Vrijeme kao centralna tačka francuske muzike 20. stoljeća: Vortex Temporum Gérarda Griseya
Time as a focal issue in French music in the 20th century: Gérard Grisey’s Vortex Temporum

Summary/Abstract: The focus of this article is Vortex Temporum, one of the late works of the French composer of spectral music, Gérard Grisey (1946–1998). Through an analysis of the complex metrica structures of one fragment of the first movement of the composition, the features that significantly conditioned their use are also articulated: Grisey’s long-standing intellectual and mystical inclinations that are revealed in his theoretical works. By analyzing the time matrix of Vortex Temporum, the influence of Henri Bergson’s (1859–1941) philosophical speculations about time on the very foundations of compositional technique is elaborated upon. The articulation of some of Bergson’s philosophical premises with musical means, such as metrical and sound processes of compression and dilation, makes Vortex Temporum a work that in and of itself represents the definition of liminal music – music that equally explores the limits of the hearing apparatus – as well as the limits of human perception of time as one of the fundamental philosophical concepts of the 20th century.

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