Lonely Child; Prologue Pour Un Marco Polo; Zipangu; Bouchara

Canadian composer Claude Vivier was one of the most curious, and most underrecognised, of the spectralists, though it’s also fair to say he was probably one of the best. He studied with Stockhausen, and was a member, for a time, of the Feedback Group, who were key to the development of spectralism. But his own compositions have an unique flavour that sets them apart from works by the likes of Grisey, Murail and Râdulescu. Their emotional tenor can be quite devastating, as on the deeply moving Lonely Child, included here, even as Vivier wrote for voice using an invented language. There’s something heartbreakingly distant about Vivier’s compositions – maybe it’s their pacing, their occasional sentimentality, their trembling sense of abandoned religiosity.