György Ligeti
Encyclopedia
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer
of contemporary classical music
. Born in a Hungarian Jewish
family in Transylvania
, Romania
, he briefly lived in Hungary
before becoming an Austria
n citizen.
in 1945), in the Transylvania
region of Romania
to a Hungarian
Jewish family. Ligeti recalls that his first exposure to languages other than Hungarian came one day while listening to a conversation among the Romanian-speaking town police. Before that he hadn't known that other languages existed. He moved to Cluj
(Kolozsvár) with his family when he was 6, and he was not to return to the town of his birth until the 1990s.
Ligeti received his initial musical training in the conservatory at Kolozsvár, and during the summers privately with Pál Kadosa
in Budapest.
In 1940, Northern Transylvania
was taken over by Hungary following the Second Vienna Award
. In 1944, his education was interrupted when he was sent to a forced labor brigade by the Horthy regime
. His brother, age 16, was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp
, and both of his parents were sent to Auschwitz. His mother was the only other survivor of his immediate family.
Following the war
, Ligeti returned to his studies in Budapest
, Hungary, graduating in 1949 from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music
. He studied under Pál Kadosa
, Ferenc Farkas
, Zoltán Kodály
and Sándor Veress
. He went on to do ethnomusicological
work on Romanian folk music
, but after a year returned to his old school in Budapest, this time as a teacher of harmony
, counterpoint
and musical analysis
. However, communications between Hungary and the West by then had become difficult due to the restrictions of the communist
government, and Ligeti and other artists were effectively cut off from recent developments outside the Soviet bloc.
, Ligeti fled to Vienna
with his ex-wife Vera (soon to be wife again) and eventually took Austrian citizenship (in 1968). He would not see Hungary again until he was invited to judge a competition in Budapest fourteen years later. On his journey to Vienna, he left most of his Hungarian compositions in Budapest, some of which are now lost; he only took what he considered to be his most important compositions. He later explained, "I considered my old music of no interest. I believed in twelve-tone music!"
A few weeks after arriving in Vienna, he left for Cologne
. There he met several key avant-garde
figures and learned more contemporary musical styles and methods. These included the composers Karlheinz Stockhausen
and Gottfried Michael Koenig
, both then working on groundbreaking electronic music
. During the summer, he attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt
. Ligeti worked in the Cologne studio with Stockhausen and Koenig and was inspired by the sounds he heard there. However, he produced little electronic music of his own, instead concentrating on instrumental works which often contain electronic-sounding textures
.
Starting around 1960, Ligeti's work became better-known and respected. His best-known work include works in the period from Apparitions (1958–59) to Lontano (1967) and his opera
Le Grand Macabre
(1978). In recent years, his three books of Études
for piano
(1985–2001) have become better-known through recordings by Pierre-Laurent Aimard
, Fredrik Ullén
, and others.
In 1973, Ligeti became professor of composition at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater
, eventually retiring in 1989. In the early 1980s, he tried to find a new stylistic position (closer to "tonality
"), leading to an absence from the musical scene for several years until he reappeared with the Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano (1982). His output was prolific through the 1980s and 1990s. Invited by Walter Fink
, he was the first composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival
in 1990.
However, health problems became severe after the turn of the millennium. On June 12, 2006, Ligeti died in Vienna at the age of 83. Although it was known that Ligeti had been ill for several years and had used a wheelchair the last three years of his life, his family declined to release the cause of his death. Ligeti's funeral was held at the Vienna Crematorium at the Zentralfriedhof
, the Republic of Austria and the Republic of Hungary represented by their respective cultural affairs ministers. The ashes were finally buried at the Zentralfriedhof in a grave dedicated to him by the City of Vienna.
Apart from his far-reaching interest in different types of music from Renaissance to African music, Ligeti was also interested in literature (including the writers Lewis Carroll
, Jorge Luis Borges
, and Franz Kafka
), painting, architecture, science, and mathematics, especially the fractal geometry of Benoît Mandelbrot
and the writings of Douglas Hofstadter
.
Ligeti was the grand-nephew of the great violinist Leopold Auer
. Ligeti's son, Lukas Ligeti
, is a composer and percussionist based in New York City.
Ligeti's earliest works are often an extension of the musical language of Béla Bartók
. Even his piano cycle, Musica ricercata
(1953), though written according to Ligeti with a "Cartesian" approach in which he "regarded all the music I knew and loved as being... irrelevant", has been described by one biographer as inhabiting a world very close to Bartók's set of piano works, Mikrokosmos. Ligeti's set comprises eleven pieces in all. The work is based on a simple restriction: the first piece uses exclusively one pitch A, heard in multiple octave
s, and only at the very end of the piece is a second note, D, heard. The second piece then uses three notes (E, F, and G), the third piece uses four, and so on, so that in the final piece all twelve notes of the chromatic scale
are present. Shortly after its composition, Ligeti arranged six of the movements of Musica ricercata for wind quintet
under the title Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet. The Bagatelles were performed first in 1956, but not in their entirety: the last movement was censored by the Soviets for being too 'dangerous'.
Because of Soviet censorship, his most daring works from this period, including Musica ricercata and String Quartet No. 1 Métamorphoses nocturnes
(1953-1954), were written for the 'bottom drawer'. Composed of a single movement divided into seventeen contrasting sections linked motivically
, the First String Quartet
is Ligeti's first work to suggest a personal style of composition. The string quartet was not performed until 1958, after he had fled Hungary for Vienna.
, he began to write electronic music alongside Karlheinz Stockhausen
and Gottfried Michael Koenig
at the electronic studio of West German Radio (WDR). He completed only two works in this medium, however—the pieces Glissandi (1957) and Artikulation (1958)—before returning to instrumental music. A third work, originally entitled Atmosphères but later known as Pièce électronique Nr. 3, was planned, but the technical limitations of the time prevented Ligeti from realizing it completely. It was finally realized in 1996 by the Dutch composers Kees Tazelaar and Johan van Kreij of the Institute of Sonology
.
Ligeti's music appears to have been subsequently influenced by his electronic experiments, and many of the sounds he created resembled electronic textures
. Apparitions (1958–59) was the first work that brought him to critical attention, but it is his next work, Atmosphères, that is better-known today. The texture used in the second movement of Apparitions and Atmosphères Ligeti would later dub "micropolyphony
".
Atmosphères
(1961) is written for large orchestra
and is not musically related to the earlier electronic piece of the same name, although some of its aesthetic intentions are similar. Out of the four elements of music—melody
, harmony
, rhythm
and timbre
—the piece almost completely abandons the first three, concentrating on the texture of the sound, a technique known as sound mass
. It opens with what must be one of the largest cluster chords ever written—every note in the chromatic scale
over a range of five octaves is played at once. Out of the fifty-six string players ushering in the first chord, no two play the same note. The piece seems to grow out of this initial massive, but very quiet, chord
, with the textures always changing.
