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RĂDULESCU: THE OTHER SPECTRALIST

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2018

Martin Suckling
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Abstract

Compared to the central figures of French spectral music, Horaţiu Rădulescu has received relatively little critical attention. Contrasting temperaments, writing styles and surface musical features have led to a tendency to place Rădulescu in opposition to Grisey in particular. In this article I analyse some of Rădulescu's theoretical writing and demonstrate important shared values with the spectral ‘mainstream’. I then examine Das Andere for solo viola, Op. 49 (1983) in detail and compare it to Grisey's solo viola masterpiece, Prologue (1976). In so doing I hope not only to reveal the inner workings of one of Rădulescu's most compelling and approachable pieces, but also to show some common strategies with Grisey, regardless of their radically different aural results.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Information
Tempo , Volume 72 , Issue 285 , July 2018 , pp. 20 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 Gilmore, Bob, ‘Dübendorf: Radulescu's “Cinerum”’, TEMPO 59, no. 233 (2005), p. 53Google Scholar.

2 Gilmore, ‘Dübendorf’, p. 53.

3 Ernst Flammer laments this situation in Germany, just as Gilmore had done in the UK. Flammer, Ernst Helmuth, ‘Horaţiu Rădulescu: Klangvisionär Der Comedia Divina’, Musik & Ästhetik 17, no. 66 (2013), pp. 79–95Google Scholar. It should be noted that thanks to the efforts of enthusiastic supporters such as Gilmore, Rădulescu's music has reached a wider audience, at least in the academic sphere; my personal thanks are to composers Julian Anderson and Christian Mason who introduced me to this fascinating and alluring sound world, as they have for many other composers.

4 Murail, Tristan, ‘Target Practice’, Contemporary Music Review 24, no. 2/3 (2005), p. 152CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See, for example: Grisey, Gérard, ‘Did You Say Spectral?’, trans. Fineberg, Joshua, Contemporary Music Review 19, no. 3 (2000), pp. 1–3Google Scholar; Dufourt, Hugues, ‘Musique Spectrale’, in Musique, Pouvoir, Écriture (Paris: Borgois, 1991), pp. 290–94Google Scholar; Moscovich, Viviana, ‘French Spectral Music: An Introduction’, TEMPO 200 (1997), pp. 21–7Google Scholar.

6 Gilmore, ‘Dübendorf’, p. 53.

7 Surianu, Horia, ‘Romanian Spectral Music or Another Expression Freed’, trans. Fineberg, Joshua, Contemporary Music Review 19, no. 2 (2000), p. 30Google Scholar.

8 Dougherty, William, ‘On Horatiu Radulescu's Fifth String Quartet, Before the Universe Was Born OP. 89’, TEMPO 68, no. 268 (2014), p. 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Flammer, ‘Horaţiu Rădulescu’; Bob Gilmore, ‘Horatiu Radulescu: Sound Plasma and Spectral Music’, Tentative Affinities, n.d., http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/stg/Bob_Gilmore/downloads.html, accessed 14 April 2017.

10 Guy Livingston, ‘Horatiu Radulescu – Interview’, 4 September 2007, http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/radulescu.html, accessed 6 February 2013.

11 Sound Plasma: Music of the Future Sign or My D High Opus 19 ∞ (Munich: Edition Modern, 1975)Google Scholar; ‘Musique de mes univers’, Silences 1 (1985), 50–56Google Scholar; ‘Brain and Sound Resonance: the World of Self-Generating Functions as a Basis of the Spectral Language of Music’, The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 999 (2003), pp. 322–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Fineberg, Joshua, ‘Guide to the Basic Concepts and Techniques of Spectral Music’., Contemporary Music Review 19, no. 2 (2000), pp. 81–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Rădulescu, ‘Brain and Sound Resonance’, p. 354.

14 I have very much enjoyed the occasions on which I've played this with my students, though I cannot vouch for them meditating on the words of the title for seven days as Rădulescu requests, or whether anyone felt ‘UTOPIA surging and tending to overcome REALITY’: Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, Explanations & Directions.

15 The second page of this overlaid stardust poetry may serve as an example: CREDO / snow bound calm, / sublime. / towards / loves and birches / our barbaric stars!: Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. ‘intimate hope invasion’ verso.

16 Those familiar with Rădulescu's output will spot a couple of work titles (yet to be composed when this text was written) amongst the page-number-verses, which suggests that these verses had more than passing significance for Rădulescu.

17 Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. 2.

18 Apparently, Rădulescu intended at one stage to submit a different version as a doctorate. Gilmore, ‘Horatiu Radulescu’.

19 The text begins by stating that Pythagoras knew all this already, and this is far from an isolated reference in Rădulescu's output. A fondness for Fibonacci series and Trinitarian numerology in his music, hidden messages such as the title Thirteen Dreams Ago embedded into the α and γ musics of the eponymous piece (pp. 29–30), the use of ‘magic’ shapes (e.g. the square of Capricorn's Nostalgic Crickets) and symbols, and a recurrence of ‘cosmic’ terminology all serve to link Rădulescu to the speculative music tradition.

20 See for example, Godwin, Joscelyn, Music and the Occult: French Musical Philosophies, 1750–1950 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1995)Google Scholar; James, Jamie, The Music Of The Spheres: Music, Science and the Natural Order of the Universe, New Edition (London: Abacus, 1995)Google Scholar.

