(reposted in wordpress) How spectralism began, probably

(Some important disclaimers could be found at the end of this post)

Proto-spectralists: Charles Koechlin, Claude Debussy, Alexander Scriabin, Béla Bartók, André Jolivet, Olivier Messiaen, Henry Cowell, Edgard Varèse, Giacinto Scelsi, Iannis Xenakis, György Ligeti, La Monte Young, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Henri Dutilleux - Métaboles (1963-1964)

Music theorists, aniticipating spectralism: Arnold Schoenberg (Klangfarbengmelodie), Harry Partch, Henry Cowell, Paul Hindemith

Computer musicians nearby: Max Mathews, John Pierce, James A. Moorer, John M. Grey

"Traditional"/"folk" approaches: Throat singing (Tuvan, Mongolian, Tibetan, ...), Bulgarian female folk singing

Timeline sample of composions:

• 1958 - Toshiro Mayuzumi (黛 敏郎) - Nirvana-Symphony
• 1965 - (?)* Maryanne Amacher - AUDJOINS, a Suite For Audjoined Rooms
• 1965 - Corneliu Cezar - Aum
• 1965 - Octavian Nemescu - Combinaţii în cercuri
• 1967 - Octavian Nemescu - Illuminations for Orchestra
• 1968 - Mihai Mitrea Celarianu - Colinde
• 1968 - Per Nørgård - Voyage into the Golden Screen
• 1968 - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung
• 1969 - Octavian Nemescu - Concentrique
• 1969/1976 - Horațiu Rădulescu - Credo
• 1969 - Jean-Claude Risset - Mutations
• 1970 - Lucian Meţianu - Pythagoreis
• 1970 - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Mantra
• 1971 - Ștefan Niculescu - Ison I
• 1972 - Horațiu Rădulescu - Capricorn's Nostalgic Crickets
• 1972 - James Tenney - Clang
• 1972 - James Tenney - QUINTEXT V
• 1973-1974 - Girard Grisey - Dérives
• 1973 - Jonathan Harvey - Inner Light I
• 1973-1977 - Aurel Stroe - Oresteia II
• 1974 - Costin Cazaban - Zig-Zag
• 1974-1985 - Girard Grisey - Les espaces acoustiques
• 1975 - Girard Grisey - Partiels
• 1974 - Michaël Lévinas - Appels
• 1974 - James Tenney - Spectral CANON For CONLON Nancarrow
• 1990 - rewritten and extended by Clarence Barlow**
• 1975 (text) - Horațiu Rădulescu - Sound Plasma: music of the future sign or my D high opus 19 ∞
• 1975 - Costin Cazaban - Naturalia I
• 1975/2002 - Peter Eötvös - Windsequenzen
• 1975 - Jonathan Harvey - Inner Light III
• 1975 - Costin Miereanu - Luna Cinese
• 1975 - Ștefan Niculescu - Ison II
• 1976 - Maryanne Amacher - Torse
• 1976-1987 - Horațiu Rădulescu - infinite to be cannot be infinite, infinite anti-be could be infinite
• 1976-1977 - Tristan Murail - Territoires de l’oubli
• 1977 - Corneliu Cezar - Rota
• 1977 - John Chowning - Stria
• 1977 - Iancu Dumitrescu - Movemur et Sumus III
• 1977 - Michaël Lévinas - Voix dans un vaisseau d’airain
• 1977 - Alvin Lucier - Music on a Long Thin Wire
• 1978 - Tristan Murail - Ethers
• 1978-1979 - Hugues Dufourt - Saturne
• 1979 - Michaël Lévinas - Ouverture pour une fête étrange
• 1980 - Maryanne Amacher - Living sound, for “Sound-joined Rooms” series
• 1980 - Costin Cazaban - Naturalia II
• 1980 - Jonathan Harvey - Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco
• 1980 - Tristan Murail - Gondwana
• 1980 - Claude Vivier - Lonely Child
• 1981 - Călin Ioachimescu - Oratio II
• 1981 - Mesias Maiguashca - FMelodies
• 1981 - Horia Şurianu - Cantus rudis

more spectralism / hyper-spectralism / post-spectralism: Clarence Barlow**, Johannes Fritsch, Maryanne Amacher, Erhard Grosskopf, Fred Popovici, Anatol Vieru, Philippe Hurel, Eric Tanguy, François Paris, Philippe Leroux, Philippe Manoury, Thierry Blondeau, Lasse Thoresen, Marc-André Dalbavie, Jean-Luc Hervé, Joshua Fineberg, Julian Anderson, Éliane Radigue, Phill Niblock, Glenn Branca, Ana-Maria Avram, Corneliu Dan Georgescu, Larry Polansky, John Luther Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Magnus Lindberg, Fausto Romitelli, Doina Rotaru, Hans Zender, Peter Ablinger, Georg Friedrich Haas, Helena Tulve, Bruno Mantovani, George Benjamin, Nigel Osborne, Richard Causton, Toby Twining, William Sethares, Donnacha Dennehy, Steve Lehman, Frédéric Maurin, Andrew Daniels, Vladimir Tarnopolsky, Fabien Lévy, Ryan Beppel, Arash Yazdani, William Dougherty, Yair Klartag, mannfishh, Emily Hall, Turgut Erçetin

* no recording available on the Internet, though

** also known as Klarenz/Clarents Baalo/Baarlough/Baaleuw/Baalow/Baghlough/Balow

also check out: Saturationism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphaël_Cendo#Work) - Raphaël Cendo, Franck Bedrossian, Yann Robin, youtube memes

Sources:

• Horia Surianu and Joshua Fineberg "Romanian spectral music or another expression freed"
• Hugues Dufourt "Spectral music and its pianistic expression"
• Julian Anderson "A provisional history of spectral music"
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_music
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone_singing
• Robert A. Wannamaker "North American Spectralism: The Music of James Tenney"
• Jeffrey Arlo Brown "The Death and Life of Spectral Music" - https://van-magazine.com/mag/spectral-music/
• Iuliana Porcos "Spectralism. Spectral composition techniques"
• https://rateyourmusic.com/list/y_z/romanian-composers-after-1960-spectralism-etc/
• Saturationism and hyper-spectralism - https://www.talkclassical.com/threads/saturationism-and-hyper-spectralism.71391/page-2
• Julian Anderson "Timbre, Process and accords fixes: Dutilleux and his Younger French Contemporaries"
• Yuriko Hase Kojima "Meanings in Making Music: Has Composing Changed with Technology?"

Disclaimers:

• The post is not about "who was first", there's no single first, it's a process, multitude, etc. I don't like the idea of "claiming the priority", I'm more for "discard studies" - https://discardstudies.com/2021/01/18/firsting-in-research/. And the post is more meant to be read as some kind of decolonial statement, and it was also useful for myself, to have some kind of visual early timeline of spectral/liminal music.
• The list probably omits some of the compositions by authors, already represented in the list a couple of times
• The endpoint is also kind of arbitrary, but it's somewhere around the Hugues Dufourt's "Musique spectrale" manifesto, and also around the untimely death of Claude Vivier.
• There's a lot of biases visible in the list (e. g., no women among any of the geographical locations where spectralism was to be found(ed), France, Romania or America; the earliest I found are Maryanne Amacher's works).