The Requiem is a work for soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, twenty-part chorus (four each of soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), and orchestra. Though, at about half an hour, it is the longest piece he had composed up to that point, Ligeti sets only about half of the traditional text
: the Introitus, the Kyrie, and the Dies irae—dividing the latter sequence into two parts, De die iudicii sequentia (Day of Judgement Sequence) and Lacrimosa (Weeping). The piece opens in the same micropolyphonic style as Atmosphères. The Kyrie is a massive, twenty-part choral quasi-fugue
where the counterpoint
is rethought in terms of the material, consisting of melismatic masses interpenetrating and alternating with complex skipping parts. De die iudicii sequentia is a montage of contrasts: fff loud versus ppp soft, masses of sound versus soloists, etc. In the Lacrimosa, the chorus is muted, and only a reduced orchestra accompanies the plangent singing of the soloists.
Lux Aeterna
is a 16-voice a cappella piece whose text is also associated with the Latin Requiem. The piece is strongly modeled after the masterful mensuration canons of Johannes Ockeghem
and accomplishes much the same effect, but with secundal
, rather than tertian harmony, in a paradoxically thick-but-transparent 16-voice texture.
Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures are "mimodramas" for three vocalists and seven instrumentalists in which the text performed by the former is composed entirely of phonetic sounds that present various abstract emotional states and interaction. "Something happens, but I do not know what it is, and you do not know what it is," Ligeti said. Emotional outbursts ranging as far as complete hysteria jostle and juxtapose with banal conversation in presenting these abstract, stylized works. Combined with the instrumental accompaniment, unlike his previously cited music, the impression is one of porosity rather than density. There is also a parody of a chorale
, and sound effects like tearing paper and marbles in a bowl, which lends a feeling of humorous absurdity to the works, possibly reflecting an influence from Mauricio Kagel
and Dieter Schnebel
, as well as Momente
by Stockhausen.
From the 1970s, Ligeti turned away from total chromaticism
and began to concentrate on rhythm. Pieces such as Continuum
(1968) and Clocks and Clouds (1972–73) were written before he heard the music of Steve Reich
and Terry Riley
in 1972. But the second of his Three Pieces for Two Pianos, entitled "Self-portrait with Reich and Riley (and Chopin in the background)," commemorates this affirmation and influence. During the 1970s, he also became interested in the polyphonic pipe music of the Banda
-Linda tribe from the Central African Republic
, which he heard through the recordings of one of his students.
In 1977, Ligeti completed his only opera, Le Grand Macabre
, thirteen years after its initial commission. Loosely based on Michel de Ghelderode
's 1934 play, La Balade du grand macabre, it is a work of Absurd theatre—Ligeti called it an "anti-anti-opera"—in which Death
(Nekrotzar) arrives in the fictional city of Breughelland and announces that the end of the world will occur at midnight. Musically, Le Grand Macabre draws on techniques not associated with Ligeti's previous work, including quotation
s and pseudo-quotations of other works and the use of consonant thirds
and sixths. After Le Grand Macabre, Ligeti would abandon the use of pastiche
, but would increasingly incorporate consonant harmonies (even major and minor triads) into his work, albeit not in a diatonic context.
After Le Grand Macabre, Ligeti struggled for some time to find a new style. Besides two short pieces for harpsichord
, he did not complete another major work until the Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano in 1982, over four years after the opera. His music of the 1980s and 1990s continued to emphasize complex mechanical rhythms, often in a less densely chromatic idiom, tending to favor displaced major and minor triads and polymodal
structures. During this time, Ligeti also began to explore alternate tuning systems through the use of natural harmonic
s for horns (as in the Horn Trio and Piano Concerto
) and scordatura
for strings (as in the Violin Concerto
). Additionally, most of his works in this period are multi-movement works, rather than the extended single movements of Atmosphères and San Francisco Polyphony.
From 1985 to 2001, Ligeti completed three books of Études
for piano (Book I, 1985; Book II, 1988–94; Book III, 1995–2001). Comprised of eighteen compositions in all, the Études draw from a diverse range of sources, including gamelan
, African polyrhythm
s, Béla Bartók
, Conlon Nancarrow
, Thelonious Monk
, and Bill Evans
. Book I was notably written as preparation for the Piano Concerto, which contains a number of similar motivic and melodic elements.
In 1988, Ligeti completed his Piano Concerto, a work which he described as a statement of his "aesthetic credo". Initial sketches of the Concerto began in 1980, but it was not until 1986 that he found a way forward and the work proceeded more quickly. The Concerto explores many of the ideas worked out in the Études but in an orchestral context.
In 1993, Ligeti completed his Violin Concerto
after four years of work. Like the Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto uses the wide range of techniques he had developed up until that point as well as the new ideas he was working out at the moment. Among other techniques, it uses "microtonality, rapidly changing textures
, comic juxtapositions... Hungarian folk melodies
, Bulgarian dance rhythms
, references to medieval
and Renaissance music
and solo violin writing that ranges from the slow-paced and sweet-toned to the angular and fiery."
Other notable works from this period are the Viola Sonata (1994) and the Nonsense Madrigals (1993), a set of six a cappella
compositions that set English texts from William Brighty Rands
, Lewis Carroll
, and Heinrich Hoffman
. The third Madrigal is based on the alphabet
.
Ligeti's last works were the Hamburg Concerto
for horn and chamber orchestra (1998–99, revised 2003, dedicated to Marie Luise Neunecker
), the song cycle
Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel
("With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles", 2000), and the eighteenth piano étude "Canon" (2001). After Le Grand Macabre, Ligeti planned to write a second opera, first to be based on Shakespeare's The Tempest
and later on Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
, but neither piece ever came to fruition.
. The soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey
includes four of his pieces: Atmosphères, Lux Aeterna (for the moon-bus scene en route to the TMA-1 monolith in the crater Tycho), Requiem (the Kyrie), and an electronically altered version of Aventures (in the cryptic final scenes). Some of this music was used again in Peter Hyams
's 1984 sequel film, 2010. Another of Kubrick's films, The Shining
, uses Lontano for orchestra. In addition, the second movement of Ligeti's Musica ricercata is used at pivotal moments in Eyes Wide Shut
.
Lontano was also used in Martin Scorsese
's Shutter Island.
Lontano, Melodien, and Volumina were used in the first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
as background music to sections of narrative from the Guide.
