The code word “Kylwiria” was mentioned by György Ligeti from time to time since the 1970s. At first, it functioned rather abstractly as a working title for the opera that had been in the making since the mid-1960s and eventually mutated into Le Grand Macabre. Later, Ligeti also shared details about the imaginary land of his childhood, providing glimpses of brightly colored maps of that land and underscoring the importance of his childlike fantasy world. This article explores the dimensions of this “private mythology” and its impact on the composer's creative thinking and work. Its documentary evidence – the description of the land of Kylwiria recorded in 1950 in a booklet of more than 70 pages – is presented in examples and examinated for its particularities. On the one hand, it seems that the pioneering exploration of geographical spaces is transferred as a model to the creative exploration of sound spaces. On the other hand, Ligeti's concept of a fantastic counterworld is to be seen in a literary and cultural-historical context, in which it is to be located somewhere between expedition report, travel guide and utopian design. Such an outline sharpens the meaning of Kylwiria as a cipher for creativity in a characteristic mixture of ratio and fantasy.
{"title":"Reports and Conjectures on Kylwiria","authors":"Heidy Zimmermann","doi":"10.1556/6.2023.00007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2023.00007","url":null,"abstract":"The code word “Kylwiria” was mentioned by György Ligeti from time to time since the 1970s. At first, it functioned rather abstractly as a working title for the opera that had been in the making since the mid-1960s and eventually mutated into Le Grand Macabre. Later, Ligeti also shared details about the imaginary land of his childhood, providing glimpses of brightly colored maps of that land and underscoring the importance of his childlike fantasy world. This article explores the dimensions of this “private mythology” and its impact on the composer's creative thinking and work. Its documentary evidence – the description of the land of Kylwiria recorded in 1950 in a booklet of more than 70 pages – is presented in examples and examinated for its particularities. On the one hand, it seems that the pioneering exploration of geographical spaces is transferred as a model to the creative exploration of sound spaces. On the other hand, Ligeti's concept of a fantastic counterworld is to be seen in a literary and cultural-historical context, in which it is to be located somewhere between expedition report, travel guide and utopian design. Such an outline sharpens the meaning of Kylwiria as a cipher for creativity in a characteristic mixture of ratio and fantasy.","PeriodicalId":34943,"journal":{"name":"Studia Musicologica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139821167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Discussing his Horn Trio, György Ligeti imaginatively describes the second movement as a dance that was “inspired by different folk musics of nonexistent people, as if Hungary, Romania, and all of the Balkans were located somewhere between Africa and the Caribbean.” And in more general remarks about his works, he goes on to suggest that, rather than overtly referencing their stylistic features, he abstracted technical principles from various traditions and combined them into an idiosyncratically amalgamated musical language. This essay shows an expansive approach to hybridity in Ligeti's Violin Concerto and Hamburg Concerto, going well beyond previous remarks about African rhythmic influences. Ligeti's practice encompasses not only rhythm, but also texture, pitch, and tuning systems; it spans a wider breadth of traditions as well, including newly identified sources such as flute and panpipe ensembles from New Guinea and yodeling traditions from across the globe. An analysis of passages from these late concertos – undertaken alongside evidence from his ethnomusicological sources, recordings, and sketches housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung – demonstrates the intricacies and patterns of Ligeti's late style and the compelling statement it makes about the role of hybridity and globalization in contemporary life.
