Combination-Tone Class Sets and Redefining the Role of les Couleurs in Claude Vivier’s Bouchara

[1.1] Claude Vivier's late style emerged in 1980 when he introduced a technique he called les couleurs in his work for soprano and orchestra, Lonely Child. This technique remained present, in one form or another, in almost all of Vivier's works that followed. In his program note for Lonely Child, Vivier described the effect of this technique: "there are no more chords as such, and the whole orchestral mass is, in this way, transformed into timbre" (Reicher 1990).(1) Vivier had created a new way to highlight a single melodic line with his les couleurs, building on the work of spectral composers Tristan Murail and Gerard Grisey, with whom Vivier had become closely acquainted during a trip to Paris in 1979. This article will address a number of issues revolving around Vivier's technique of les couleurs. First, I will give a general and historicized introduction to les couleurs. I will then address prior scholarly work on les couleurs and describe why the state of the literature demands a redefinition and further work; important and nuanced terminology will also be introduced and discussed here. To aid in my redefinition, I define a new analytical tool-combination-tone class set analysis-with which I carefully examine Vivier's deployment of les couleurs and extract Vivier's idiosyncratic approach to his own technique, which he even frequently undermined.Origins of les couleurs[1.2] Ross Braes (2003) has extensively shown the roots of Vivier's couleurs in Vivier's jeu de timbres-a term Vivier sometimes freely exchanged with Klangfarbenmelodie-in Vivier's Orion (1979), Zipangu (1980), and Cinq chansons pour percussion (1980). Braes (2003, 13-14) advocates that "Vivier was apparently thinking of a vertical expansion of melody into something quasi-timbral." As this marks a significant departure from the early twentieth-century classical understanding of Klangfarbenmelodie, Braes exclusively uses the term jeu de timbres throughout his dissertation to avoid a misunderstanding. Braes (2003, 14) defines jeu de timbres thus: "unlike harmonization of melodies in a tonal sense, the jeu de timbres comprises a series of complex vertical sonorities, based on the essential pitches of the principle melody, devised before actually writing the work." Braes describes three typologies of jeu de timbres, saying the technique may "involve one or more of the following: interval-classes, overtone partials, and mirror inversions" (2003, 14). All three types of jeu de timbres are concerned with relationships to a provided input. For example, interval classes are only useful if an initial pitch is provided, at which point the prescribed relationship determines other specifics. The same is true with overtone partials and mirror inversions. This way of thinking is precisely in line with Vivier's later implementation of and rationale behind using les couleurs. Speaking in an interview with Susan Frykberg (1982, 9), Vivier says "somehow, I discovered that the notes are not very important themselves, only their relationships. So it's much more important to establish their relationships first. Also, what happens in this kind of situation, is that you always have some spontaneous beauty."[1.3] Vivier gave only rather vague descriptions of les couleurs in interviews, making statements such as "the music I'm writing now gives me total control because I have only one melody that I control continuously, with a whole system of colours, of added frequencies-it's too complicated to explain-so that the music remains consistent all the time" (Reicher 1990, 37). In a separate statement (Reicher 1990, 32), Vivier confesses his preference towards understanding his work through listening to his music: "What I have to say, I must say with music. I can't say it with words. That's the problem. I can talk around the music, but it's more difficult to talk about music as such, the music itself." While Vivier's statements add an alluring veil of mystery to his music, they are not particularly useful in defining les couleurs. …