Lontano, Atmosphères, and the first movement of the Cello Concerto were used in Sophie Fiennes
's documentary Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, about the German post-war artist Anselm Kiefer
.
Other links
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
of contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
. Born in a Hungarian Jewish
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
family in Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, he briefly lived in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
before becoming an Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n citizen.
Early life
Ligeti was born in Târnava-Sânmărtin (in Hungarian, Dicsőszentmárton, renamed TârnăveniTârnaveni
Târnăveni is a city and municipality in central Romania, Mureş County. It lies on the Târnava Mică River in central Transylvania. The city administers three villages: Bobohalma, Botorca and Cuştelnic; the last was part of Găneşti Commune until 2002....
in 1945), in the Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
region of Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
to a Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
Jewish family. Ligeti recalls that his first exposure to languages other than Hungarian came one day while listening to a conversation among the Romanian-speaking town police. Before that he hadn't known that other languages existed. He moved to Cluj
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest , Budapest and Belgrade...
(Kolozsvár) with his family when he was 6, and he was not to return to the town of his birth until the 1990s.
Ligeti received his initial musical training in the conservatory at Kolozsvár, and during the summers privately with Pál Kadosa
Pál Kadosa
Pál Kadosa was a piano teacher and Hungarian composer of the post-Bartók generation. His early style was influenced by Hungarian folklore while his later works were more toward Hindemith and expressively forceful idioms. He was born in Léva. He studied at the national Hungarian Royal Academy...
in Budapest.
In 1940, Northern Transylvania
Northern Transylvania
Northern Transylvania is a region of Transylvania, situated within the territory of Romania. The population is largely composed of both ethnic Romanians and Hungarians, and the region has been part of Romania since 1918 . During World War II, as a consequence of the territorial agreement known as...
was taken over by Hungary following the Second Vienna Award
Vienna Awards
The Vienna Awards are two arbitral awards by which arbiters of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sought to enforce peacefully the claims of Hungary on territory it had lost in 1920 when it signed the Treaty of Trianon...
. In 1944, his education was interrupted when he was sent to a forced labor brigade by the Horthy regime
Hungary during World War II
Hungary during World War II was a member of the Axis powers. In the 1930s, the Kingdom of Hungary relied on increased trade with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to pull itself out of the Great Depression. By 1938, Hungarian politics and foreign policy had become increasingly pro-Fascist Italian and...
. His brother, age 16, was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
Mauthausen Concentration Camp grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly east of the city of Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the...
, and both of his parents were sent to Auschwitz. His mother was the only other survivor of his immediate family.
Following the war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Ligeti returned to his studies in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, Hungary, graduating in 1949 from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music
Franz Liszt Academy of Music
The Franz Liszt Academy of Music is a concert hall and music conservatory in Budapest, Hungary, founded on November 14, 1875...
. He studied under Pál Kadosa
Pál Kadosa
Pál Kadosa was a piano teacher and Hungarian composer of the post-Bartók generation. His early style was influenced by Hungarian folklore while his later works were more toward Hindemith and expressively forceful idioms. He was born in Léva. He studied at the national Hungarian Royal Academy...
, Ferenc Farkas
Ferenc Farkas
Ferenc Farkas was a Hungarian composer.Farkas began his studies in composition at the Budapest Academy of Music , where his teachers were Leo Weiner and Albert Siklós. He later studied with Ottorino Respighi in Rome...
, Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is best known internationally as the creator of the Kodály Method.-Life:Born in Kecskemét, Kodály learned to play the violin as a child....
and Sándor Veress
Sándor Veress
Sándor Veress was a Swiss composer of Hungarian origin. The first half of his life was spent in Hungary; the second, from 1949 until his death, in Switzerland, of which he became a citizen in the last months of his life.Veress taught at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest...
. He went on to do ethnomusicological
Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
work on Romanian folk music
Music of Romania
Romania is a European country with a multicultural music environment which includes active ethnic music scenes. Romania also has thriving scenes in the fields of pop music, hip hop, heavy metal and rock and roll...
, but after a year returned to his old school in Budapest, this time as a teacher of harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
, counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
and musical analysis
Musical analysis
Musical analysis is the attempt to answer the question how does this music work?. The method employed to answer this question, and indeed exactly what is meant by the question, differs from analyst to analyst, and according to the purpose of the analysis. According to Ian Bent , analysis is "an...
. However, communications between Hungary and the West by then had become difficult due to the restrictions of the communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
government, and Ligeti and other artists were effectively cut off from recent developments outside the Soviet bloc.
After leaving Hungary
In December 1956, two months after the Hungarian revolution was put down by the Soviet ArmySoviet Army
The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...
, Ligeti fled to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
with his ex-wife Vera (soon to be wife again) and eventually took Austrian citizenship (in 1968). He would not see Hungary again until he was invited to judge a competition in Budapest fourteen years later. On his journey to Vienna, he left most of his Hungarian compositions in Budapest, some of which are now lost; he only took what he considered to be his most important compositions. He later explained, "I considered my old music of no interest. I believed in twelve-tone music!"
A few weeks after arriving in Vienna, he left for Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
. There he met several key avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
figures and learned more contemporary musical styles and methods. These included the composers Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
and Gottfried Michael Koenig
Gottfried Michael Koenig
Gottfried Michael Koenig is a contemporary German-Dutch composer.-Biography:Koenig studied church music in Braunschweig, composition, piano, analysis and acoustics in Detmold, music representation techniques in Cologne and computer technique in Bonn. He attended and later lectured at the...
, both then working on groundbreaking electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
. During the summer, he attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
. Ligeti worked in the Cologne studio with Stockhausen and Koenig and was inspired by the sounds he heard there. However, he produced little electronic music of his own, instead concentrating on instrumental works which often contain electronic-sounding textures
Texture (music)
In music, texture is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition , thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece...
.
Starting around 1960, Ligeti's work became better-known and respected. His best-known work include works in the period from Apparitions (1958–59) to Lontano (1967) and his opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
Le Grand Macabre
Le Grand Macabre
Le Grand Macabre is György Ligeti's only opera. The opera has two acts and its libretto – loosely based on the 1934 play, La Balade du grand macabre, by Michel De Ghelderode – was written by Ligeti in collaboration with Michael Meschke...
(1978). In recent years, his three books of Études
Études (Ligeti)
The Hungarian composer György Ligeti composed a cycle of 18 Études for solo piano between 1985 and 2001. They are generally seen as one of the major creative achievements of his last decades, and one of the most significant sets of piano studies, combining virtuoso technical problems with...
for piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
(1985–2001) have become better-known through recordings by Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Pierre-Laurent Aimard is a French pianist. He was born in Lyon, where he entered the conservatory. Later he studied with Yvonne Loriod and with Maria Curcio....
