Spectralism. Spectral composition techniques

Abstract

Spectral music stands out as a touchstone in the musical soundscape of the first half of the 20th century. Alongside other movements such as graphism, minimalism, aleatoric and archetypal music, and pointillism, spectral music was born as a reaction to the excessive calculation and rigor that the structuralists of the50s promoted in their compositions. The movement is subscribed to post-modernism since it seeks to recuperate traditions and origins by returning to the practice of natural resonance and re-establishing a gravitational center for the musical discourse. The following text aims at outlining the previous cultural parameters that rendered such a change necessary, the sub-directions circumscribed to spectral aesthetics, and also it seeks to point out aspects of composition techniques in order to create an image, as accurately as possible, of this musical movement.