Spectrum 5 is the fifth of a series or “family” of pieces for various instrumental ensembles, all of which use the same notation and playing procedures, and the same set of pitches—harmonic partials of a very low fundamental. There will be several basic formal types or “personalities” in this “family”, distinguished by different shapes determining the changing statistical properties of the energetic variables—temporal density and dynamic level—of a stochastic (or “constrained random”) process.
-Program note by James Tenney