Wiedergeburt der Ars subtilior?

Kennzeichnend für die Ars subtilior im späten 14. Jahrhundert sind die im Vergleich zur Ars nova größere Bandbreite an verschiedenen Notenwerten, die Gleichzeitigkeit verschiedener Mensuren in den einzelnen Stimmen und die damit in engem Zusammenhang stehende manierierte Notation. In der rhythmischen Konstruktion der Étude pour piano Nr. 2 - <Cordes Vides> von György Ligeti entsteht durch die vielfältige Kombination einfacher Konfliktrhythhmen ein hohes Maß an Komplexität, wobei die Möglichkeiten einer Rezeption der Techniken der Ars subtilior sichtbar werden. Die Notierung verschiedener Mensuren in den beiden Händen im traditionellen Notationssystem erlaubt es, die Gleichzeitigkeit verschiedener Geschwindig-keitsschichten für einen einzelnen Interpreten spielbar zu machen.

Geliehenes Pathos

Seit Mitte der 1970er Jahre hat sich für die Musik von Manfred Trojahn, Wolfgang Rihm, Reinhard Febel, Hans-Jürgen von Bose, Wolfgang von Schweinitz und Detlev Müller-Siemens die Bezeichnung "Neue Einfachheit" als typologischer und historiographischer Terminus durchgesetzt. Durch die gemeinsamen Lehrer György Ligeti und Klaus Huber entwickelten die untereinander vielfach befreundeten Komponisten eine Art Gegenschule zur Darmstädter Schule. Im engeren Sinne schulbildend wirkten sie jedoch erst seit den 1980er Jahren als Lehrer der heute dreißig- bis vierzigjährigen Komponisten. Anhand der Musik von Matthias Pintscher wird die Frage diskutiert, inwiefern es sich bei der Musik dieser jüngeren Generation um eine Reformulierung von Ansätzen ihrer Lehrer aus den 1970er Jahren handelt. Ihr Verhältnis zur Musik der Tradition, insbesondere zu Gustav Mahler, zu tonalen Formen und musiksprachlichen Gesten, zu Hans Werner Henze und Helmut Lachenmann, sowie ihre Ablehnung der seriellen und postseriellen Avantgarde legt dies nahe. Angesprochen ist auch die Musik von Rebecca Saunders, Jörg Widmann, Johannes Maria Staud und anderen. Die exemplarische Erörterung des Begriffs einer "Zweiten Neuen Einfachheit" anhand von Pintschers "Fünf Orchesterstücken" (1997) versteht sich als ein erstes Diskussionsangebot über und mit dieser jüngeren Komponistengeneration.

Antipodean Alice

This chapter discusses how the Alice in Wonderland prototype developed by Lewis Carroll became influential for writers and artists after 1945. It aligns its treatment of sexuality with what Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht called the ‘frozen time’ of the Cold War era, showing how Australian painter Charles Blackman deployed representations of Alice to project a world in which time was reversed. This is linked to Blackman’s interest in Indigenous culture and to explorations of temporality in the work of English film director Nicolas Roeg. Similarly reflexive representations of time in playwright Jean Genet and film-maker Ingmar Bergman are counterpointed with the absurdist style of composer György Ligeti, whose opera Le Grand Macabre frames Cold War politics within a burlesque setting. This chapter concludes with an analysis of Vladimir Nabokov, also much influenced by Carroll, who in his later fictions seeks explicitly to put time and space into reverse.

Features of the individual interpretation of the cello sonata genre in the creation by Gyorgy Ligeti