{"title":"The Hybrid Musical Landscape of Ligeti's Late Concertos","authors":"Benjamin R. Levy","doi":"10.1556/6.2023.00009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2023.00009","url":null,"abstract":"Discussing his Horn Trio, György Ligeti imaginatively describes the second movement as a dance that was “inspired by different folk musics of nonexistent people, as if Hungary, Romania, and all of the Balkans were located somewhere between Africa and the Caribbean.” And in more general remarks about his works, he goes on to suggest that, rather than overtly referencing their stylistic features, he abstracted technical principles from various traditions and combined them into an idiosyncratically amalgamated musical language. This essay shows an expansive approach to hybridity in Ligeti's Violin Concerto and Hamburg Concerto, going well beyond previous remarks about African rhythmic influences. Ligeti's practice encompasses not only rhythm, but also texture, pitch, and tuning systems; it spans a wider breadth of traditions as well, including newly identified sources such as flute and panpipe ensembles from New Guinea and yodeling traditions from across the globe. An analysis of passages from these late concertos – undertaken alongside evidence from his ethnomusicological sources, recordings, and sketches housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung – demonstrates the intricacies and patterns of Ligeti's late style and the compelling statement it makes about the role of hybridity and globalization in contemporary life.","PeriodicalId":34943,"journal":{"name":"Studia Musicologica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139871638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
From the mid-1950s, Basel harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer (1909–1973) promoted the harpsichord as a modern instrument, commissioning numerous composers to contribute to a new repertoire. To this end, she turned to György Ligeti, who completed Continuum for her in 1968. The composer had already used the harpsichord in ensembles several times, but now he had to think about it in a soloistic function for the first time, starting from a specific performer with her specific instrument. In this paper, I focus on this relationship between composer, performer-commissioner, and instrument, drawing primarily on the correspondence between Ligeti and Vischer preserved at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. These unpublished letters document their collaboration and how both negotiated their artistic positions and aesthetic concepts of the harpsichord as “some sort of machine.” An in-depth analysis of Ligeti and Vischer's exchange about the instrument's peculiarities and performance issues allows us to better understand their self-conception as artists and their ideas of “modernity.” Furthermore, this case study sheds light on a specific period in the history of an instrument that through the efforts of performers like Vischer was transformed from an artifact of the past to an emblem of the present.
{"title":"“Some Sort of Machine without a Body”","authors":"Elisabeth Reisinger","doi":"10.1556/6.2023.00005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2023.00005","url":null,"abstract":"From the mid-1950s, Basel harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer (1909–1973) promoted the harpsichord as a modern instrument, commissioning numerous composers to contribute to a new repertoire. To this end, she turned to György Ligeti, who completed Continuum for her in 1968. The composer had already used the harpsichord in ensembles several times, but now he had to think about it in a soloistic function for the first time, starting from a specific performer with her specific instrument. In this paper, I focus on this relationship between composer, performer-commissioner, and instrument, drawing primarily on the correspondence between Ligeti and Vischer preserved at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. These unpublished letters document their collaboration and how both negotiated their artistic positions and aesthetic concepts of the harpsichord as “some sort of machine.” An in-depth analysis of Ligeti and Vischer's exchange about the instrument's peculiarities and performance issues allows us to better understand their self-conception as artists and their ideas of “modernity.” Furthermore, this case study sheds light on a specific period in the history of an instrument that through the efforts of performers like Vischer was transformed from an artifact of the past to an emblem of the present.","PeriodicalId":34943,"journal":{"name":"Studia Musicologica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139683859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
György Ligeti was very interested in many artistic and scientific fields and drew inspiration for his compositional work from them (his engagement with mathematics – particularly fractal geometry and chaos theory – is perhaps the best known). In this chapter I compare the concept of artistic research with Ligeti's practice and oeuvre. While the notion of artistic research was only appearing in embryonic form during the latter stages of Ligeti's career, many – though not all – of his statements seem to be suitable for describing his artistic processes. The benefit of this investigation is expected to be twofold: applying the concept of artistic research to Ligeti's approaches and practices should yield new insights on the relationship between his work and his interest in other humanities and sciences. Yet this look at Ligeti may also help to refine the concept of artistic research as discussed and applied to the artistic output of today.
{"title":"Ligeti and Artistic Research","authors":"Wolfgang Marx","doi":"10.1556/6.2023.00008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2023.00008","url":null,"abstract":"György Ligeti was very interested in many artistic and scientific fields and drew inspiration for his compositional work from them (his engagement with mathematics – particularly fractal geometry and chaos theory – is perhaps the best known). In this chapter I compare the concept of artistic research with Ligeti's practice and oeuvre. While the notion of artistic research was only appearing in embryonic form during the latter stages of Ligeti's career, many – though not all – of his statements seem to be suitable for describing his artistic processes. The benefit of this investigation is expected to be twofold: applying the concept of artistic research to Ligeti's approaches and practices should yield new insights on the relationship between his work and his interest in other humanities and sciences. Yet this look at Ligeti may also help to refine the concept of artistic research as discussed and applied to the artistic output of today.","PeriodicalId":34943,"journal":{"name":"Studia Musicologica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139813830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Like his fellow members of the Western European musical avantgarde of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Ligeti often expressed himself in articles or lectures on theoretical and analytical topics. Unlike his contemporaries, however, he also wrote on matters autobiographical. Though his first self-examination, dating from 1971, is still concerned overwhelmingly with compositional theory, from the end of that decade he returned several times to personal experiences, especially those of his childhood years and early adulthood. These seemed to become important again now that the musical climate was turning from a hard objectivity that held the composer's personality to be almost irrelevant towards a fuzzier view of how composers could not but be subjectively engaged in their work. At the same time, in their variety of approach, Ligeti's autobiographical writings refuse to tell a single story.
