Wannamaker, R. (in press 10/2007). North American Spectralism: The Music of James
Tenney. In Reigle, R. & P. Whitehead (Eds.), Istanbul Spectral Music Conference,
Nov. 18–23, 2003. Istanbul, Turkey: Pan Yayincilik.
ABSTRACT
Since 1971 the works of American-Canadian composer James Tenney have exhibited
many of the technical and stylistic earmarks of what has since come to be called
"spectral music". In particular, his oeuvre includes very early examples
of instrumental music involving orchestrations of the harmonic series and of pitch
relationships derived from it, "instrumental synthesis" based on spectral
analysis, the orchestration of electroacoustic sounds, structural concepts derived
from acoustics and psychoacoustics (including Shepard tones, difference tones,
harmonic fusion, and residue pitches), gradual formal processes, and a general
preoccupation with the phenomenology of sound. This paper provides an introduction
to this important and under-recognized body of work, relating it to an American
phenomenalistic aesthetic descended from Cage and Partch. Tenney’s work
is considered as representative of a previously unacknowledged indigenous North
American school of spectral music composition that also includes such composers
as Larry Polansky and John Luther Adams.