, Fredrik Ullén
Fredrik Ullén
Fredrik Ullén is a Swedish pianist. He has made recordings for the BIS, BMG Classics, Caprice, Danacord, dbProductions, and Phono Suecia labels....
, and others.
In 1973, Ligeti became professor of composition at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater
Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg
The Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg is one of the larger universities of music in Germany.It was founded 1950 as Staatliche Hochschule für Musik on the base of the former private acting school of Annemarie Marks-Rocke and Eduard Marks.Studies include various music types from church music...
, eventually retiring in 1989. In the early 1980s, he tried to find a new stylistic position (closer to "tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
"), leading to an absence from the musical scene for several years until he reappeared with the Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano (1982). His output was prolific through the 1980s and 1990s. Invited by Walter Fink
Walter Fink
Walter Fink is a German retired executive and a patron of Contemporary music. He is mostly known for being a founding member, Executive Committee member and sponsor of the Rheingau Musik Festival.- Biography :...
, he was the first composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival
Rheingau Musik Festival
The Rheingau Musik Festival is an international summer music festival in Germany, founded in 1987. It is mostly for classical music, but includes other genres...
in 1990.
However, health problems became severe after the turn of the millennium. On June 12, 2006, Ligeti died in Vienna at the age of 83. Although it was known that Ligeti had been ill for several years and had used a wheelchair the last three years of his life, his family declined to release the cause of his death. Ligeti's funeral was held at the Vienna Crematorium at the Zentralfriedhof
Zentralfriedhof
The Zentralfriedhof is one of the largest cemeteries in the world, largest by number of interred in Europe and most famous cemetery among Vienna's nearly 50 cemeteries.-Name and location:...
, the Republic of Austria and the Republic of Hungary represented by their respective cultural affairs ministers. The ashes were finally buried at the Zentralfriedhof in a grave dedicated to him by the City of Vienna.
Apart from his far-reaching interest in different types of music from Renaissance to African music, Ligeti was also interested in literature (including the writers Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, and Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
), painting, architecture, science, and mathematics, especially the fractal geometry of Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoît B. Mandelbrot was a French American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child...
and the writings of Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
.
Ligeti was the grand-nephew of the great violinist Leopold Auer
Leopold Auer
Leopold Auer was a Hungarian violinist, teacher, conductor and composer.-Early life and career:...
. Ligeti's son, Lukas Ligeti
Lukas Ligeti
Lukas Ligeti is a composer and percussionist. His work incorporates elements of jazz, contemporary classical, and various world musics.- Background :...
, is a composer and percussionist based in New York City.
Years in Hungary
Many of his very earliest work were written for chorus and set folk songs. His largest work in this period was a graduation composition for the Budapest Academy, entitled Cantata for Youth Festival, for four vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra. One of his earliest pieces now in the repertoire is his Cello Sonata, a work in two contrasting movements written in 1948 and 1953 respectively. It was initially banned by the Soviet-run Composer's Union and had to wait a quarter of a century before its first public performance.Ligeti's earliest works are often an extension of the musical language of Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
. Even his piano cycle, Musica ricercata
Musica ricercata
Musica ricercata is a set of eleven pieces for piano by György Ligeti. The work was composed from 1951 to 1953, shortly after the composer began lecturing at the Budapest Academy of Music. The work premiered on November 18, 1969 in Sundsvall, Sweden...
(1953), though written according to Ligeti with a "Cartesian" approach in which he "regarded all the music I knew and loved as being... irrelevant", has been described by one biographer as inhabiting a world very close to Bartók's set of piano works, Mikrokosmos. Ligeti's set comprises eleven pieces in all. The work is based on a simple restriction: the first piece uses exclusively one pitch A, heard in multiple octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...
s, and only at the very end of the piece is a second note, D, heard. The second piece then uses three notes (E, F, and G), the third piece uses four, and so on, so that in the final piece all twelve notes of the chromatic scale
Chromatic scale
The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone apart. On a modern piano or other equal-tempered instrument, all the half steps are the same size...
are present. Shortly after its composition, Ligeti arranged six of the movements of Musica ricercata for wind quintet
Wind quintet
A wind quintet, also sometimes known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players . The term also applies to a composition for such a group....
under the title Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet. The Bagatelles were performed first in 1956, but not in their entirety: the last movement was censored by the Soviets for being too 'dangerous'.
Because of Soviet censorship, his most daring works from this period, including Musica ricercata and String Quartet No. 1 Métamorphoses nocturnes
String Quartet No. 1 (Ligeti)
György Ligeti's String Quartet No. 1, titled Métamorphoses nocturnes, was composed in 1953-54. It is thus representative of what the composer himself used to call "the prehistoric Ligeti", referring to the works he wrote before leaving Hungary in 1956...
(1953-1954), were written for the 'bottom drawer'. Composed of a single movement divided into seventeen contrasting sections linked motivically
Motif (music)
In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
, the First String Quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
is Ligeti's first work to suggest a personal style of composition. The string quartet was not performed until 1958, after he had fled Hungary for Vienna.
From 1956 to Le Grand Macabre
Upon arriving in CologneCologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, he began to write electronic music alongside Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
and Gottfried Michael Koenig
Gottfried Michael Koenig
Gottfried Michael Koenig is a contemporary German-Dutch composer.-Biography:Koenig studied church music in Braunschweig, composition, piano, analysis and acoustics in Detmold, music representation techniques in Cologne and computer technique in Bonn. He attended and later lectured at the...
at the electronic studio of West German Radio (WDR). He completed only two works in this medium, however—the pieces Glissandi (1957) and Artikulation (1958)—before returning to instrumental music. A third work, originally entitled Atmosphères but later known as Pièce électronique Nr. 3, was planned, but the technical limitations of the time prevented Ligeti from realizing it completely. It was finally realized in 1996 by the Dutch composers Kees Tazelaar and Johan van Kreij of the Institute of Sonology
Institute of Sonology
The Institute of Sonology is an education and research center for electronic music and computer music based at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in the Netherlands.-Background:...
.
Ligeti's music appears to have been subsequently influenced by his electronic experiments, and many of the sounds he created resembled electronic textures
Texture (music)
In music, texture is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition , thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece...
. Apparitions (1958–59) was the first work that brought him to critical attention, but it is his next work, Atmosphères, that is better-known today. The texture used in the second movement of Apparitions and Atmosphères Ligeti would later dub "micropolyphony
Micropolyphony
Micropolyphony is a type of 20th century musical texture involving the use of sustained dissonant chords that shift slowly over time. According to David Cope, "a simultaneity of different lines, rhythms, and timbres"...
