Stele

Modern French composer Gérard Grisey (1946-1998) turned his early interest and talent for music into a major international career, though his life was cut short by a ruptured aneurysm at age 52. During his years of training, which included stints at the Paris Conservatory and Darmstadt Institute, Grisey enjoyed the mentorship of Europe’s leading composers, including Messiaen, Ligeti, Stockhausen, and Xenakis. A preeminent aesthetic emerged from these experiences, namely that music is sound above all else—and sometimes to the exclusion of all else. Not with literature or theater, nor with mathematics or quantum physics, says Grisey, should composers be concerned. He favors the immense variety and the immediate raw appeal of sound in and of itself.
Stèle, written in 1995, is characterized by use of circulating soft brush on one bass drum, offset by increasing and decreasing rhythmic patterns on the other drum. There are stretches of silence. The composer’s score indications show a concern with resonance and space, as he details precise locations for the instruments themselves as well as for striking the instruments to create certain effects. To our ears, which are far more accustomed to following pitch-based progressions, Stèle offers a great challenge. If I read his title correctly, the stele invoked (signifying a monument with a carved message, such as the Ten Commandments, Rosetta Stone, or Hammurabi’s code) is charged with conveying the sheer scale of received historical wisdom and the resonances that have accompanied such pronouncements through the millennia.

(c) Jason Stell