Download - Ligeti Nonsense Madrigals and Atmospheres
Research Project
Discussion of a Composer and Two Compositions
György Ligeti
Atmosphères
Nonsense Madrigals (The Alphabet)
Pablo Martinez Martinez
Seminar in Twentieth-Century Music
MUSI 5338.01
Index
Proposal 3
Historical Context of Ligeti and his Works 5
Atmosphères 7
Nonsense Madrigals 8
Musical Style of Atmosphères and Nonsense Madrigals 11
Musical Discussion 16
Analysis of Melodic and Harmonic Aspects 16
Rhythm 17
Accompaniment and Musical Material 17
Form 18
Texture 19
Sound: Orchestration, Timbre, Dynamics 19
Text (The Alphabet only) 21
Conclusion 22
Biography 23
2
György Ligeti lived in a historical moment of the dualism in Western
Music: Tonality and Atonality. His constant pushing and stretching of
the boundaries of tonality led him to reach new horizons. However,
Ligeti’s intention was never to create innovative pieces merely to attract
attention from the public. As he said in one of his interviews, “what I
have done has nothing to do with sensationalism.” 1 Through this project,
I expect to find what aspects in Ligeti’s musical style are considered
innovative in his works Atmosphères and Nonsense Madrigals.
The orchestral work Atmosphères was written in 1961, and Ligeti
dedicated it to Mátyás Seiber (1905-60), a friend and Hungarian
composer who lived in the West and who had died in a car accident in
1960. Ligeti had wanted to write a requiem since 1956. As Harald
Kaufmann points out in 1969, with Atmosphères, Ligeti “wants us to hear
this work as a requiem which is emerging from some subterranean cave,
very far away, beyond the range of conscious perception.” 2 To generate
music with lack of tonality, but also with such a slow motion which
gives the impression that time has stopped, Ligeti works using clusters in
canon. Through this project, I will show how clusters in Atmosphères and
Nonsense Madrigals are one of the main tools employed by Ligeti in
order to create a mass that combines all the instrumental lines into one
holistic sound. This conception of style in Ligeti’s music is called
Textural Music. The music is not treated merely as melody or
contrapuntal polyphonic structures (which were some of the main
concerns of his contemporaries), but as a fluctuating, all-encompassing
spider web containing melodies, chords, rhythmic motives, timbre
changes, etc. in a block of sound. The result obtained is a texture like
currents, turbulences, chaos, labyrinths and spirals. This mass of sound
is moved trough the pieces with canon writing. In Atmosphères and
1 Bálint András Varga, From Boulanger to Stockhausen: Interviews and a Memoir (Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, 2013), 30.
2 Louise Duchesneau and Wolfgang Marx, György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds
(Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011), 72.
3
Nonsense Madrigals is possible to identify how one simple instrument or
group of instruments start a single melody, but this melody is played in
canon by more instruments. The combination of the lines creates
secundal chords, and those secundal chords are the origin of clusters. As
the entries of the new lines are emerging, the mass of sound moves
through the piece. Both clusters and use in canon as will be discussed in
the musical analysis of Atmosphères and Nonsense Madrigals.
I will explain where these works are located stylistically. Nonsense
Madrigals combines the Renaissance polyphony, textural music, and
nonsense text. Atmosphères was originally a project of electronic music.
Finally, it became a work that exploited the possibilities of the
traditional orchestra. This research will try to explain how influenced
was Ligeti by electronic music.
Historical context of Ligeti and his works
4
Ligeti’s left of Hungary marked a turning point in his life and led him to
know better the electronic music that was being created in Western
Europe, especially in Germany. In Hungary, Ligeti had been in contact
with Karlheinz Stockhausen, though sparsely. Towards the middle of the
1950s, the blockade of mail to and from Western Europe was gradually
lifted allowing Ligeti to receive scores and records from abroad. 3 It was
also during this time that Ligeti contacted Stockhausen who was, at the
time, the leading modernist composer in post-war Germany. Despite
jammed radio broadcasts from the west, Ligeti was able to occasionally
pick up German broadcasts. Through this, he was gradually introduced to
the post-war European avant-garde. On November 7, Ligeti received a
letter from Stockhausen saying that two of his electronic tape pieces,
Kontra-Punkte and Gesang der Jünglinge , would be broadcast late at
night. While others sought safety in the cellar to avoid stray bullets from
the battle outside, Ligeti obstinately remained upstairs to receive the
radio broadcast:
. . . the first time I heard a Stockhausen piece was during the
revolution, because [radio] jamming was stopped...The Soviets had
come in and everybody was down in the cellars, but I went up so
that I could hear the music clearly. There were detonations going
on, and shrapnel, so it was quite dangerous to be listening. 4
Ligeti decided that he must leave Budapest. Stockhausen had arranged
for a scholarship to be granted to Ligeti to study at the electronic music
studio in Cologne. Ligeti described his dramatic escape from Hungary to
the west:
The railway people organized trains for people who wanted to go
in the direction of the Austrian frontier.. .The train stopped at
every station, and they telephoned ahead to the next station to find
3 Paul Griffiths, György Ligeti, (London: Robson Books, 1983), 14.4 Ibid., 22.
5
out if there were Russian soldiers there.. .I and my wife took the
train one day, and we got to a town in west Hungary about sixty
kilometers from the border. There had been some mistake and the
warning had failed: the train was surrounded by the Russian
military. But they didn’t have enough people to cover the whole
train. Within seconds they took away everybody from the front half
of the train, but we in our end very quickly got out and into town.
Somebody told us to go to the post office, where we could be
hidden overnight.. .And the next day the postman took us on by
train, just an engine and a mail wagon, with ten or twelve people
hidden under the mailbags. It was quite dangerous, because there
was a three-year old child with us, and he had to be given tablets
to make him sleep.
Then we were dropped quite close to the frontier, not in a station
but outside, and we were told to get out and do what we could. It
was perhaps ten kilometers from the border, and already within the
prohibited zone, with Russians patrolling. Then the next night
somebody showed us the frontier, while all the time the Russians
were lighting the sky with rockets. We knew we had reached the
border when we fell into the mud where the mines had been. 5
After making it to the west, Ligeti stayed for a brief time in Vienna. In
February 1957, he made his way to Cologne where he stayed with
Stockhausen. Once there, Ligeti immersed himself in the modern music
scene. He went to the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne where he
began experimenting with electronic music.
Atmosphères
5 Griffiths, 24.
6
In Cologne, Ligeti began to write electronic music alongside Karlheinz
Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig at the electronic studio of
West German Radio (WDR). However, he completed only two works in
WDR—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. As Ligeti stated, Stockhausen influence “was quite
decisive for me: I would never have been able to compose works like
Aparitions and Atmosphères without what I received from him.” 6
His first orchestral work Apparitions written between 1958 and 1959 was
premiered at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival
in 1960. The performance of this work put Ligeti on the international
stage as an important new figure in avant-garde music. In particular,
listeners were drawn to the work’s new and original sound world which
was quite different from the integral serial works prevalent at the time. 7
Ligeti’s next major work for large orchestra was Atmosphères in 1961.
He described the piece as “floating, fluctuating sound.” 8 Atmosphères
was commissioned by the Southwest German Radio and had its world
premiere on 22 October by Hans Rosbaud conducting the SWF Symphony
Orchestra at the Donaueschingen Festival. The work was a huge success.
At its premiere, the audience demanded an encore of the entire work. The
SWF recorded this performance for broadcast, and this recording has
been released commercially on CD several times. Ligeti became famous
in Western Europe after this piece.
Ligeti explains how he was trying to achieve a textural work, apparently
with no melodic sections, a decade before Atmosphères :
6 Marina Lobanova, György Ligeti: Style, Ideas, Poetics, Translated by Mark Suttleworth (Berlin: Verlag Ernst Kuhn, 2002), 382.
7 György Ligeti, György Ligeti in Conversation with Péter Varnai, Josef Häusler, Claude Samuel and Himself. Translated into English by Gabor J. Schabert, Sarah E. Soulsby, Terence Kilmartin, and Geoffrey Skelton (London: Eulenberg Books, 1983), 8.
8 Ibid., 14.
7
I first began to think about a kind of static music you find in
Atmospheres and Apparitions in 1950; music wholly enclosed
within itself, free of tunes, in which there are separate parts but
they are not discernable, music that would change through gradual
transformation almost as if it changed its color from the inside. 9
Nonsense Madrigals
Rather than ignore the inadvertent humor associated with many of the
bizarre sounds in electronic music, Ligeti welcomed and even exploited
the humorous sounds. He also intentionally created sounds that were
speech like. In that sense it may be seen that Ligeti brought a more
sensual human element to a medium that was generally seen as pure.
