Tristan Murail (Le Havre, March 11, 1947) is a French composer and a student of Olivier Messiaen. He is one of the most important representatives of spectral music, or spectralism, along with Jonathan Harvey and Gérard Grisey.
After his university studies—in which he obtained a degree in economics and a diploma from the «Institut d’études politiques», as well as diplomas in classical Arabic and Maghrebi Arabic from the «École Nationale des langues orientales»—he entered the National Conservatory of Paris in 1967 and studied there until 1972. He attended Olivier Messiaen’s course, «computer music» courses, and obtained a first prize in composition in 1971.
Between 1971 and 1973, he was selected for the Prix de Rome and was a fellow of the «Académie de France» at the Villa Medici in Rome, where he met Giacinto Scelsi. In 1973, he also collaborated in the founding of the Ensemble l’Itinéraire and in the development of works for different types of keyboards (Ondes Martenot, electronic organs, synthesizers).
He is the author of several articles on spectral music—«La révolution des sons complexes», «Spectres et lutins ou Questions de cible»—and continues with his compositions aided by computers. He taught musical informatics at the National Conservatory of Paris (where Philippe Hurel was one of his students) and at IRCAM, where he cooperated in the development of the musical software “Patchwork”. He currently uses the OpenMusic program for his work and is currently working at Columbia University in New York. In addition, he frequently participates in international conferences and seminars, especially in the «Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik» in Darmstadt.
Murail’s works are published by Salabert and Editions Henry Lemoine. His music has been recorded by the record labels Una Corda, Metier, Adés, and MFA-Radio France. He obtained the «Grand Prix du Disque» in 1990 and the «Grand Prix du Président de la République, Académie Charles Cros» in 1992.
Murail’s most outstanding works are the orchestral works Gondwana and Time and Again, as well as Désintégrations for 17 instruments and tape, and Ethers.
Murail also composes a series of pieces for various instruments in his Random Access Memory cycle, of which the sixth, Vampyr!, is a rare piece in the classical repertoire for electric guitar. Vampyr! is one of the few works in Murail’s catalog that does not use the spectral technique. In addition, in the notes for the interpretation, the composer recommends that the performer play in the style of guitarists from the pop or rock tradition, such as Carlos Santana and Eric Clapton.