21 Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. ‘and errors’.

22 Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. ‘intimate hope invasion’, recto.

23 Dufourt, ‘Musique Spectrale’, pp. 290–91.

24 Dufourt, ‘Musique Spectrale’, p. 291.

25 Murail, Tristan, ‘The Revolution of Complex Sounds’, trans. Cody, Joshua, Contemporary Music Review 24, no. 2/3 (2005), p. 122Google Scholar.

26 Fineberg, Joshua, Classical Music, Why Bother?: Hearing the World of Contemporary Culture Through a Composer's Ears, 1 edition (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 105Google Scholar.

27 Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. ‘intimate hope invasion’, verso.

28 Grisey, ‘Did You Say Spectral?’, p. 3.

29 Murail, ‘The Revolution of Complex Sounds’, p. 132.

30 It is also worth highlighting in the context of violin-as-inspiration that combination tones are very clearly audible for the performer on a great many violin double stops. One could imagine that Rădulescu's fascination with harmonies built from combination tones (what he called ‘self-generating functions’) had its source at least in part in this very tangible aspect of violin performance.

31 See for example NASA's wonderful collection of videos from their Solar Dynamics Observatory, e.g. www.youtube.com/user/SDOmission2009/videos (accessed 1 April 2018).

32 Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. ‘intimate hope invasion’, verso.

33 Ana Maria Avram notes that the French approach is ‘combinatorial and actually structuralist’, a view I would temper by saying that the ‘French style’ does not reject such a possibility, in spite of its stated avoidance of the discontinuous music that was regarded as so problematic. Philip Clark, ‘Unstable Molecule: Interview with Dumitrescu and Avram’, The Wire, October 2009, p. 34, www.thewire.co.uk/issues/308 (accessed 1 April 2018).

34 Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. ‘crushing the crumbled skies’, verso.

35 Wilson, Peter Niklas, ‘Vers une “ecologie des sons”: Partiels de Gérard Grisey et l'esthétique du groupe de l'itinéraire’, trans. Kaltenecker, Martin, Entretemps, no. 8 (1989), pp. 57–8Google Scholar.

36 Confusingly, Rădulescu calls these ‘self-generating functions’. Understanding that he uses the word ‘function’ instead of ‘partial’ clarifies things somewhat and indicates that for him the magic of the harmony is that it creates itself from the interaction of the source pitches.

37 David Bündler, ‘Interview with Gerard Grisey’, March 1996, available at www.angelfire.com/music2/davidbundler/grisey.html (accessed 13 April 2012).

38 Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. ‘again an ash sun weeping’, recto.

39 Rădulescu permits Das Andere to be performed on any string instrument tuned in fifths.

40 Rădulescu, Horatiu, Das Andere, Op. 49 (Montreux: Lucero Print, 1984)Google Scholar.

41 An onomatopoeic name invented by cellist Rohan de Saram.

42 These indications are all found in different sections of the published score: respectively, in the score itself and the programme note; in the score, p.1; and in the performing notes (p.2).

43 This video, taken from the area of Maramures that is in Ukraine, features a large number of trembitas playing against a held note, an effect that is near-identical to the opening of Das Andere: https://youtu.be/Cu_vleOPvwE.

44 Score, Performing notes, p. 2.

45 Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. ‘again an ash sun weeping’, recto; Horatiu Rădulescu, ‘Musique de mes univers’.

46 Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. ‘pre-existing soul of THEN’, verso.

47 Rădulescu, Horatiu, Thirteen Dreams Ago (Paris: Editions Jobert, 1978)Google Scholar.

48 Rădulescu, Sound Plasma, p. ‘pre-existing soul of THEN’, recto.

49 The vast majority of the information contained in this document is already easily accessible from the score – the only extra analytical layer presented are the indications for the seven regions. However, there are a few somewhat enigmatic additions. Module 14 is labelled ‘VERDI’ for reasons I have not been able to discern. Similarly, the open D in module 23 is highlighted as being ‘BABUSHKA-voice’.

50 For the most part, Rădulescu's regions advance at clear textural/harmonic shifts. The one that is slightly surprising at first glance is where region 7 begins. Why here? Why not with the multiphonic in the subsequent module, which seems to be marked as a more significant event? The answer, I believe, is that module 38 begins an important middleground chromatic/microtonal descent across the A modules, as will be discussed later in the article.

51 For more detail on this technique, see Gilmore, Bob, ‘Spectral Techniques in Horatiu Radulescu's Second Piano Sonata’, TEMPO 62, no. 252 (2010), pp. 66–78Google Scholar.

52 This ‘purely musical’ journey in combination with the title and programme note, invites speculation as to a psychological parallel. ‘Das Andere’, the other, is the shadow, which in Jungian psychology should be confronted and integrated on the path to self-individuation. A and Σ materials appear in this opposing relationship, and without undergoing any internal changes they are eventually integrated within the ‘cathedral’ sound’ of the final page of the piece.

53 Hennessey, Jeffrey J, ‘Beneath the Skin of Time: Alternative Temporalities in Grisey's Prologue for Solo Viola’, Perspectives of New Music, 47, no. 2 (2009), pp. 45–8Google Scholar.

54 Labelling as in Hennessey, ‘Beneath the Skin of Time’.