Timelines in Spectral Composition: A cognitive approach to musical creativity

Abstract

What takes place in the minds of composers when they struggle to incorporate a given temporal concept into a musical work? Spectral composers have produced detailed theoretical proposals about time in music, but how exactly those ideas influenced their musical practices remains an extremely challenging question. Graphical representations in their sketches provide invaluable clues. Through the analyses of Gérard Grisey’s and Kaija Saariaho’s manuscripts, we show how the theoretical frameworks for the basic cognitive operations of blending and anchoring, which underlie the construction of complex meanings, can shed light on the intricate musical uses of timelines by spectral composers. We combine the universal claims of this cognitive analysis with the diachronic perspective of a musicological study, teasing out the mental paths that these composers may have followed to create novel aesthetic proposals from their experience with graphic representations of sound, mainly spectrograms, and from techniques of electroacoustic studios. Thus we pave the way towards a common language for understanding time representation across electroacoustics and music in general, based on this mixed methodology. Through such shared tenets, the cognitive study of music can reciprocally contribute to burgeoning fields such as time representation, meaning construction and creativity.

Rural Acoustic Landscape Analysis Based on Segmentation and Extraction of Spectral Image Feature Information

“…Spectral composers have put forward detailed theoretical suggestions on musical time, but how these ideas affect their music practice is still a very challenging question. Through the analysis of the articles of Gérard Grisey and Kaija Saariaho, Besada and Cánovas showed how the theoretical framework of basic cognitive operations of mixing and anchoring as a basis for complex meaning construction can clarify the complex musical use of timelines by spectral composers [ 4 ]. It shows the use of language notation in music, but not in landscape.…”

Neuroscience and New Music: Assessing Behavioral and Cerebral Aspects of Its Perception, Cognition, Induction, and Entrainment

“…However, these kinds of representations are often significant from the composers' side, in a quest of anchoring their particular struggle with temporal conceptions. This topic currently elicits scholarly discussion from cognitive perspectives which acknowledge the importance of embodiment and enaction-from a less radical viewpoint, though-as substantial features of compositional practices (Besada and Pagán Cánovas, 2020;Besada et al, 2021). Rather than a critique of Kozak's position, my last remark is a challenge for future collaboration around overlapping research questions.…”

Gearing Time Toward Musical Creativity: Conceptual Integration and Material Anchoring in Xenakis’ Psappha

“…Material anchors are useful for discussing agency in musical practices ( Zbikowski, 2019 ), such as the presence of timelines in composition ( Besada and Pagán Cánovas, 2020 ). In the forthcoming discussion of the compositional practices around Psappha , we analyze material anchoring in a complex conceptual integration network for time, built ad hoc to serve the purposes of music composition, but nonetheless based on the basic patterns that we have just outlined.…”