Spectres

The piece’s title and the importance of sound color in the work recall the French “spectral music” of the 1970s. Although Valentin Silvestrov’s intentions are quite different, certain similarities cannot be ignored, for example the echoing “fragmentation” of the sound, which is then “distributed” among the registers and sound colors of the various instruments. A further association that immediately comes to mind is to Scriabin’s Prometheus, whose score includes an extra line devoted to lighting effects. Silvestrov did not include a special part for light in his piece, but it is light – or a kind of symbolism of light – that determines the character of the entire work: flickering, flaring, glowing, radiant, fading, or extinguished light. To continue with a visual image, the work’s form is ignited like a rocket – from the spark to the flame. This is mirrored in the development of the three movements as well as in the growth of the improvisational energy.

As the American conductor Virko Baley wrote in an article entitled “Die Avantgarde von Kiev. Eine Retrospektive auf halbem Weg” [The Avantgarde in Kiev: A Retrospective at the Midpoint] (in Melos/ Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 1976 No. 4), “The basic principle of the composition is … monophonic: form as melody, whereby even the aleatoric sections have melodic contours or at least seem to.”

Tatjana Frumkis