Gérard Grisey

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Gérard Grisey was a French composer of contemporary classical music, born on 17 June 1946 in Belfort and died on 11 November 1998 in Paris, at the age of fifty-two, of a ruptured aneurysm. His first instrument was the accordion, which he was given at the age of five. At nine he had already written an essay about music. He won the Prix de Rome and from 1972 to 1974 stayed at the Villa Medici in Rome. There he became friends with Tristan Murail, with whom in 1973 he founded the group L'Itinéraire, together with Roger Tessier and Michaël Lévinas. In 1974 and 1975 he studied acoustics.

Music and breakthrough

Grisey is regarded as a pioneer of spectral music, a movement that he is said to have founded together with Murail, although he himself later rejected the label. Partiels from 1975, here in the performance by the Asko Ensemble, is one of his best-known pieces and comes from the series Les Espaces acoustiques. He also wrote, among others, Vortex temporum, Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil and Dérives.

Influence

Spectral music takes the natural timbre of a sound, the spectrum of overtones, as the starting point for harmony and form. Instruments and voices play together in such a way that they form one complex sound. For anyone who listens to pop music, Grisey is an example of a composer who treats sound itself as material, as electronic music and ambient also do.

Listening

• 
  Partiels (Asko Ensemble) · Gérard Grisey, 1975

Discography

Studio albums

• 1981Partiels / Derives
• 1999Les Espaces acoustiques
• 2001Paris Compositions
• 2001Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil
• 2001Vortex temporum / Taléa
• 2005Les Espaces acoustiques
• 2005Solo pour deux / Anubis-Nout / Stèle / Charme / Tempus ex machina
• 2007Vortex temporum / Périodes
• 2008Le Temps et l'Écume / Les Chants de l'Amour
• 2020J’ouïs
• 2020La Passione
• 2023Dérives

Mentioned in other articles

• Spectralism GenreIn Paris in 1973, Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail founded the ensemble L'Itinéraire and began to investigate sound itself.

See also

• Spectralism