I can't claim to understand this.

 

I can't claim to understand this

Whats to understand? It sounds cool

 

^ Interesting. I'm wondering what that squeaky stringy sound is around 4:20 and near the end. I don't see any fast bowing action at 4:20, sounds to be some electronics manipulation or amplification of the finger sliding?

 

4:10-4:45 may be the most interesting part of the piece.

I think the boingy string sound you're hearing isn't an added thing . . . it's actually being played, even though you don't SEE it happening. I think it's happen as a result of the bowing rather than the fingering.

EDIT: Oh. It IS added sound. Never mind.

 

This is all new to me, thanks for posting it. the Robin piece seems to have spectralist influences but maybe concerned more with noise of various colors? At least it sounded like that to me - approaching pink or brown noise at parts.

Found an orchestral piece that has some amazing textures, particularly the section beginning around the 4:00 mark

 

My feeling is that there's more complexity in the saturationists than there is in Dumitrescu, more counterpoint and more interesting rhythms. But yes, both work with complex timbres and extended techniques and, of course, Dumitrescu was a force in the French music scene.

 

Here's a facsinating interview between Bedrossian and Samuel Andreyev (who's also a composer and has a great youtube channel). If I remember correctly, they discuss the origins of the term "saturationism", the influence of non-classical music on Bedrossian, his studies with Grisey, etc.:

And here's a lecture given by Bedrossian. This I haven't watched so can't comment on the quality:

 

So far, I just watched the first 50 minutes of this lecture. Bedrossian basically introduced what he will be talking about, and he also played his 2012 work Itself, for orchestra, which is a pretty riveting work the more you listen to it. Without hearing the rest of the lecture (which I'll do tomorrow), my first impressions are:

I think at first glance, the OP's equivalence of saturationism = hyper-spectralism seems to be spot on. Bedrossian has emphasized a few times already in the lecture that he is more influenced by the spectralist approach to sound than by Lachenmann's approach. But also when listening to Itself, you can hear the sound layers chosen in such a way so that you don't hear any of the "seams" demarcating the individual instruments (not counting the occasional solo sections in the work, where obviously you know the instrument). This implies a pretty firm knowledge of acoustics and of the harmonic spectra of instruments. Not even Grisey and Murail seem to achieve this level of proficiency and this level of "seamlessness". So saturationism might just be thought of as spectralism done really really well.

And yet, putting it that way makes Bedrossian's music sound derivative, when my ears say otherwise. For one thing, the fact that the resulting sound is a seamless, organic, indivisible whole gives one the impression of a free-floating sound untethered to the instrumentalists, like it just drifted into the auditorium from the outside and is passing through. With other pieces, when you are able to ground the musical sounds to the musicians (using your ears), you're able to say things like "this sound comes from musician x and not musician y", "that sound comes from musician y and not musician x", "this sound previously came from musician x and now no longer does", "this sound previously did not come from musician x and now does". Such statements are necessary preconditions for establishing in your head the counterpoint, harmony, rhythms of the piece. But with the Bedrossian piece, these statements are denied to you -- or at least, denied to you immediately. Therefore, you're prevented from picking up, for example, the counterpoint or rhythm, though no doubt they exist (or do they?). Or perhaps Bedrossian has in mind a sort of acousmatic listening experience where you need to locate these things without resorting to the source of the sound in your explanation.

But if this is what Bedrossian is going after, then saturationism is, also a departure from spectralism, despite it being a "hyper-spectralism" simultaneously. Spectral music, despite it being pretty radical in other ways, requires a somewhat traditional mode of listening since, though you do listen to the resulting sound complex, you're expected to appreciate how the different parts contribute to the whole. But in Bedrossian, you don't get the opportunity to decipher the parts.

The more I think about it, the more I think this approach to timbre is pretty groundbreaking.