".
Atmosphères
Atmosphères
Atmosphères is a piece for full orchestra, composed by György Ligeti in 1961. It is noted for eschewing conventional melody and metre in favor of dense sound textures...
(1961) is written for large orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
and is not musically related to the earlier electronic piece of the same name, although some of its aesthetic intentions are similar. Out of the four elements of music—melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
, harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
, rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
and timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
—the piece almost completely abandons the first three, concentrating on the texture of the sound, a technique known as sound mass
Sound mass
In contrast to more traditional musical textures, sound mass composition "minimizes the importance of individual pitches in preference for texture, timbre, and dynamics as primary shapers of gesture and impact." Developed from the modernist tone clusters and spread to orchestral writing by the late...
. It opens with what must be one of the largest cluster chords ever written—every note in the chromatic scale
Chromatic scale
The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone apart. On a modern piano or other equal-tempered instrument, all the half steps are the same size...
over a range of five octaves is played at once. Out of the fifty-six string players ushering in the first chord, no two play the same note. The piece seems to grow out of this initial massive, but very quiet, chord
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
, with the textures always changing.
The Requiem is a work for soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, twenty-part chorus (four each of soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), and orchestra. Though, at about half an hour, it is the longest piece he had composed up to that point, Ligeti sets only about half of the traditional text
Requiem
A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead or Mass of the dead , is a Mass celebrated for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, using a particular form of the Roman Missal...
: the Introitus, the Kyrie, and the Dies irae—dividing the latter sequence into two parts, De die iudicii sequentia (Day of Judgement Sequence) and Lacrimosa (Weeping). The piece opens in the same micropolyphonic style as Atmosphères. The Kyrie is a massive, twenty-part choral quasi-fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
where the counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
is rethought in terms of the material, consisting of melismatic masses interpenetrating and alternating with complex skipping parts. De die iudicii sequentia is a montage of contrasts: fff loud versus ppp soft, masses of sound versus soloists, etc. In the Lacrimosa, the chorus is muted, and only a reduced orchestra accompanies the plangent singing of the soloists.
Lux Aeterna
Lux Aeterna (György Ligeti)
Lux Aeterna is a piece for 16 solo singers, written by György Ligeti in 1966. It is most famous for its use in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey....
is a 16-voice a cappella piece whose text is also associated with the Latin Requiem. The piece is strongly modeled after the masterful mensuration canons of Johannes Ockeghem
Johannes Ockeghem
Johannes Ockeghem was the most famous composer of the Franco-Flemish School in the last half of the 15th century, and is often considered the most...
and accomplishes much the same effect, but with secundal
Secundal
In music or music theory, secundal is the quality of a chord made from seconds, and anything related to things constructed from seconds such as counterpoint. Secundal chords are often referred to more generally as tone clusters, especially when non-diatonic...
, rather than tertian harmony, in a paradoxically thick-but-transparent 16-voice texture.
Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures are "mimodramas" for three vocalists and seven instrumentalists in which the text performed by the former is composed entirely of phonetic sounds that present various abstract emotional states and interaction. "Something happens, but I do not know what it is, and you do not know what it is," Ligeti said. Emotional outbursts ranging as far as complete hysteria jostle and juxtapose with banal conversation in presenting these abstract, stylized works. Combined with the instrumental accompaniment, unlike his previously cited music, the impression is one of porosity rather than density. There is also a parody of a chorale
Chorale
A chorale was originally a hymn sung by a Christian congregation. In certain modern usage, this term may also include classical settings of such hymns and works of a similar character....
, and sound effects like tearing paper and marbles in a bowl, which lends a feeling of humorous absurdity to the works, possibly reflecting an influence from Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel was a German-Argentine composer. He was notable for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance .-Biography:...
and Dieter Schnebel
Dieter Schnebel
Dieter Schnebel is a composer. From 1976 until his retirement in 1995, Schnebel served as professor of experimental music at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste.-Career:...
, as well as Momente
Momente
Momente is a work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, written between 1962 and 1969, scored for solo soprano, four mixed choirs, and thirteen instrumentalists...
by Stockhausen.
From the 1970s, Ligeti turned away from total chromaticism
Chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...
and began to concentrate on rhythm. Pieces such as Continuum
Continuum (Ligeti)
Continuum for harpsichord is a musical composition by György Ligeti composed in 1968, and dedicated to the contemporary harpsichordist, Antoinette Vischer...
(1968) and Clocks and Clouds (1972–73) were written before he heard the music of Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
and Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
in 1972. But the second of his Three Pieces for Two Pianos, entitled "Self-portrait with Reich and Riley (and Chopin in the background)," commemorates this affirmation and influence. During the 1970s, he also became interested in the polyphonic pipe music of the Banda
Banda people
Banda is an ethnic group of the Central African Republic, some of who also live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, and South Sudan....
-Linda tribe from the Central African Republic
Central African Republic
The Central African Republic , is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It borders Chad in the north, Sudan in the north east, South Sudan in the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo in the south, and Cameroon in the west. The CAR covers a land area of about ,...
, which he heard through the recordings of one of his students.
In 1977, Ligeti completed his only opera, Le Grand Macabre
Le Grand Macabre
Le Grand Macabre is György Ligeti's only opera. The opera has two acts and its libretto – loosely based on the 1934 play, La Balade du grand macabre, by Michel De Ghelderode – was written by Ligeti in collaboration with Michael Meschke...
, thirteen years after its initial commission. Loosely based on Michel de Ghelderode
Michel De Ghelderode
Michel de Ghelderode was an avant-garde Belgian dramatist, writing in French.-Career:...
's 1934 play, La Balade du grand macabre, it is a work of Absurd theatre—Ligeti called it an "anti-anti-opera"—in which Death
Death (personification)
The concept of death as a sentient entity has existed in many societies since the beginning of history. In English, Death is often given the name Grim Reaper and, from the 15th century onwards, came to be shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe and clothed in a black cloak with a hood...
(Nekrotzar) arrives in the fictional city of Breughelland and announces that the end of the world will occur at midnight. Musically, Le Grand Macabre draws on techniques not associated with Ligeti's previous work, including quotation
Quotation
A quotation or quote is the repetition of one expression as part of another one, particularly when the quoted expression is well-known or explicitly attributed by citation to its original source, and it is indicated by quotation marks.A quotation can also refer to the repeated use of units of any...
s and pseudo-quotations of other works and the use of consonant thirds
Third (music)
In music and music theory third may refer to:*major third*minor third*augmented third/perfect fourth*diminished third/major second*Third , chord member a third above the root*Mediant, third degree of the diatonic scale...
and sixths. After Le Grand Macabre, Ligeti would abandon the use of pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
, but would increasingly incorporate consonant harmonies (even major and minor triads) into his work, albeit not in a diatonic context.