Griffiths states that “Sounds and sound processes speak in their own
language and do not need a higher language of tonal or serial ordering to
make them mean.” 1 0
Between the years 1962-65, Ligeti wrote a pair of works titled Aventures
and Nouvelles Aventures . These two works are scored for soprano, alto,
and baritone soloists with flute (doubling piccolo), horn, harpsichord,
piano (doubling celesta), percussion, cello, and double bass. In these
works, Ligeti returns to the ideas with which he experimented in
Artikulation by the creation of speech-like sounds. Ligeti has described
the work as “a kind of opera with the unfolding adventures of imaginary
characters on an imaginary stage.” 1 1 He also uses an imaginary language:
“I wrote my own text, which is semantically meaningless and has only
emotional content.” 1 2
Ligeti uses this material in Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures to depict
an enormous range of emotions; Ligeti has human voices making sounds,
9 Ibid., 33.10 Griffiths, 27.11 Ibid., 41.12 Ligeti, 45.
8
not words in a way that expresses various emotional states vividly and
dramatically:
Each stream consists of a number of separated episodes (seven to
eleven per stream), and each episode has its own very distinctive
expressive character (e.g. mystical, idyllic, nostalgic, funereal,
redeemed, excited, ironic, erotic, becalmed, humorous,
hypocritical, cold, indifferent, triumphant, pathetic, stupid,
hysterical, emotional, startled, fiery, exalted, anxious,
unrestrained, mannered-ornamental, malicious, etc., etc.)” 1 3
Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures and its concept were influential in
the third movement of the Nonsense Madrigals written over twenty years
later.
The Nonsense Madrigals began with a commission by the English male
vocal sextet The King’s Singers. The first performance, in four
movements, took place on September 25, 1988 at the Berlin Festival
Week. After this performance, Ligeti decided that the work was not
complete and that it required additional movements.
A fifth movement was added and received its performance by The King’s
Singers on October 28, 1989 at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of
the Ligeti by Ligeti Festival. Four years later, Ligeti added a sixth
movement dedicated to two of its members, Simon Carrington and
Alastair Hume, both of whom were leaving the ensemble after having
been part of the ensemble for twenty five years. This final movement was
performed on November 27, 1993 as part of the Huddersfield Festival.
With Nonsense Madrigals , Ligeti tried to find his own mothertongue, a
true language to employ in his works:
I am ceaselessly looking for my idiom without ever finding it: I am
always doing something new. […] I believe the Nonsense
13 Griffiths, 43-44.
9
Madrigals are a success. Actually, I only accept the piano études
and the Nonsense Madrigals , the other works are a different story.
However, I am still looking for means of expression.
[…] Now I would like to find a language which is really worth
something. This is no false modesty, I am being honest. 1 4
Musical Style of Atmosphères and Nonsense Madrigals.
The term Textural Music came from an article that Varèse wrote called
“Weberns Melodik” in 1966. He said that, with Pointillism
(fragmentation of line), Webern created a new “global” texture in which
independent colors and intervals are united and combined in order to
generate a large static mass. Ligeti was highly influenced by Varèse, and
14 András Varga, 56.
10
music created with a mass of sound became his most distinctive feature.
In one of his interviews, he explains how he decide to embrace Textural
Music in his style:
I was captivated by this music: immobile, with no rhythm and no
melody. I had to take one step further and renounce harmony as
well. That is how I arrived at constructing clusters. 1 5
The sound masses of Atmospheres are not simply tone clusters as one
might see in the music of Penderecki, but rather the result of a technique
that Ligeti had been cultivating for several years, what he has called
“micropolyphony”
Technically speaking I have always approached musical texture
through part-writing... but you cannot actually hear the polyphony,
the canon. You hear a kind of impenetrable texture, something like
a very densely woven cobweb. I retained melodic lines in the
process of composition, they are governed by rules as strict as
Palestrina’s or those of the Flemish school, but the rules of this
polyphony are worked out by me. The polyphonic structure does
not actually come through, you cannot hear it; i t remains hidden in
a microscopic, under-water world, to us inaudible. I call it
micropolyphony. 1 6
The sound masses from micropolyphony are the result of woven
chromatic lines. In the case of Atmospheres , this chromatic canon, as it
were, is at times as many as forty-eight parts. 1 7 With micropolyphony,
one hears the overall texture, rather than the individual lines as in
traditional contrapuntal contexts. Ligeti often makes the analogy of
micropolyphony to Renaissance polyphony, especially the dense canonic
writing of Ockeghem:
