The Phenomenological Turn in Romanian Spectralism
Aaron Hayes · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022
Abstract This chapter approaches the music of Romanian composers Ana Maria Avram and Iancu Dumitrescu from a phenomenological perspective that moves away from a reliance on science and technology characteristic much of French spectralism. These composers have expressed their interest in a shift away from the scientific analysis of timbre and sound toward certain post-Husserlian ideas, and this change in focus coincides with recent work in transformational analysis, studies of embodiment and expression, and the ontology of music. Employing a number of concepts from these fields, including the work of Gilbert Simondon, this article focuses especially on Avram’s concept of transformation, and proposes that her music initiates a phenomenology of musical stability that corrects the simplified reification of musical objects: not simply by opposing stable and unstable, but by also employing multistability and metastability in music.