The Spectral Piano
From Liszt, Scriabin, and Debussy to the Digital Age

Marilyn Nonken finds precedent in the works of pianist-composers Liszt, Scriabin and Debussy for spectral attitudes towards the musical experience.

Marilyn Nonken (Author)

9781107018549, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 March 2014

210 pages, 21 music examples
24.4 x 17 x 1.3 cm, 0.57 kg

'Marilyn Nonken's new book on spectral music for the piano is a screaming success … Few books can boast as much, and it is gratifying to encounter an international concert performer who can make so engaging a discourse around her core repertoire.' Bob Gilmore, Tempo

The most influential compositional movement of the past fifty years, spectralism was informed by digital technology but also extended the aesthetics of pianist-composers such as Franz Liszt, Alexander Scriabin and Claude Debussy. Students of Olivier Messiaen such as Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey sought to create a cooperative committed to exploring the evolution of timbre in time as a basis for the musical experience. In The Spectral Piano, Marilyn Nonken shows how the spectral attitude was influenced by developments in technology but also continued a tradition of performative and compositional virtuosity. Nonken explores shared fascinations with the musical experience, which united spectralists with their Romantic and early Modern predecessors. Examining Murail's Territoires de l'oubli, Jonathan Harvey's Tombeau de Messiaen, Joshua Fineberg's Veils, and Edmund Campion's A Complete Wealth of Time, she reveals how spectral concerns relate not only to the past but also to contemporary developments in philosophical aesthetics.

1. An intimate history
2. Itinerary
3. Protospectralists at the piano
4. The first generation
5. The spectral effect
6. Spectral music and its pianistic expression Hugues Dufourt.

Subject Areas: 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6], Music [AV]