After Le Grand Macabre
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
, he did not complete another major work until the Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano in 1982, over four years after the opera. His music of the 1980s and 1990s continued to emphasize complex mechanical rhythms, often in a less densely chromatic idiom, tending to favor displaced major and minor triads and polymodal
Polytonality
The musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality . Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time...
structures. During this time, Ligeti also began to explore alternate tuning systems through the use of natural harmonic
Harmonic
A harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the signal that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency, i.e. if the fundamental frequency is f, the harmonics have frequencies 2f, 3f, 4f, . . . etc. The harmonics have the property that they are all periodic at the fundamental...
s for horns (as in the Horn Trio and Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto (Ligeti)
György Ligeti's Piano Concerto was written from 1985-1988. The work has five movements:#Vivace molto ritmico e preciso - Attacca subito:#Lento e deserto#Vivace cantabile#Allegro risoluto, molto ritmico - Attacca subito:...
) and scordatura
Scordatura
A scordatura , also called cross-tuning, is an alternative tuning used for the open strings of a string instrument, in which the notes indicated in the score would represent the finger position as if played in regular tuning, while the actual pitch is altered...
for strings (as in the Violin Concerto
Violin Concerto (Ligeti)
The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by György Ligeti is a violin concerto written for and dedicated to the violinist Saschko Gawriloff. A performance of the work lasts about 28 minutes.-History:...
). Additionally, most of his works in this period are multi-movement works, rather than the extended single movements of Atmosphères and San Francisco Polyphony.
From 1985 to 2001, Ligeti completed three books of Études
Études (Ligeti)
The Hungarian composer György Ligeti composed a cycle of 18 Études for solo piano between 1985 and 2001. They are generally seen as one of the major creative achievements of his last decades, and one of the most significant sets of piano studies, combining virtuoso technical problems with...
for piano (Book I, 1985; Book II, 1988–94; Book III, 1995–2001). Comprised of eighteen compositions in all, the Études draw from a diverse range of sources, including gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
, African polyrhythm
Polyrhythm
Polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms.Polyrhythm in general is a nonspecific term for the simultaneous occurrence of two or more conflicting rhythms, of which cross-rhythm is a specific and definable subset.—Novotney Polyrhythms can be distinguished from...
s, Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Conlon Nancarrow
Conlon Nancarrow
Conlon Nancarrow was a United States-born composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. He became a Mexican citizen in 1955.Nancarrow is best remembered for the pieces he wrote for the player piano...
, Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
, and Bill Evans
Bill Evans
William John Evans, known as Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie...
. Book I was notably written as preparation for the Piano Concerto, which contains a number of similar motivic and melodic elements.
In 1988, Ligeti completed his Piano Concerto, a work which he described as a statement of his "aesthetic credo". Initial sketches of the Concerto began in 1980, but it was not until 1986 that he found a way forward and the work proceeded more quickly. The Concerto explores many of the ideas worked out in the Études but in an orchestral context.
In 1993, Ligeti completed his Violin Concerto
Violin Concerto (Ligeti)
The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by György Ligeti is a violin concerto written for and dedicated to the violinist Saschko Gawriloff. A performance of the work lasts about 28 minutes.-History:...
after four years of work. Like the Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto uses the wide range of techniques he had developed up until that point as well as the new ideas he was working out at the moment. Among other techniques, it uses "microtonality, rapidly changing textures
Texture (music)
In music, texture is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition , thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece...
, comic juxtapositions... Hungarian folk melodies
Hungarian folk music
Hungarian folk music includes a broad array of styles, including the recruitment dance verbunkos, the csárdás and nóta.During the 20th century, Hungarian composers were influenced by the traditional music of their nation which may be considered as a repeat of the early "nationalist" movement of the...
, Bulgarian dance rhythms
Bulgarian dances
Bulgarian folk dances are intimately related to the music of Bulgaria. This distinctive feature of Balkan folk music is the asymmetrical meter, built up around various combinations of 'quick' and 'slow' beats...
, references to medieval
Medieval music
Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...
and Renaissance music
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...
and solo violin writing that ranges from the slow-paced and sweet-toned to the angular and fiery."
Other notable works from this period are the Viola Sonata (1994) and the Nonsense Madrigals (1993), a set of six a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
compositions that set English texts from William Brighty Rands
William Brighty Rands
William Brighty Rands was a British writer and one of the major authors of nursery rhymes of Victorian era.- Biography :...
, Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, and Heinrich Hoffman
Heinrich Hoffman
Heinrich Hoffman was born on December 23, 1836. He served in the American Civil War, and was a Medal of Honor Recipient. He served as a Corporal in the Union Army in Company M, 2nd Ohio Cavalry. He received the Medal of Honor for action on April 6, 1865 at the Battle of Sayler's Creek, Virginia.He...
. The third Madrigal is based on the alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
.
Ligeti's last works were the Hamburg Concerto
Hamburg Concerto
Hamburg Concerto for solo horn and chamber orchestra with 4 obbligato natural horns is one of György Ligeti's last works, composed in 1998-99 and revised in 2003....
for horn and chamber orchestra (1998–99, revised 2003, dedicated to Marie Luise Neunecker
Marie Luise Neunecker
Marie Luise Neunecker is a German hornplayer and a professor of French horn.- Professional career :Neunecker studied musicology and German studies....
), the song cycle
Song cycle
A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...
Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel
Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel
Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel is a song cycle by György Ligeti on poetry by Sándor Weöres. The work is scored for mezzo-soprano and an unusual ensemble of percussion and wind instruments...
("With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles", 2000), and the eighteenth piano étude "Canon" (2001). After Le Grand Macabre, Ligeti planned to write a second opera, first to be based on Shakespeare's The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
and later on Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
, but neither piece ever came to fruition.
In popular culture
Ligeti's music is best known to the general public for its use in the films of Stanley KubrickStanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
. The soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
includes four of his pieces: Atmosphères, Lux Aeterna (for the moon-bus scene en route to the TMA-1 monolith in the crater Tycho), Requiem (the Kyrie), and an electronically altered version of Aventures (in the cryptic final scenes). Some of this music was used again in Peter Hyams
Peter Hyams
Peter Hyams is an American screenwriter, director and cinematographer, probably best known for directing the 1984 science fiction adventure 2010 , Capricorn One, the comic book adaptation Timecop and the Arnold Schwarzenegger horror/action film End of Days.-Family:Hyams was born in New York...
