An Analytical and Educational Survey of Roger Boutry's Mtachrome

One of Messiaen's greatest students was Pierre Boulez (b. 1925). When Boulez heard 12-tone music for the first time in 1945, he had found "the answer he had been searching for on bothaesthetic and psychological grounds" (Peyser, 2008). He experimented with serialism, the newmusique concrete of the 1950s, electronic sounds, and indeterminacy (Boulez, 2008).In the 1 970s, composers across Europe began to experiment with the acoustic propertiesof sound, developing into what is known as spectral music, or spectralism. Spectral musicemphasizes "the importance of sound of the sound spectra themselves to the music and itstechniques" (Anderson, 2009). Spectralism has been primarily associated with a group ofcomposers of the French Groupe de l'ltineraire, mainly Gerard Grisey and Tristan Murail(Anderson, 2009).This brief overview of twentieth century French musical composition shows the cohesionof musical goals and interests among French composers and the progression of French musicthroughout the period, giving a historical context leading up to Roger Boutry's Metachrome. It isevident that most of the musical innovations of France have largely been connected to theexperimentations with new sounds through color and orchestration. Roger Boutry's Metachromeshares in nationalistic taste for colors in music. Perhaps it is the influence of the astoundingFrench painters or the love of art itself that created this array of color that has, with no doubt,deeply impacted the advancements of French music in the twentieth century.