Gérard Grisey and the Impact of Musical Acoustics on the Emergence of Spectral Thought

International audienceGérard Grisey (1946-1998) is one of the main instigators of the spectral revolution that took place in France in the early 1970s. Drawing his inspiration from the physical structure of sounds and the mechanisms of auditory perception, he laid the foundations of what is called “spectral music”. In this lecture we will focus mainly on Grisey’s formative years and his first creative period, which ends in 1985 with the completion of his six-piece cycle Les Espaces acoustiques, one of the paradigms of spectralism. We will highlight the influence of Olivier Messiaen, György Ligeti and Karlheinz Stockhausen on Grisey’s approach to composition and explain how he instructed himself in musical acoustics before collaborating with acousticians to explore sound phenomena through his different works