{"title":"Ligeti's Autobiographies","authors":"Paul Griffiths","doi":"10.1556/6.2023.00002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2023.00002","url":null,"abstract":"Like his fellow members of the Western European musical avantgarde of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Ligeti often expressed himself in articles or lectures on theoretical and analytical topics. Unlike his contemporaries, however, he also wrote on matters autobiographical. Though his first self-examination, dating from 1971, is still concerned overwhelmingly with compositional theory, from the end of that decade he returned several times to personal experiences, especially those of his childhood years and early adulthood. These seemed to become important again now that the musical climate was turning from a hard objectivity that held the composer's personality to be almost irrelevant towards a fuzzier view of how composers could not but be subjectively engaged in their work. At the same time, in their variety of approach, Ligeti's autobiographical writings refuse to tell a single story.","PeriodicalId":34943,"journal":{"name":"Studia Musicologica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139822711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Like his fellow members of the Western European musical avantgarde of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Ligeti often expressed himself in articles or lectures on theoretical and analytical topics. Unlike his contemporaries, however, he also wrote on matters autobiographical. Though his first self-examination, dating from 1971, is still concerned overwhelmingly with compositional theory, from the end of that decade he returned several times to personal experiences, especially those of his childhood years and early adulthood. These seemed to become important again now that the musical climate was turning from a hard objectivity that held the composer's personality to be almost irrelevant towards a fuzzier view of how composers could not but be subjectively engaged in their work. At the same time, in their variety of approach, Ligeti's autobiographical writings refuse to tell a single story.
{"title":"Ligeti's Autobiographies","authors":"Paul Griffiths","doi":"10.1556/6.2023.00002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2023.00002","url":null,"abstract":"Like his fellow members of the Western European musical avantgarde of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Ligeti often expressed himself in articles or lectures on theoretical and analytical topics. Unlike his contemporaries, however, he also wrote on matters autobiographical. Though his first self-examination, dating from 1971, is still concerned overwhelmingly with compositional theory, from the end of that decade he returned several times to personal experiences, especially those of his childhood years and early adulthood. These seemed to become important again now that the musical climate was turning from a hard objectivity that held the composer's personality to be almost irrelevant towards a fuzzier view of how composers could not but be subjectively engaged in their work. At the same time, in their variety of approach, Ligeti's autobiographical writings refuse to tell a single story.","PeriodicalId":34943,"journal":{"name":"Studia Musicologica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139882575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"For the Honorary Doctorate of Sir John Eliot Gardiner","authors":"K. Komlós","doi":"10.1556/6.2023.00003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2023.00003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34943,"journal":{"name":"Studia Musicologica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139683783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Discussing his Horn Trio, György Ligeti imaginatively describes the second movement as a dance that was “inspired by different folk musics of nonexistent people, as if Hungary, Romania, and all of the Balkans were located somewhere between Africa and the Caribbean.” And in more general remarks about his works, he goes on to suggest that, rather than overtly referencing their stylistic features, he abstracted technical principles from various traditions and combined them into an idiosyncratically amalgamated musical language. This essay shows an expansive approach to hybridity in Ligeti's Violin Concerto and Hamburg Concerto, going well beyond previous remarks about African rhythmic influences. Ligeti's practice encompasses not only rhythm, but also texture, pitch, and tuning systems; it spans a wider breadth of traditions as well, including newly identified sources such as flute and panpipe ensembles from New Guinea and yodeling traditions from across the globe. An analysis of passages from these late concertos – undertaken alongside evidence from his ethnomusicological sources, recordings, and sketches housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung – demonstrates the intricacies and patterns of Ligeti's late style and the compelling statement it makes about the role of hybridity and globalization in contemporary life.
