Le Chants de l’Amour for 12 voices and tape Gérard Grisey (1984). Duration: 35:23.

Les Chants de l’Amour, was completed in 1984. It was Grisey’s first large-scale vocal composition, and here the dramatisation of musical material that occurs throughout his instrumental work is very overt, within the context of a ‘music theatre’. With its chattering and countrapuntal vocals, for the most part unintelligible, this is a work that, if any, serves to belie the usual thought that spectral music simply corresponds to an over-technical extravagance of harmony. What is shown again here is that power ofdescription that was a major concern of Grisey, and which explodes in a piece that does not rely on any stereotypically ‘spectral’-orchestral tenets. [source]

I:      8:19
II:     7:24
III:   5:06
IV:  10:08
V:     4:24

Performed by Schola Heidelberg conducted by Walter Nussbaum.