Margareta Jeric
"One of the pieces that had a profound impact on me and propelled me to start composing is Gerard Grisey’s Partiels (1975). I can’t even remember where I initially heard it. Was it at a concert, a contemporary music festival, or in one of my undergraduate music analysis classes? What I do remember is being intensely moved and astonished by the new sounds I was hearing. That piece led me to the discovery of the French spectral music movement, which in turn led me to the exploration of electroacoustic music and computer-assisted composing.
At the very beginning of the work, we can hear the spectrum of the low E of the trombone simulated by an ensemble of 18 instruments. The synthesis of the spectrum is achieved through the meticulous distribution of the dilated components of the spectrum: the volume, the intensities, and the frequencies. While writing the music, the composer tries to get as close as possible to the frequencies of the spectrum obtained by the sonogram analysis, while at the same time taking into consideration the idiomatic properties of the instruments and the feasibility of the performance by the musicians. Thanks to these different elements of writing techniques, the instruments of the orchestra lose their classical sound signature in order to blend into an agglomerate that plays on the ambiguity between harmony and timbre."
