"I found a kind of proportionality between the act of playing a note, and the pause that follows it. This is biological, the rhythm of physical movement, systole and diastole, the heart, the step, the tension and relaxation of muscle. From this incredibly simple observation I began to think out another world of rhythm, a world linked to cosmic and human naturality, to number, to quantity in terms of moments of action and moments of rest. I found that the pause following a number of actions is specific to it and gives it a special quality. In my composing I have tried to develop a consciousness of this quality.” - Iancu Dumitrescu

Hyperion Ensemble was founded in 1976 by Iancu Dumitrescu to explore spectral music, and rapidly became a life-changing education for the musicians who entered it. Members of Hyperion simply found themselves doing something completely different from the rest of their professional lives in orchestras or other ensembles. Dumitrescu - and, later, Ana Maria Avram - were not interested in constructing a music based on the spectral analysis of sounds. For them the important point was to make music directly out of the continuous transformation of sound itself. This radical reconceptualisation inevitably changes the relation of the musician to the written score, to the conductor, and to their own technique: it demands a transformation in their understanding of what music is and what they are doing when they play it, reaching down, finally, to innermost motivations, and how one's self is articulated on a deep level.

From this, it will be clear that Spectralism can be a direct work with material processes, and that that includes the responses of the musicians as a vital process alongside the transformations of the sound material itself. So there is a kind of presence of the musician in this music that is both different from, and connected to, the presence of the musician within an improvising group.

Hyperion Ensemble (UK) are:

Angharad Davies & Mayah Kadish: violins
Hannah Marshall: cello
Gwen Reed & Otto Willberg: double basses
Mark Sanders & Chris Cutler: percussion
Sarah Gail Brand & Alex Paxton: trombones
Yoni Silver & Tim Hodgkinson: bass clarinets
Guest: Octav Avramescu (piano)