The Spectral Piano: From Liszt, Scriabin, and Debussy to the Digital Age (Music since 1900)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.47 (565 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 131661641X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 210 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-01-26 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"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
Interesting presentation of some pieces, but when you strip out the spectralist generalities the rest might feel slight Marilyn Nonken is an American pianist who has performed a great deal of modernist repertoire. While initially attracted by New Complexity composers such as Michael Finnissy, at the turn of the millennium she became fascinated by the "spectralist" school originating from France and subsequently taken up by some Americans as well. (Contemporary music fans might know her from her Metier recording of Tristan Murail's complete piano works). THE SPECTRAL PIANO is Nonken's presentation of the spectral aesthetic as it relates to her instrument.THE SPECTRAL PIANO opens with an historical prologue, w. Z. M. Ridgway said spectralism in first person - a performer's eye-view. This book is an excellent overview of the development of a spectral attitude in music composition. The spectral attitude begins with the Romantic fascination with sound quality, especially the coloristic tendencies in the piano writing of Franz Liszt. The next composer discussed in the spectral lineage is Alexander Scriabin, who apparently intuited the overtone series (it was later explained to him) and exploited it carefully at the piano. Then come Debussy and Messiaen, furthering fascinations that come to define spectral music: time, timbre, process, perception.Nonken then takes us throug
. Marilyn Nonken is an international concertizing pianist, Associate Professor of Music and Music Education, and Director of Piano Studies at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. A highly regarded musician, she has recorded the complete piano music of Tristan Murail: 'Complete Piano Music', and 'Voix Voilees: Spectral Piano Music', and piano music of Olivier Messiaen, Hugues Dufourt and Joshua
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. Nonken explores shared fascinations with the musical experience, which united spectralists with their Romantic and early Modern predecessors. Examining Murail's Territioires 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.. 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. In The Spectral Piano, Marilyn Nonken sh