Introduction: Spectral Thinking by Cross, J

“…A tiny, swirling fragment from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé is transformed into the rapid, repeating arpeggios of the opening as a kind of representation of a sine wave,3 but which might equally be understood as the sound of a tolling bell: a single, distorted spectrum (four notes on the piano are tuned down a quarter tone), like that heard in Strasbourg, each ‘attack’ slowly fading across four bars, while the cello enters periodically with a sustained ‘hum’. …”