{"title":"The Hybrid Musical Landscape of Ligeti's Late Concertos","authors":"Benjamin R. Levy","doi":"10.1556/6.2023.00009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2023.00009","url":null,"abstract":"Discussing his Horn Trio, György Ligeti imaginatively describes the second movement as a dance that was “inspired by different folk musics of nonexistent people, as if Hungary, Romania, and all of the Balkans were located somewhere between Africa and the Caribbean.” And in more general remarks about his works, he goes on to suggest that, rather than overtly referencing their stylistic features, he abstracted technical principles from various traditions and combined them into an idiosyncratically amalgamated musical language. This essay shows an expansive approach to hybridity in Ligeti's Violin Concerto and Hamburg Concerto, going well beyond previous remarks about African rhythmic influences. Ligeti's practice encompasses not only rhythm, but also texture, pitch, and tuning systems; it spans a wider breadth of traditions as well, including newly identified sources such as flute and panpipe ensembles from New Guinea and yodeling traditions from across the globe. An analysis of passages from these late concertos – undertaken alongside evidence from his ethnomusicological sources, recordings, and sketches housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung – demonstrates the intricacies and patterns of Ligeti's late style and the compelling statement it makes about the role of hybridity and globalization in contemporary life.","PeriodicalId":34943,"journal":{"name":"Studia Musicologica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139811920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article traces references to nature and naturalism (understood as an attempt to ground and legitimize art in natural phenomena) in Ligeti's writings, but also in selected aspects of his oeuvre. The references to nature recur here in various manifestations, with romantic depictions of nature appearing alongside more recent, modernist approaches. The concept of nature is associated with the romantic setting for human emotions, with the discovery of scientific laws, with listening to soundscape, with phenomena of auditory perception and with the spectral explorations of sound. Although nature is not a central, strategic concept for Ligeti, it remains a constant, even if hidden, context for his work, a point of reference.
{"title":"“Die Natur ist hier … zu Musik geworden”: György Ligeti and (Musical) Nature","authors":"Ewa Schreiber","doi":"10.1556/6.2023.00010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2023.00010","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces references to nature and naturalism (understood as an attempt to ground and legitimize art in natural phenomena) in Ligeti's writings, but also in selected aspects of his oeuvre. The references to nature recur here in various manifestations, with romantic depictions of nature appearing alongside more recent, modernist approaches. The concept of nature is associated with the romantic setting for human emotions, with the discovery of scientific laws, with listening to soundscape, with phenomena of auditory perception and with the spectral explorations of sound. Although nature is not a central, strategic concept for Ligeti, it remains a constant, even if hidden, context for his work, a point of reference.","PeriodicalId":34943,"journal":{"name":"Studia Musicologica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139812109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
On several occasions, Ligeti spoke about an early literary memory that he credited with the origins of his meccanico style. He recalled reading a short story by Gyula Krúdy (1878–1933) at the age of five, in which Krúdy supposedly wrote about a widow who lived in an old house filled with constantly ticking clocks. To date, the best Krúdy experts have been unable to identify the story in question, and it is reasonable to assume that in Ligeti's mind, actual elements from the writer's work were freely recombined and reimagined at a time when the compositions partly inspired by the Krúdy experience had already been written. Ligeti's published interviews contain references to Krúdy that go beyond the story with the clocks, it may be assumed that the writer's influence on the composer goes deeper than what has been acknowledged so far.In addition, there is an aspect of Ligeti's recollection of the Krúdy story that has not received all the attention it deserves. In his conversations with Péter Várnai, the composer spoke of machines that were working or not working (emphasis mine), and elevators stopping at the wrong floor, or not starting at all. Some of the meccanico works are worth revisiting in search of such “malfunctions” as we try to reimagine the old house where not all the clocks might have been running like clockwork.
{"title":"The Widow in the Old House or The Elevator is Out of Order","authors":"Péter Laki","doi":"10.1556/6.2023.00011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/6.2023.00011","url":null,"abstract":"On several occasions, Ligeti spoke about an early literary memory that he credited with the origins of his meccanico style. He recalled reading a short story by Gyula Krúdy (1878–1933) at the age of five, in which Krúdy supposedly wrote about a widow who lived in an old house filled with constantly ticking clocks. To date, the best Krúdy experts have been unable to identify the story in question, and it is reasonable to assume that in Ligeti's mind, actual elements from the writer's work were freely recombined and reimagined at a time when the compositions partly inspired by the Krúdy experience had already been written. Ligeti's published interviews contain references to Krúdy that go beyond the story with the clocks, it may be assumed that the writer's influence on the composer goes deeper than what has been acknowledged so far.In addition, there is an aspect of Ligeti's recollection of the Krúdy story that has not received all the attention it deserves. In his conversations with Péter Várnai, the composer spoke of machines that were working or not working (emphasis mine), and elevators stopping at the wrong floor, or not starting at all. Some of the meccanico works are worth revisiting in search of such “malfunctions” as we try to reimagine the old house where not all the clocks might have been running like clockwork.","PeriodicalId":34943,"journal":{"name":"Studia Musicologica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139828300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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