Noise in Spectral Music

The adoption of the metaphor of sound as an 'être vivant' creates in the first theoretical formulations of the spectral composers such as Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Hugues Dufourt, among others, the basis for a poetics of inclusion and integration of different categories of sounds. They are imagined in a sort of ideal continuum that from the sine wave crosses the various families of harmonic and inharmonic sounds, up to the family of aperiodic sounds, that is to say, noise. In this vision of the sound continuum, the harmonic spectra - obtained from the acoustic analysis of a sound model (real or theoretical)- are only an ideal starting point for the various transformation processes that privilege the vibrant and unstable nature of complex sounds based on the so-called 'instrumental synthesis technique', the proper foundation of spectral thinking. The instrumental synthesis required a profound rethinking of pitch organisation systems as it was determined by a double vision of the pitch as a meeting point between two dimensions: a macrophonic one (the sound spectra as a whole) and a microphonic one (a partial component of the acoustic space). The shift from one dimension to the other has accomplished important functions on a formal level in most of the spectral works manifesting in various global transformation processes determined by specific degrees of change factors. On a syntax level, it has required the development of new articulation systems capable of including in a coherent and intelligible way the multiplicity of spectromorphological typologies and their poignancy for perception. The unique perspective inaugurated by the spectral technique was not primarily concerned with introduction of new sound resources but with a new ways of their use. From the earliest stages of a piece, the introduction of new sounds is subordinated to principles of formal necessity aimed at the composition of the global sound transformation processes, which are themselves governed by rules of perception and by elementary oppositions such as harmonic/inharmonic, periodic/aperiodic, simple/complex, homophonic/polyphonic, etc., as stated in various spectral composers' theoretical writings. Based on the main works of the early spectral period by authors such as Grisey, Murail, and Dufourt, this text illustrates different ways of articulating complex sounds and noisy timbres that arise from the tension between the desire to construct a new syntax capable of highlighting the specific nature of the sounds created on the one hand, and the perceptive modalities of these complex auditory images that resist the initial hypothesis of the timbral continuum on the other. This study pays particular attention to the different categories of noise used as an integral part of the sound resources of a piece and to the way they are articulated within the formal processes. A reflection on the expressive function of these elements within the works of the first spectral period are linked to the possible reasons for their gradual decrease from the spectral production after the Seventies-Eighties, a period in which the instrumental synthesis is supported by a widespread diffusion of CAC that arouses the development of new ways of composing the acoustic and timbral space.