Timbral-Harmonic Progression in Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child

Abstract

Abstract This chapter addresses the issue of how to create form in the absence of inharmonicity. A familiar approach to formal logic in spectral music, exemplified by the opening of Grisey’s Partiels uses inharmonicity to create and manage tension and thus create form. Since the timbre-harmonies generated by Claude Vivier’s les couleurs technique do not involve such inharmonicity, they present an intriguing perceptual problem: how might listeners understand these sonorities in a way that points beyond the immediacy of their luxuriantly resonant qualities and toward a perceptible formal logic? This chapter discusses a possible analytical solution by conceiving timbre-harmonies from Vivier’s Lonely Child according to their inherent tension, which can be characterized by an “enrichment value.” Inherent tension is a perceptual dimension that enables the discussion of emergent sensations of timbral-harmonic progression in the work. That emergent timbral-harmonic progression can in turn help create a listener’s perception of form.