15 Ibid., 31.16 Ligeti, 14-15.17 Griffiths, 35.
11
To this day, I am more interested in Ockeghem than Palestrina,
because his music does not tend towards culminating points. Just
as one voice approaches a climax another voice comes to
counteract it , l ike waves in the sea. The unceasing continuity of
Ockeghem’s music, a progress without development, was one point
of departure for me to think in terms of impenetrable textures of
sound. 1 8
In one of his interviews with Marina Lobanova in 1991, he mentions
again how important was for him Ockeghem’s music and how he
influenced him, in order to create music with a constant stream, a
continual flow:
…The idea was to work with Palestrina’s, Josquin’s or Ockeghem’s
notions (I was very much influenced by Ockeghem at the time), but
using clusters in order to obtain this special iridescent colour.”
“Ockeghem was the most important immediate source for
technique. Unlike Josquin and Lasso, and later Palestrina,
Ockeghem – and also Obrecht, only I was not acquainted with him
at the time – writes music which is like a constant stream, a
continual flow: there are no climaxes, only an unchanging tension.
And it’s stasis! It is always flowing, yet remains like an expanse of
water which preserves its shape… That was the idea, and it came
from Ockeghem. 1 9
The fact that Ligeti wrote Nonsense Madrigals shows again how
influenced he was by Renaissance polyphony. This can be considered a
polystylistic approach, because it is a mixture of a Renaissance genre,
the Madrigal, with a new way of composition, Textural music (Especially
in the third movement, analyzed later, The Alphabet, where the statism is
18 Ligeti, 26.19 Lobanova, 365.
12
achieved with clusters). Ligeti said that he considered his works as
polystylistic often:
-You have also said that there’s something of Wagner and Debussy
in Atmosphères , Lontano , and some of your other earlier works.
-[…] more than allusion, it was polystylistic. Not all that far from
Ives in fact: Ives was the embodiment of polystylistics and the
simple assembly of preconstructed parts. 2 0
In addition, the themes are an utter nonsense, as exemplified by the
movements with text from Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland .
The most unique movement is the third movement in which the text is
nothing but the individual letters of the English alphabet. Ligeti’s
interest in Lewis Carroll goes back at least as far as 1968, the year of his
Second String Quartet. 2 1 Ligeti said in one of his interviews what
aspects of Carroll’s work interested him:
The sort of mathematical games and nonsense subjects that I like
can also be found in Lewis Carroll. I’ve always been interested in
mathematics, particularly in more paradoxical and beautiful sides
and the aesthetics of the mathematical way of thinking. […] The
beauty of such “absurd” problems can also be found in literature.
So, Lewis Carroll, Ionesco, Borges, topology – as well as many
other areas of mathematics – are all interconnected… 2 2
It is interesting how it seems that Ligeti is aware of the the variety
shown in his music:
Complex structures – order, chaos, labyrinths and spirals – have a
great symbolic importance in my music. Branching structures of
the type seen in trees, street intersections, street maps of large
20 Lobanova, 363.21 Griffiths, 74.22 Lobanova, 380.
13
cities, complex, labyrinthine gardens, spider’s webs, fishing nets,
tissues and textures are also important. Consistency is important
for my music too – hard, soft, sticky, wet – and then currents,
turbulences, colours and light, both bright and dark… But I
wouldn’t associate any of these with specific ages. Besides, I don’t
think in aesthetic categories when I compose – I think in terms of
form, consistency, colour and light, and of sound than is both
colour and light… 2 3
Therefore, in Nonsense Madrigals, one can find how Renaissance music
is combined with music created with a mass of sound, and coated with an
aura of nonsense.
