Dynamic Form

Abstract This chapter discusses dynamic form—form arising from the flux of a designated property, with the retrospective contour of such flux representing the dynamic form as experienced and remembered. To forge this representation, quantitative models called vessels, which are proxy listener scanning functions, relate an idealized listener directly to the score, traversed automatically, thus emulating an idealized real-time hearing. A vessel of dynamic form focuses on features of texture, rhythm, pitch, or timbre, or any appropriate combination of these. The chapter discusses listener phenomenology and compositional poetics and planning. It also discusses smooth or gradated change arising from interpolation, frequency modulation, and ring modulation, as well as their relations to proto-spectralist techniques of Reich, Murail, Ligeti, and Saariaho. It considers granularity and ontology of sound and score. Excerpts are drawn from Grisey’s Partiels, Ligeti’s Atmosphéres, Reich’s Drumming, Murail’s Territoires de L’oubli, and Saariaho’s Io, Lichtbogen and Papillon II.