SYZYGY Presents Concert of Spectralism

SYZYGY, the contemporary music ensemble of SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, will present a concert of spectral music entitled Musique Spectrale on Wednesday, October 25 at 7:30 PM in SMU’s Caruth Auditorium. The concert will consist of some of the most colorful and exciting music from the spectralist tradition including music that influenced it and more recent music influenced by it.

Spectralism is a style of music that grew up in many places at once but eventually found particular interest at IRCAM in Paris in the early 1970’s and was workshopped and performed by Ensemble l'Itinéraire. Spectralism is generally regarded as music in which compositional approaches and decisions are made based on electronic analysis of individual sounds. The constituent parts of those sounds (spectra) are then orchestrated, recombined, and manipulated in a number of ways.

The program features the landmark spectral work Partiels (1975) for 13 musicians by Gerard Grisey. Throughout this work, the resonance of a single pitch is explored in various guises with kaleidoscopic ranges of tone as well as noise (including imitation of electronic feedback and lots of other surprises). Also included will be Quattro Pezzi per Orchestra (su una nota sola) (1959) by the enigmatic and controversial Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi. Each movement is based on the exploration of a single pitch with some extremely resonant (and disturbing) textures. The second movement of this piece appeared in the film Shutter Island. Philip Lasser’s incredible, multi-colored Still Life in Toccata Style (2004) for solo piano will be performed by SMU Performer's Diploma student Yinuo Wang. The virtuosic work has an unchanging harmonic motive, but its emotional flux and the constant swirl of energy around it is infectious.

The concert is free and open to the public. There will be one fifteen intermission, and the concert will last about 90 minutes. For more information, visit http://mcs.smu.edu/calendar/event/syzygy-musique-spectrale or call 214.768.2787.

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