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Spectral music is music that is concerned with timbral structures, especially when decisions about timbre are informed by a mathematical analysis known as a Fast Fourier Transform. FFTs can be used to provide graphs that illustrate details about the timbral structure of a sound, which might not be initially apparent to the ear. FFTs can also be used in creating sounds with computers, in order to transform the timbre of a sound in various ways, such as creating hybrid timbres through a collection of processes known as cross-synthesis, or applying a room reverberation to a sound through a process known as convolution. This music began to emerge in the 1970s and is very much a product of France's IRCAM, a pioneering institution supported by the French government and created primarily by the great composer and conductor Pierre Boulez for the purpose of exploring sound scientifically and musically. Musically, the idea of spectral music can be seen as an outgrowth of the work of composers such as Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen, both of whom created harmonies and orchestrations based on the harmonic and inharmonic partials contained in complex sounds, such as multiple-stop organ tones, bell sounds, and bird song. Spectral music simply carries this principle much further and with more radical precision, made possible with the aid of computerized FFT analysis. In performance, spectral music often involves little or no use of electronic or computer-generated sound, yet it produces an effect that sounds "electronic" to modern ears, because the precisely calibrated deviations from the normal tunings of notes produce uncanny effects that are normally associated with electronic phenomena such as feedback, ring modulation, frequency modulation, etc. In the general field of computer music, then, spectral music is usually considered "computer assisted composition", rather than "computer generated music" or "electronic music". Philosophically, the spectralists' attitude of rigorous objectivity in the exploration of sound and the application of their discoveries to composition can be considered a continuation of traditional modernism. To perform such music on traditional instruments such as cellos or clarinets requires an extraordinarily refined training that arose first in France in response to the innovations born at IRCAM. This high degree of scientific acoustical sophistication in the performance of new music has become fairly standard in Western Europe but is much less to be found in the United States, where the general cultural conservatism during the same period (the last decades of the 20th century) produced a more relaxed, post-modern, eclectic new music repertoire, casually incorporating elements of popular music, historical styles, quotations, pastiche, and the like. Spectral music was initially associated with composers Hugues Dufourt, Horatiu Radulescu, Gérard Grisey, and Tristan Murail. More recently the movement has broadened out into one of the most important contemporary compositional trends. The music of Phillippe Leroux, Phillippe Hurel, and Joshua Fineberg is of particular note. As was the case with impressionism and many other labels for musical style, those composers whose music has been called "spectral" do not generally accept the label.
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