In 1957, Ligeti was assisting Gottfried Michael Koenig in the electronic
music studio of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne for the
realization of a piece called Essay . In 1961, Ligeti wrote Atmosphères,
but the work on the orchestral piece was previously interrupted for the
profit of another electronic piece called Artikulation which thereafter
became Pièce électronique N.2. In addition, it is interesting to note that
Pièce électronique N.3 . (1957), was formerly called Atmosphères
but in 1961, when Ligeti started the piece for large orchestra, he used
that title for the orchestra piece and re-named the electronic piece Pièce
électronique N.3. In his essay Musique et Technique , Ligeti relates that
when two of his orchestral compositions Atmosphères and Apparitions
were first performed, in 1961 and 1960, several listeners thought there
were loudspeakers disseminated in between the performers. 2 4 The illusion
was caused by the composer using techniques he already worked on in
the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne, techniques he successfully
adapted to instrumental music. However, Atmosphères has been
considered by Ligeti as a piece influenced by orchestral music wrote
23 Ibid., 374.24 Mehmet Okonşar, Micropolyphony: Motivations and Justifications Behind a Concept
Introduced by György Ligeti, 12
14
before, such as the Prelude to Rheingold, in Debussy and also in
Bartók. 2 5 About these works, Ligeti said:
I think that the Prelude to Rheingold with its static surfaces was
the model for Atmosphères . I grasped this idea very early on. So
then: Feuerzauber as an unbelievably magical fluctuation…
This brings me back to my analogies with fractal geometry and
chaos research. The possibility of imagining music not as melody,
polyphony or contrapuntal structures, but as fluctuation, as “thick”
and “thin”, “dark” and “light” areas, and as threads and knots
which can oscillate like a spider’s web – this actually derives from
the orchestral vision of Berlioz and Wagner and resembles the path
taken by coloristic painting on its journey towards Impressionism
(Turner versus Monet, for example). You see it in a different way
with Debussy too, and I continued quite consciously in the same
vein as Wagner and Debussy… Remarkably enough, pieces like
Atmosphères , which I composed in 1961, appeared at almost
exactly the same time as the “atmospheric” research that Edward
Lorenz published in 1962. The two things are not directly
connected, but in both of them you can see the same pattern:
fluctuation and current. So it is here that I can see the parallels
between what I did (and not only I, but other people as well: I am
thinking of Nancarrow’s polyrhythm, etc.) 2 6
Musical Discussion
Analysis of Melodic and Harmonic Aspects
Atmosphères and The Alphabet share a similiar melodic approach. In
textural music, the mass of sound is more important that a single melody.
Although it is possible to find melodic lines inside this block of sound,
their purpose is not is not to sound above the rest. In The Alphabet , the
25 Duchesneau and Marx, 131.26 Lobanova, 369.
15
composer seeks static sonorities, in order to create clusters. However, it
is possible to find some melodic inflections, as in mm. 34, Alto I, or mm.
40-42, Alto I/II. In Atmosphères , melodic lines cannot be heard
individually, because the prevailing idea is a mass of sound. Lines are
interlaced in order to create micropolyphony. Therefore, it is possible to
identify melodic patterns in Atmosphères , for example in m. 44 (Violin
I,1), but as one component of the 48-voice micropolyphony, with the
same importance as the others. In The Alphabet , i t is possible to observe
that a single pitch, or set of pitches, is assigned to each letter of the
alphabet, being more evident during the first five letters. The letter “Ef”
is not employed. The reason for this is that the audible difference in
pronunciation compared to the other nearby letters would affect the
sound created with the [i] vowel-based letters (ei, bi, si , di, i) . Although
there are similarities, such as an elaborated chromaticism and a non-tonal
purpose, it is possible to identify some differences concerning harmony
between the vocal and instrumental piece. In The Alphabet , there is not a
tonality but it is built under tonal centers. In m. 36, for example, there is
an Eb minor triad in second inversion with the dynamic marking fppp. In
m. 49, the upper voices create a C minor triad in second inversion with
the dynamic marking fffff. Also, the piece ends on a C Major 7,9 chord.
In Atmosphères , the music is devoid of any harmonic or melodic
progression, and there are not tonal centers. Because of the developed
chromaticism, it is easy to identify chromatic lines inside the
micropolyphonic environment. Sometimes, the chromatic lines form
canons with not necessarily the same pitches, becoming “chromatic
canon,” as seen in mm. 32-33, for example. As seen, the vocal work
tends to have a reminiscence of tonality, unlike the orchestral piece.
Rhythm
In both pieces, the sonorities produced with clusters move in a slow
harmonic rhythm. In The Alphabet , the first sound block created with C#-
B, lasts 10 measures until the next cluster appears with a D#,
overlapping with the previous one. But in this work, the harmonic
16
rhythm is speeded up during mm. 36-49. The note durations become
shorter gradually. Atmosphères can be considered “timeless music”,
because there is no concept of beginning or end. The instruments enter
almost imperceptibly, as showed in mm. 43-44. If the voices are analyzed
individually, it is easy to find a great variety of rhythm, for example in
mm. 23-29, but being a part of the overall design, which gives the
impression that there is no tempo. In The Alphabet , the tempo and time
signature written in the score remain the same during the entire work.