Here's the program note to Itself:

Itself pursues the project of a musical form essentially rhythmicised by the unfolding and transformation of sonic material. From this perspective, a certain number of questions -- which can already be found in the majority of my previous works, notably Charleston (2005), It (2005-2007) and Swing (2009) -- return here for development on the scale of the symphony orchestra.

Colour through Excess

Among various problems, phenomena of saturation in music occupy a special and recurring place in my work, though the word itself must be understood in a twofold sense: as excess and colour. In terms of material, the virtual omnipresence of complex sounds proved decisive in the composition of Itself, as the harmonic construction often results from an accumulation of sonic layers -- and this extreme density is itself a contributing factor in modifying the perception of overall colour. The excess of sound is combined here with the proliferation of musical information, whether of a rhythmic or a contrapuntal nature. This particular association has a tendency to weaken or even destroy the hierarchies between the different dimensions of the musical discourse, most of all the supremacy of pitches. In this respect, saturated phenomena take on a perceptual and structural function in this piece. Time and form can thus be understood as a consequence of the (de)composition of these events, which hold the potential for dramatic tension.

Distortion and Irony

This tension, which is partly connected to the excess of the material, can never be without some irony -- and the distortion of the orchestral model is one of the aesthetic problems posed in this work. The constant use of complex sounds and the accumulation of instrumental techniques also serve the purpose of moving away from the orchestra as such, yet without disowning it. The result is a special dialogue between tradition and its codes, like a slightly cruel game that involves subverting signs of emotion and prestige. This can produce expressive ambiguity, which then feeds off acoustic ambivalences and other corruptions of memory.

I chose once again to adopt a falsely objective title, the ultimate avatar of this ironic energy -- and undoubtedly a way of reaffirming the idea that, because of the concert situation, a piece of music has no choice but to live through itself in order to say the things that elude us.

Here's the commercial recording:

 

When writing my post above, I found this work by Raphaël Cendo that's an even better example of what I was trying to get at. There's some real crazy witchcraft going on here:

 

I’ll just mention in passing that a saturationist composer whose music is particularly enjoyable is Dimitri Kourliandski.

 

In the scores I have seen by Bedrossian or Robin, they appear more purely textural like Xenakis - dont see the notated high upper partials that you see in spectralist pieces. Although Bedrossian was briefly a student of Grisey (cut short by his death)

Found this Bedrossian's publisher page

One might confine oneself to the definition given during the seminar organised at the CDMC17 in 2008 : 'The saturated phenomenon in the acoustic domain is an excess of matter, energy, movement and timbre18'. Inharmonic, distorted and multiphonic sounds, the Berio tremolo doubling a flatterzunge, Larsen effects, static, etc. are part of the field of saturated sounds. Certainly, the serial system tended towards an excess of sounds-Iannis Xenakis as well as Pierre Boulez perceived this quite well in their time. But rather than consider it a 'sound barrier', a limit not to be
crossed, the 'saturationists' apprehend this situation of sound accumulation as the natural condition of sound today. This view of music is also a criticism of the dominant discourse of the 1990s elaborated in the wake of composer Helmut Lachenmann in which 'instrumental musique concrète' appears as the alternative to the aura of philharmonic sound. Saturated music refuses to enclose itself in the Lachenmannian dilemma opposing 'bruité sound' and 'philharmonic sound', proposing the world of complex sounds as the paradigm of the 21st century. To borrow the terminology of philosopher Jean-Luc Marion19, the strength of this concept is to set the complex sound as an excess of intuition over the signification of the sound itself. It means refusing to confine it in an a priori framework, giving it a chance to be itself. To parody the philosopher : 'The sound first listens to itself and is uttered only afterwards20'.

https://www.billaudot.com/en/composer.php?p=Franck&n=Bedrossian

 

Is For Samuel Beckett saturationist? I mean I know it isn't -- but is that just because it wasn't written by Bedrossian & Co., or is there something intrinsic. Complex sounds, given a chance to be themselves, not part of an a priori framework . . . .