Abstract

Composers’ manipulation of temporality vis-à-vis the unfolding of musical time is central to the discipline and indeed the history of music is replete with differing methods and approaches to the potentials inherent in the manipulation of listeners' attention and expectation. In this essay I will address one such movement or approach entitled ‘spectralism’, which is based on analysis into the perception of sound itself as a means to create music and which espouses research into the spectral information contained in sounds as a compositional tool. To this end I will focus predominantly on the concept of temporality and, in particular, with the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s chapter on temporality in his book The Phenomenology of Perception. I will begin by describing the main tenets of spectralism and draw parallels between the aesthetics of the composer Gérard Grisey and Merleau-Ponty’s work in order to build arguments based on where they may be similar and where they may diverge. I will pose the question of: What a phenomenological perception of temporality would mean for the so-called ‘spectral’ aesthetics in Grisey’s music? I will then, in section two, attempt to criticise the analysis component of spectralism and see if it is compatible with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Finally, in section three, I will finish by addressing the question of: Whether the use of musical ‘temporalism’ in the place of ‘spectralism’ is more suitable? Given the arguments provided.