However, in Atmosphères , there are some time signature changes (mm.
44,77,82,83) and tempo changes (mm.40,44,70).
Accompaniment and Musical Material
In The Alphabet , there is no formal accompaniment. All the voices have
the same importance. This idea of evenness can also be observed in the
micropolyphony of Atmosphères . Each instrument is treated individually
(m.44, cello section). Multiple melodies form clusters, without the
leadership of one particular element. The cluster notation shows that all
voice motions are neutralizing each other, projecting a static sound-
cloud. However, it is possible to find some places in both pieces were
there is an accompanimental purpose. In The Alphabet , there is more
melodic independence in mm. 46-47, and we can interpret certain voices
as a pedal point, sustaining the other voices with more significance. In
Atmosphères , there is a repeated use of a brief motif, formed by the notes
C-D-C#-D#, in mm.44-46 (violins). As seen, the structure and outer
frame of the music remains unchanged, while the inner sounds (pitches,
rhythms, timbre changes) are changing.
Form
In The Alphabet , the dynamics during the piece can establish a dynamic
structure following the pattern: pppp-ffffff-pp . Therefore, the piece can
be divided into three parts, shown the next structure:
17
In Atmosphères , i t is also possible to recognize a dynamic structure, as
showed in this graphic time-intensity of the whole piece:
2 7
Atmosphères and The Alphabet give the impression that time has stopped.
This requires that the structure is based on the dynamics through the
pieces rather than in the development of thematic elements.
Texture
In contrast to more traditional musical textures, the concept of a sound
mass in these works minimizes the importance of individual pitches in
preference for texture, timbre, and dynamics as primary shapers of
gesture and impact. The texture in The Alphabet can be considered
homophonic, especially at the beginning and end of the piece.
Counterpoint is employed during the section where chromaticism is more
evident, as in mm. 44-49. Atmosphères is one of the clearest examples
27 Okonşar, 30.
18
for textural music. Separated musical lines create a homogeneous
surface, minutely detailed and vitalized by the activity beneath. This is
achieved with clusters. With micropolyphony, an overall texture is heard
rather than individual lines like in traditional counterpoint. Both pieces
use canon technique. In The Alphabet , the voices start in groups of 2, but
they are becoming more individual during the development of the work.
The idea of clusters is combined with canon technique in Atmosphères . It
is possible to see clusters in canon, for example in mm. 32-33. Dynamics
in Atmosphères are often written into separated sections, creating the
illusion of “dynamic counterpoint” (mm. 44-49).
Sound: Orchestration, Timbre, Dynamics
Atmosphères was originally conceived as an electronic piece, but Ligeti
considered that he did not have enough tools to create the work that he
wanted. Therefore, he reinvented the orchestra as a site of endless
potential for sonic exploration. It seems like Ligeti enjoyed leading
classical ensembles to the extreme. The most extreme change of register
in The Alphabet is founded in m.49 (the lower three voices). This
contrast can be considered similar to mm. 36-44 in Atmosphères , where,
as Griffiths describes, “screeching high piccolos are cut off and
answered by double basses from six octaves below.” 2 8
The tessitura is very difficult in The Alphabet . In the opening measures
especially, the voices must sustain tones which are occasionally in
extremes of the range for long moments of time at very soft dynamics,
and with clear and unwavering intonation. In The Alphabet , the problems
of tessitura are augmented by Ligeti’s dynamic scheme in which the
opening is marked pppp and later, in m. 49, the Baritone II and Bass sing
an F#2 marked ffffff . The tessitura is higher when the tension increases.
As seen, the idea of a piece that ranges from pppp to ffffff is in itself
rather nonsensical, and these madrigals are based on nonsense. Such
indications require a certain degree of thoughtful imagination on the part
of the performer.