's 1984 sequel film, 2010. Another of Kubrick's films, The Shining
The Shining (film)
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an...
, uses Lontano for orchestra. In addition, the second movement of Ligeti's Musica ricercata is used at pivotal moments in Eyes Wide Shut
Eyes Wide Shut
Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 drama film based upon Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle . The film was directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, and was his last film. The story, set in and around New York City, follows the sexually-charged adventures of Dr...
.
Lontano was also used in Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
's Shutter Island.
Lontano, Melodien, and Volumina were used in the first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy radio series written by Douglas Adams . It was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Radio 4 in 1978, and afterwards on global short wave radio on the BBC World Service, National Public Radio in the U.S. and CBC Radio in...
as background music to sections of narrative from the Guide.
Lontano, Atmosphères, and the first movement of the Cello Concerto were used in Sophie Fiennes
Sophie Fiennes
Sophia Victoria Twisleton Wykeham-Fiennes , known as Sophie Fiennes, is an English film director and producer.-Career:Following a foundation course in painting at Chelsea School of Art, Fiennes worked with director Peter Greenaway from 1987–1992. She managed the UK based dance company, The Michael...
's documentary Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, about the German post-war artist Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac...
.
Orchestral
- Concert românesc (1951)
- Apparitions (1958–59)
- AtmosphèresAtmosphèresAtmosphères is a piece for full orchestra, composed by György Ligeti in 1961. It is noted for eschewing conventional melody and metre in favor of dense sound textures...
(1961) - Lontano (1967)
- Ramifications (1968–69), for string orchestra or 12 solo strings
- Chamber Concerto, for 13 instrumentalists (1969–70)
- Melodien (1971)
- San Francisco Polyphony (1973–74)
Concertante
- Cello Concerto, for Siegfried PalmSiegfried PalmSiegfried Palm was a German cellist who is known worldwide for his interpretations of contemporary music. Many 20th-century composers like Kagel, Ligeti, Xenakis, Penderecki and Zimmermann wrote music for him....
(1966) - Double Concerto, for flute, oboe and orchestra (1972)
- Piano ConcertoPiano Concerto (Ligeti)György Ligeti's Piano Concerto was written from 1985-1988. The work has five movements:#Vivace molto ritmico e preciso - Attacca subito:#Lento e deserto#Vivace cantabile#Allegro risoluto, molto ritmico - Attacca subito:...
(1980–88) - Violin ConcertoViolin Concerto (Ligeti)The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by György Ligeti is a violin concerto written for and dedicated to the violinist Saschko Gawriloff. A performance of the work lasts about 28 minutes.-History:...
(1989-93) - Hamburg ConcertoHamburg ConcertoHamburg Concerto for solo horn and chamber orchestra with 4 obbligato natural horns is one of György Ligeti's last works, composed in 1998-99 and revised in 2003....
, for horn and chamber orchestra with 4 obbligatoObbligatoIn classical music obbligato usually describes a musical line that is in some way indispensable in performance. Its opposite is the marking ad libitum. It can also be used, more specifically, to indicate that a passage of music was to be played exactly as written, or only by the specified...
natural hornNatural hornThe natural horn is a musical instrument that is the ancestor of the modern-day horn, and is differentiated by its lack of valves. It consists of a mouthpiece, some long coiled tubing, and a large flared bell. Pitch changes are made through a few different techniques:* Modulating the lip tension as...
s (1998–99, revised 2002)
Vocal/Choral
- Idegen földön, Betlehemi királyok, Bujdosó, Húsvét, Magány, Magos kősziklának, (1946)
- Three Weöres Songs, voice and piano (1946–47)
- Lakodalmas (1950)
- Hortobágy (1951)
- Haj, ifjuság (1952)
- Five Arany Songs, voice and piano (1952)
- Inaktelki nóták, Pápainé (1953)
- Mátraszentimrei dalok, Éjszaka (Night), Reggel (Morning), for choir a cappella (1955)
- Aventures (1962)
- Nouvelles Aventures (1962–65)
- Requiem, for soprano and mezzo-soprano solo, mixed chorus and orchestra (1963–65)
- Lux AeternaLux Aeterna (György Ligeti)Lux Aeterna is a piece for 16 solo singers, written by György Ligeti in 1966. It is most famous for its use in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey....
, for 16 solo voices (1966) - Clocks and Clouds, for 12 female voices (1973)
- Three Fantasies After Friedrich Hölderlin, for 16 voices (1982)
- Magyar Etüdök, for 16 voices after Sandor Weöres (1983)
- Nonsense madrigals, for 6 male voices (1988–1993)
- Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedűvelSíppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvelSíppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel is a song cycle by György Ligeti on poetry by Sándor Weöres. The work is scored for mezzo-soprano and an unusual ensemble of percussion and wind instruments...
(With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles) (2000)
Chamber/Instrumental
- Sonata for Solo CelloSolo Cello Sonata (Ligeti)The Sonata for Solo Cello is an unaccompanied cello sonata written by György Ligeti between 1948 and 1953. The piece was initially received poorly by the Soviet-run Composer's Union and was not allowed to be published or performed...
(1948/1953) - Andante and Allegretto, for string quartet (1950)
- Baladă şi jocBalada si jocBaladă şi joc is a short piece for two violins by György Ligeti, based on two Romanian folk songs.In 1949, before graduating from the Franz Liszt Academz of Music in Budapest, Ligeti spent the year researching folk music in Romania...
(Ballad and Dance), for two violins (1950) - Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet (1953)
- String Quartet No. 1String Quartet No. 1 (Ligeti)György Ligeti's String Quartet No. 1, titled Métamorphoses nocturnes, was composed in 1953-54. It is thus representative of what the composer himself used to call "the prehistoric Ligeti", referring to the works he wrote before leaving Hungary in 1956...
Métamorphoses nocturnes (1953–54) - String Quartet No. 2String Quartet No. 2 (Ligeti)György Ligeti's String Quartet No. 2 is a string quartet that was composed between February and August 1968. It consists of five movements:# Allegro nervoso# Sostenuto, molto calmo# Come un meccanismo di precisione# Presto furioso, brutale, tumultuoso...
(1968) - Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet (1968)
- Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano (1982)
- Hommage à Hilding Rosenberg, for violin and cello (1982)
- Sonata for Solo Viola (1991–94)
Piano
- See also, List of solo piano compositions by György Ligeti
- Induló (March), four-hands (1942)
- Polifón etüd (Polyphonic Étude), four-hands (1943)
- Allegro, four-hands (1943)
- Capriccio nº 1 & nº 2 (1947)
- Invention (1948)
- Három lakodalmi tánc (Three Wedding Dances), four-hands (1950)
- (I. A kapuban a szeker, II. Hopp ide tisztan, III. Csango forgos)
- Sonatina, four-hands (1950)
- Musica ricercataMusica ricercataMusica ricercata is a set of eleven pieces for piano by György Ligeti. The work was composed from 1951 to 1953, shortly after the composer began lecturing at the Budapest Academy of Music. The work premiered on November 18, 1969 in Sundsvall, Sweden...
