ABSTRACT
The experience of computer music grounded in information theory introduces a kernel aspect for spectral music: a means for the control of processes of transformation, which express the formal organization of a work, according to a specific degree of predictability or in Grisey’s term ‘pre-audibility’. The question of new language, new syntax and new rules which permeates the theoretical horizon of the first spectral generation will inform many composers of later generations and will emerge in various forms in their music and theoretical writings. The saturated energy is not oriented towards dissipation, but, on the contrary, it transforms into a generative, iterative gesture by double bass and trombone, from which the opening low E harmonic spectrum of Partiels grows. From a historical distance, the early spectral period appears as an opening towards a new horizon of an ‘age of timbre’, grounded in scientific research on acoustics and psychoacoustics.