28 Griffiths, 37.
19
It is important to consider the idiomatic quality of the vocal writing. In
The Alphabet , letters with similar pronunciation are employed together in
order to create a specific sonority (m. 23). Returning to orchestral
characteristics in Atmosphères , the whole sections are written
exclusively with neighbor tones (half and whole, mm.44-48), being the
few jumps (m. 49 violin I-14) for shifting the line back to the range of
the instrument. Sometimes, a chord is held during a long period. The
pitches remain the same, but various instrumental groups rise and fall in
volume during this employment of clusters. This aspect can be seen in
mm. 1-8. The string section is always notated pppp , imperceptible attack,
except for some relevant places, as in m. 40, in the double-basses cluster.
Micropolyphony in Atmosphères is used as an expressive element.
Individual notes, although not discernable on their own, create the
characteristics of the “color,” “shape,” and “inner activity” of the
soundscape.
Text (The Alphabet Only)
Although the piece has a text to be sung, this text in The Alphabet is
meaningless semantically. There is not a poetic text. Because of the lack
of any semantic meaning, this madrigal can be viewed as the most
nonsensical of the set. With a lack of meaning, the effect of the piece is
both humorous and serious. As Griffiths says, “Indeed, one of the most
distinctive features of his output is the Aventures principle: that music
has words (expressive gestures) but no language.” 2 9 This Aventures
principle is the heart of The Alphabet . The letters of the alphabet are
written phonetically (Ei, Bi, Si, Di, I, Ef…). However, some letters seem
to have a specific meaning, because they are written in strategic clusters
(notice how Ligeti uses the letter “wai” in m.52, as if it were a question
(“wai”-why). In addition, the composer uses question marks or
exclamations to reinforce the intention of each cluster. The concept of
setting the alphabet to music for purely aesthetic purposes might be
29 Griffiths, 45.
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considered humorous (and humor is certainly an important part of the
Nonsense Madrigals ). In The Alphabet Ligeti seems to juxtapose
emotional depth with humor.
CONCLUSION
With Atmosphères , Ligeti created an extremely interesting orchestral
scoring. Micropolyphony is what makes Ligeti’s textural music apart.
Many lines of dense canons move at the same time, thus resulting in
clusters vertically, instead of individual melodic lines. Micropolyphony
is a technique experimented in the electronic-music studio and then
adapted to orchestral writing. Ligeti used his electronic-music studio
experiments in such a creative way. His orchestral works are the result of
what he learned in electronic music. The work done in the WDR, RAI
and ORTF music research studios have been immensely important in the
evolution of the present day’s music language. While some composers
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like Boulez, Messiaen, abandoned electronic music, others like Berio,
Nono, Stockhausen had a predilection for this language.
Ligeti’s compositional style in Nonsense Madrigals is
a parody of compositional techniques from the 14th century as well as
the rhythmic provocativeness of jazz. The use of parody in these works is
compatible with Ligeti’s choice of texts which includes literary parodies
by Lewis Carroll.
In The Alphabet , Ligeti seems to be influenced by his own earlier music.
This piece is very much in the style of Lux Aeterna and Atmosphères in
its slowly evolving sound mass. The opening, in fact is very much like
the opening of Lux Aeterna in that both pieces start pp from a single core
from which the texture slowly increases. As seen, The Alphabet has some
extreme changes of register that seem to be reminiscences of
Atmosphères . Also, both works share a slow sense of moving. There is
not a reference of beginning or end. The Alphabet could be considered as
a pastiche of Ligeti ’s style from the 1960s, with Atmosphères and Lux
Aeterna . The almost static sustained quality marked by the slow build up
of sonorities in a canonic-like method is a return to sound masses, found
in works like Atmospheres and Lux Aeterna . These two works from the
1960s, has in the 1980s, returned in a context of nonsense.
Bibliography
András Varga, Bálint. “Interviews, György Ligeti” In From Boulanger to
Stockhausen: interviews and a memoir. University of Rochester Press,
2013.
Duchesneau, Louise, and Wolfgang Marx. György Ligeti: Of Foreign
Lands and Strange Sounds. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011.
Griffiths, Paul. György Ligeti . London: Robson Books, 1983.
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Ligeti, György. György Ligeti in Conversation with Péter Varnai, Josef
Häusler, Claude Samuel and Himself . Translated into English by Gabor
J. Schabert, Sarah E. Soulsby, Terence Kilmartin, and Geoffrey Skelton.
London: Eulenberg Books, 1983.
Lobanova, Marina N. György Ligeti: style, ideas, poetics, trans. Mark
Suttleworth. Berlin: Verlag Ernst Kuhn, 2002.
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