ROVNER: Mr. Murail, you are a well-known composer in France and a representative of what is known as the spectral school, which is well-known both in France and in other countries. Among other composers of this trend one can name Gerard Grisey and Jonathan Harvey in England. Could you tell us about the spectral school, how did it begin and what are some of the essential techniques employed in this direction and, especially, in your own compositions?   MURAIL: I would not describe this musical direction as a "school." There is no such thing as the "spectral school", but there are techniques which are shared by a number of composers. These techniques form an attempt to rebuild a coherent sound world, which was destroyed due to many many destructive experiences, such as generalized serialization on one hand and the aleatory experiments of John Cage, on the other hand. The challenge was to create a new harmonic system which would be coherent. We came up with and developed fully the idea to use sound itself as a model for musical structure. This is what we could call spectral techniques - the way that we use sounds as models. This means that we must investigate the world of sounds with tools that we have at our dispositions, and for this we use computers. We look at what is inside the sounds - this is an important idea. We think that music is partly happening inside the sound, not just as a combination of sounds; this is perhaps the most distinctive feature of the so-called spectral music.   ROVNER:Can you tell us what composers influenced you in your youth and what composers brought about the development of your compositional style, both as teachers or colleagues or just earlier-generation composers.   MURAIL: I studied with Olivier Messiaen, who was my only teacher, so I suppose that he had some influence on m, or at least he helped me to find my way. Even though I have never used techniques derived from Messiaen's techniques, still he was helpful as a teacher because was able to help his students find their own voice. Otherwise I was interested in if not influenced by composers such as Ligeti and Xenakis. I was also personally acquainted with the Italian composer, Giacinto Scelsi, but I was not influenced by him; however it was interesting to so how he went on a similar path, trying to explore the nature of sound, but in a very intuitive and almost, one could say, mystical way, while we were trying to do that in a scientific way. Among my colleagues, there are a few who follow a similar path to mine, especially one French composer who is an especially close friend, Gerard Grisey; we shared a lot of information and experiments together. You also mentioned Jonothan Harvey, who is also a close associate, however someone like Harvey has never written what can be called "spectral music" but he has used spectral techniques in quite a few pieces, while following a different compositional trend. This idea of using spectral sound, or timbral sound as a source for musical inspiration has by now become rather widely used.   ROVNER: Among your compositions, which are the most well-known, there are some compositions, which are purely instrumental, including smaller-ensemble and larger-ensemble works, among which one can name "Allegories" and "Vues Aeriennes" and there is a number of important pieces which combine electronic instruments with live acoustic instruments, such as "Desintegrations" and "Time and Again". It is known that you are very much involved with electronic music and that you are active at IRCAM. Can you tell us how does the electronic medium fulfill the musical requirements of your style and how does it interact with some of the spectral techniques and connect with the acoustic instruments which you use.   MURAIL: First of all, I would like to say that it is very hard, in general, to produce interesting electronic sounds, without using spectral techniques to some extent. By that I mean that you have to know and be aware of the nature of sound in order to be able to build a new sound from scratch. So the interaction of electronic sounds with acoustic sounds, the type of music I write, is quite natural and quite obvious, because, in fact, I consider all sounds to be part of the same world, the same sonic world, and I look at acoustic sounds and synthetic sounds in the same way. I try to deconstruct acoustic sound and to reconstruct electronic sounds with exactly the same emphasis. It is a process of analysis and synthesis - these two media are not really different in their essence. Of course, they are different technically, nevertheless, in their purely musical aspect, I try to integrate the two sources of sound in my compositions as much as I can, when I use both of them.   ROVNER: As it is known to me the spectral technique of music involves deriving sounds from all sorts of instruments, for instance, bells, and finding overtones in them, which are not really related to the natural overtone scale, since they are much more irregular in their symmetric pattern, chromatic and often contain microtonal intervals - still, similarly to the natural harmonic series, they are derived naturally from instruments or from other sounds. Can you tell us what are some of these instruments used to produce these chords and how are they transferred to the music and to the actual harmonic content of the composition?   MURAIL: This process is hard to explain without a blackboard or a possibility of writing things out. I have explored many musical instruments, including the bells you mentioned. I have even made trips to a few far-away countries, such as Java, to study the peculiar instruments, which they have there, such as the bells. Most of the instruments of the orchestra have quite simple spectra, which are called harmonic spectra. The only real difference between them is the intensity of the components of the instruments. Sometimes interesting extractions are caused by the different intensities. If you filter off a part of the sound, you can come up with strange chords or pitch-combinations; strange but very natural and very beautiful too. You can also discover some interesting processes inside sounds. For instance, many instrumental sounds have, what I call, harmonic distortions. This harmonic distortion is a source for an infinite number of different colors which you can synthesize