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey sought to create a cooperative committed to exploring the evolution of timbre in time as a basis for the musical experience. In The Spectral Piano, Marilyn Nonken shows how the spectral attitude was influenced by developments in technology but also continued a tradition of performative and compositional virtuosity. Nonken explores shared fascinations with the musical experience, which united spectralists with their Romantic and early Modern predecessors. Examining Murail's Territoires de l'oubli, Jonathan Harvey's Tombeau de Messiaen, Joshua Fineberg's Veils, and Edmund Campion's A Complete Wealth of Time, she reveals how spectral concerns relate not only to the past but also to contemporary developments in philosophical aesthetics.
1. An intimate history
2. Itinerary
3. Protospectralists at the piano
4. The first generation
5. The spectral effect
6. Spectral music and its pianistic expression Hugues Dufourt.
'Marilyn Nonken belongs to a generation of new music performers who bring subtlety, nuance and even humour to complex music; hers is the leading recording of the piano music of Tristan Murail, who is one of the composers featured in her new book, The Spectral [Piano]. A great value of Dr Nonken's study is that she sets the Spectral movement in a wide historical context, going back indeed to Liszt and Scriabin; another that she demonstrates the influence of Murail and Gérard Grisey (together with their teacher Messiaen) on composers beyond France, arguing convincingly for the far-reaching influence and implications of Spectral concerns. What is particularly welcome is that here is a scholar whose writing carries particular authority, based as it is on her experience of understanding and communicating the music as its performer.' Peter Hill, University of Sheffield