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Ligeti the Postmodernist?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Mike Searby
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Extract

The stylistic changes in György Ligeti's music since 1960 have in some ways mirrored those in the wider contemporary music world. In his music of the 1960s he displays an experimental and systematic approach to the exploration of sound matter which can also be seen in the contemporaneous music of composers such as Xenakis, Penderecki and Stockhausen. In the 1970s his music shows a more eclectic approach, particularly the opera Le Grand Macabre (1974–7) in which there is much plundering of past styles – such as allusions to Monteverdi, Rossini, and Verdi. From this work onward there would appear to be a complete break from the approach in his works on the 1960s.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 199 , January 1997 , pp. 9 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

1 Penderecki has gone much further towards a tonal language composing in a kind of sub-Brucknerian style from die 1970s onwards.

2 Szitha, T. ‘A Conversation with György Ligeti’, Hungarian Music Quarterly, Vol 3, ptl, 1992, p.15 Google Scholar.

3 Taylor, S., The Lamento Motif: Metamorphosis in Ligeti's Late Style, DMA, Cornell University, 1994, p.18 Google Scholar.

4 ‘A Conversation with György Ligeti’, p.14.

5 Ibid., p.14.

6 Ibid., p.15.

7 Mikropolyphonie consists of many canonic lines superimposed but with different rhythms, producing a tight web-like texture with a background cluster which slowly evolves.

8 Ligeti continues to use canonic structure in later works such as Magyar Etüdök (1983) although this uses a more traditional rhythmic canon. The structure and process in these pieces are explored in detail in the following article: Aluas, Luminita, ‘Visible and Audible Structures: Spatio-Temporal Compromise in Ligeti's Magyar Etüdök , Tempo 179, 12 1992, pp.7–17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 A similar phenomenon can be seen in works like Penderecki's Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima, which uses chance-like textures, although it is much more clearly aleatoric in Penderecki's case.

10 Ligeti, György, Ligeti in Conversation, London, Eulenberg, 1983, p.137 Google Scholar.

11 This kind of musical experimentation would not have been allowed in Hungary in the 1950s.

12 Ligeti in Conversation, p.94.

13 ‘A Conversation with György Ligeti’, p. 14.

14 Ibid., p. 17.

15 The Lamento Motif, p.75.

16 The shifting cadences are reminiscent of the opening of Beethoven's First Symphony, which has a similarly disorienting effect.

17 The Lamento Motif, p.3.

18 Ibid., p.3.

19 Bossin, Jeffrey, ‘György Ligeti's New Lyricism and the Aesthetic of Currentness: The Berlin Festival's Retrospective of the Composer's Career’, Current Musicology, 37/38, 1984, p.237 Google Scholar.

20 Literally ‘colour music’, where texture and timbre are more important than the traditional parameters of music.

21 Based on clock-like, layered mechanisms.

22 Satory, S., ‘An Interview with György Ligeti in Hamburg’, Canadian University Music Review, 10, 1990, p. 109 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Potter, K., ‘Ligeti on Ligeti’, Musical Times, 131, 1990, p.43 Google Scholar.

24 Ligeti, G., ‘Ma Position comme compositeur aujourd 'hui’, Contrechamps, 12/13, 1990, pp.8–9 Google Scholar, cited in The Lamento Motif, p.146.