Les Espaces Acoustiques

Perhaps the key work within the vague corpus of ‘spectral music,’ Grisey’s Les Espaces Acoustiques was developed over twelve years, its six movements birthed from 1974’s “Périodes.” In the liner notes interview for the Accord release of Espaces, Grisey makes one of his most significant statements, his instruction to “no longer [compose] with notes but with sounds,” and this is certainly something Grisey gets at across Espaces’s ninety minutes. The works build in intensity and population, from the solo viola “Prologue” through the closing orchestral “Transitoires” and “Epilogue.” What’s most striking about Espaces is Grisey’s ability to have the composition seem perpetually to hover in mid-air, as a floating object, where shifting, sliding scrums of strings alternate with plucked dynamics, beautiful blocks of sound butting against each other as everything rotates, seemingly unmoored from gravity.