(1951–1953) - Chromatische Phantasie (1956)
- Trois Bagatelles (1961)
- Three Pieces for Two Pianos (1976)
- (I. Monument, II. Selbstportrait mit Reich und Riley (und Chopin ist auch dabei), III. In zart fliessender Bewegung)
- Études pour piano, Book 1Études (Ligeti)The Hungarian composer György Ligeti composed a cycle of 18 Études for solo piano between 1985 and 2001. They are generally seen as one of the major creative achievements of his last decades, and one of the most significant sets of piano studies, combining virtuoso technical problems with...
, six etudes (1985) - Études pour piano, Book 2Études (Ligeti)The Hungarian composer György Ligeti composed a cycle of 18 Études for solo piano between 1985 and 2001. They are generally seen as one of the major creative achievements of his last decades, and one of the most significant sets of piano studies, combining virtuoso technical problems with...
, eight etudes (1988–94) - Études pour piano, Book 3Études (Ligeti)The Hungarian composer György Ligeti composed a cycle of 18 Études for solo piano between 1985 and 2001. They are generally seen as one of the major creative achievements of his last decades, and one of the most significant sets of piano studies, combining virtuoso technical problems with...
, four etudes (1995–2001)
Organ
- Ricercare - Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi (1953)
- Volumina (1961–62, revised 1966)
- Two Studies for Organ: Harmonies (1967); Coulée (1969)
Harpsichord
- ContinuumContinuum (Ligeti)Continuum for harpsichord is a musical composition by György Ligeti composed in 1968, and dedicated to the contemporary harpsichordist, Antoinette Vischer...
(1968) - Passacaglia ungherese (1978)
- Hungarian Rock (Chaconne) (1978)
Electronic
- Glissandi, electronic music (1957)
- Artikulation, electronic music (1958, recording with synchronized graphical score)
- Pièce électronique no. 3 (1957–58, not realized until 1996)
Awards
- Berlin Prize (Requiem) (1965)
- UNESCO International Rostrum of ComposersInternational Rostrum of ComposersThe International Rostrum of Composers is an annual forum organized by the International Music Council that offers broadcasting representatives the opportunity to exchange and publicize pieces of contemporary classical music...
(1969) - Grawemeyer AwardGrawemeyer Award (Music Composition)The Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition is an annual prize instituted by H. Charles Grawemeyer, industrialist and entrepreneur, at the University of Louisville in 1984. The award was first given in 1985...
for Music Composition (Etudes for Piano) (1986) - Sonning Award, Denmark (1990)
- Balzan PrizeBalzan PrizeThe International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organisations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the brotherhood of man.-Rewards and assets:Each year the...
(1991) - Schock PrizeSchock prizeThe Rolf Schock Prizes were established and endowed by bequest of philosopher and artist Rolf Schock . The prizes were first awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1993 and have been awarded every two years since...
for Musical Arts (1995) - Ernst von Siemens Music PrizeErnst von Siemens Music PrizeThe international Ernst von Siemens Music Prize is an annual music prize given by the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste on behalf of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung , established in 1972. The foundation was established by Ernst von Siemens...
, Germany (1993) - Wolf Prize in ArtsWolf Prize in ArtsThe Wolf Prize in Arts is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation, and has been awarded since 1981; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine and Physics, awarded since 1978...
, Israel (1996) - Wihuri Sibelius Prize, Finland (2000)
- Kyoto Award (2001)
- Kossuth Price, Hungary (2003)
- Polar Music PrizePolar Music PrizeThe Polar Music Prize is a Swedish international music award founded in 1989 by Stig Anderson, possibly best known to be the manager of the Swedish pop group ABBA, with a donation to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music....
(2004) - Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of MusicRoyal Academy of MusicThe Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
, London (1992)
Notable students
- Denys BoulianeDenys BoulianeDenys Bouliane is a Canadian composer and conductor.-Biography:He is a graduate of Laval University . He studied music composition in the Neue Musik Theater class of Mauricio Kagel in Cologne followed by studies with György Ligeti until 1985...
- Martin BresnickMartin BresnickMartin Bresnick is a composer of contemporary classical music, film scores and experimental music.-Education and early career:Bresnick was born and raised in the Bronx, and is a graduate of New York City's specialized High School of Music and Art. He was educated at the University of Hartford ,...
- Unsuk ChinUnsuk ChinUnsuk Chin , is a South Korean composer of classical music, based in Berlin, Germany. She was awarded the Grawemeyer Award in 2004 and the Arnold Schönberg Prize in 2005.- Biography :...
- Michael DaughertyMichael DaughertyMichael Kevin Daugherty is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. Influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism, Daugherty is one of the most colorful and widely performed American concert music composers of his generation...
- Anne LeBaronAnne LeBaronAlice Anne LeBaron is an United States composer and harpist.-Biography:Anne LeBaron holds a B.A. in music from the University of Alabama , an M.A. in music from the State University of New York at Stony Brook , and a D.M.A. from Columbia University...
- Roberto SierraRoberto SierraRoberto Sierra is a composer of contemporary classical music.Sierra studied composition in Europe, notably with György Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany...
- Manfred StahnkeManfred StahnkeManfred Stahnke is a German composer and musicologist from Kiel. He writes chamber music, orchestral music and stage music. His music is notably known for his use of microtonality.- Life:...
- Sheila SilverSheila SilverSheila Silver is an American composer.She was born in Seattle, Washington in 1946,she started her piano studies at the age of five. In 1968 she received Bachelor of Arts degree from University of California at Berkeley, and had her Ph.D from Brandeis University, Mass. in 1976. She is an important...
Further reading
- Duchesneau, Louise, and Wolfgang Marx. 2011. György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press. ISBN 9781843835509.
External links
Obituaries and remembrances- The BBC obituary
- Obituary for György Ligeti, Plaistow, Stephen. The Guardian, Wednesday June 14, 2006, Retrieved June 14, 2006.
Other links
- www.gyoergy-ligeti.de: Official Site with non-proprietary audio files
- EssentialsofMusic.com: Gyorgy Ligeti requires proprietary realmedia player
- CompositionToday - Ligeti article and review of works
- Collection of research on Ligeti's music and links to recordings.