taking some distance from the original model of sound. In fact, you can reinvent spectra, after you have analyzed how the spectra of nature and the spectra of instruments work in their inner structure and content. In this case, we do not use the instrumental spectra in their literal form, but rather, we find ways to make detailed analysis and formalization of these spectra, trying to find the hidden relationships inside them. When you have extracted this formal or algorithmic basis, you can create new sounds, let's say, from scratch, but which have the same kind of internal relationships as the existing instrumental and otherwise derived spectra. This is what will make them their interesting qualities, and this is what will also enable us to create very interesting and coherent harmonies. These harmonies form the basis of many of our compositions. I am now especially interested in the way that the resulting harmonies interfere with the formal development of the piece. Generally, I think that this technique is a very powerful way of creating musical forms - this aspect of music has been a little bit forgotten after the essential stylistic revolution in music of the beginning of this century, when people decided to get rid of the tonal system, but I think that it is still a very powerful way of providing constancy and coherence to music.   ROVNER: Can you tell about your activities at IRCAM, what do you do there, as well as your activities as a teacher, since I know that you had a number of private students.   MURAIL: A: I am now no longer associated with IRCAM, since now I live in New York - it's seven hours from here on the airplane. At IRCAM, I have done a number of different things. First of all I have composed pieces, which used electronic or computer-generated equipment - I have composed two or three pieces using IRCAM techniques. Then I have been associated with the development of software, especially a program called "Patchwork" which has been used more and more in the formalization of musical structure, precisely, and for assimilation of such structures. I have also taught at the Department of Pedagogy at IRCAM for seven years, where I had a number of students, who learned the computer music techniques, but also had to realize a personal project which was a piece. At different times, I have also been in charge of a number of other projects. In addition, as you mentioned, I had quite a lot of private students.   ROVNER: Q: Can you tell about your musical activities in the United States? Have you been in the United States before? What kind of experience did you have from teaching at Columbia University, what can you say of the students, and, generally, is the environment here very different from that of France?   MURAIL: A: I have been in this country for quite a lot before, but never for a long period of time. I have visited universities and I have had contacts with the modern musical scene here. I have also taught in France at the American Conservatory at Fountainebleau and also I have had lots of American students in France, either taking private lessons with me, or coming in the summer to study at the American Conservatory. Here the environment is quite different from France, of course. First of all, it is culturally different but also the teaching system here is different in terms of structure from that of France. In France music is taught in conservatories and not in universities, and that is the first and the biggest difference. Here all the teaching is organized in terms of the university system, with the students receiving credits for each course that they take, and so on. I think that sometimes it fits the needs of the students and sometimes it doesn't, to be sincere, especially if the matter is giving composition lessons. You really have to develop a long relationship with a student if you want to go far in teaching him or her. So this is something which, I think, should be a little bit more flexible, in general, in this country. Otherwise it is like everywhere else - there are some very good students and a few not very good students and some people in the middle, so this is not very surprising. The biggest difference between France and New York in general is that stylistically here the contemporary music scene here is very, very open - you can have lots of different things happen simultaneously in one institution, and all of the styles are, generally, accepted everywhere. In France the setting is very much different. There are different aesthetical trends in contemporary music, which do not have any contact at all between themselves: some kind of music will never be performed at such a festival and some other kind of music will never be commissioned by such an institution. It's much more stylistically divided, nevertheless, this division also encourages some kind of intellectual struggle and challenge which is not necessarily bad, since it motivates a composer to perfect his or her style to meet a high standard of composition. Sometimes I feel that the contemporary music scene here is really too soft.   ROVNER: Q: Can you tell about what compositions of yours have recently been performed in Europe or the United States and whether you will be having any performances in the near future? What compositions are you writing now, which, maybe, we will hear sometime soon?   MURAIL: A: I just had a very important premiere in Paris of a big piece for a large orchestral ensemble, featuring woodwinds by four, six horns and so on. This composition was played in the Salle Pleyel in Paris. I have had a few other performances in Paris and in other cities in France at the same time. Next year features many exciting projects for me. There will be several performances in this country and in many other places. I will have some of my compositions performed in different venues in the Midwest and in California, as well as lots of performances in many different countries throughout Europe - I am afraid that I will not be able to go to every one. I will have important performances by various contemporary music ensembles in Paris, London, Vienna, Brussels, Salzburg. In addition, I will be invited to Kyoto and Tokyo in Japan, next fall. I have several new compositions to write, the most important of which is a chamber piece with electronics - I am currently working on that project.