The purpose of this scientific article is characterization of the individual approach concerning the outstanding Austrian composer of Hungarian origin Gyorgy Ligeti to the genre of sonata for cello solo, which was successfully made by this composer. To achieve this goal, the role of this genre in the composer’s work is determined, the stylistic features of the only cello sonata in the composer’s work are discovered, and the composition of the work is analyzed. The methodology research as is in applying a holistic musicology analysis that allows deeply penetrate into the essence of the intonational drama of the work, to reveal the individual features of the author’s interpretation by the composer of the sonata genre for solo cello. The scientific novelty. The sonata of Gyorgy Ligeti, namely, the consideration of the features of the individual interpretation of the instrumental sonata genre, has not yet become the object of domestic musicological research, so addressing this topic is relevant and has a novelty factor. Conclusion. Throughout the long career of Gyorgi Ligeti, his composer style experienced a significant evolution from experiments in the field of electronic music and micropolyphony to a gradual return to classical romantic traditions. It was facilitated by the composer’s focus on the constant search for a new musical language and ways to express it. In the Sonata for cello solo, D. Ligeti pays great attention to the timbre features and technical characteristics of the instrument, seeks to diversify its sound by introducing modern techniques and means of sound extraction. A detailed examination of the artistic and technical techniques used by the composer along with analysis of performing difficulties will facilitate the work of artists on this work and its popularization in contemporary concert and performing practice.

“Zero point” The Beginnings of György Ligeti’s Western Career

György Ligeti and his wife fled Hungary in December 1956, travelling through the night of the 11 and 12, and finally reaching Vienna the following day. The existing materials dating from Ligeti’s early emigration demonstrate particularly dynamic correspondence with three Hungarian expatriates: composers Sándor Veress and Mátyás Seiber, as well as the critic John S. Weissmann. 33 letters and postcards and a further 11 replies, held in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, comprise a body of Ligeti’s correspondence with these colleagues dating between the final month of 1956 and the end of 1958. Although evidently incomplete, this unique collection offers novel perspectives surrounding the beginnings of Ligeti’s Western career. Reflecting expectations and future aspirations, these documents trace the excitements as well as challenges of “wiping the slate clean.” Encapsulating Ligeti’s evolving compositional interests and recounting the processes through which he forged new professional relationships, this correspondence reveals insights relating to the composer’s newly- emerging public image. Emigration brought many trials, yet upheaval simultaneously presented an opportunity to radically break with the past. Ligeti could redefine his professional identity as a composer. Although Ligeti felt uneasy in Cologne, it quickly became apparent that engaging in an official capacity with the Electronic Music Studio of the West German Radio (WDR) provided an extraordinary opportunity to establish himself in avant-garde musical circles. Initially shocked by these musical experiments, it was clear to Ligeti that his own creative path lay separate from the avant-garde scene with which he became acquainted in Cologne. Ligeti’s correspondence dating from these encounters indicates that he left Hungary with preconceived musical concepts and aspirations. His experiences with contemporary music rather provided the technical tools through which he could construct and articulate his own concepts, in a manner appearing current in the context of the Cologne-Darmstadt avant-garde.

Creating with Constraints

Musicians have long framed their creative activity within constraints, whether imposed externally or consciously chosen. As noted by Leonard Meyer, any style can be viewed as an ensemble of constraints, requiring the features of the artwork to conform with accepted norms. Such received stylistic constraints may be complemented by additional, voluntary limitations: for example, using only a limited palette of pitches or sounds, setting rules to govern repetition or transformation, controlling the formal layout and proportions of the work, or limiting the variety of operations involved in its creation. This chapter proposes a fourfold classification of the limits most often encountered in music creation into material (absolute and relative), formal, style/genre, and process constraints. The role of constraints as a spur and guide to musical creativity is explored in the domains of composition, improvisation, performance, and even listening, with examples drawn from contemporary composers including György Ligeti, George Aperghis, and James Tenney. Such musical constraints are comparable to self-imposed limitations in other art forms, from film (the Dogme 95 Manifesto) and visual art (Robert Morris’s Blind Time Drawings) to the writings of authors associated with the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) such as Georges Perec and Raymond Queneau.

György Ligeti

György Sándor Ligeti (b. 1923–d. 2006) is arguably the most influential composer of the late 20th century. Over the course of six decades, he produced solo Chamber Works, choral compositions, Fluxus experiments, analog Electronic pieces, orchestral compositions, and works of music theatre. Ligeti was born in Transylvania of Hungarian-Jewish parents, where he first studied music at the Kolozsvár Conservatory. Although he lost his father and brother to the wartime concentration camps, Ligeti escaped a Nazi work camp and entered the Liszt Academy in 1945. He joined the Academy faculty on graduation, just as Communist dictates began to affect Budapest’s cultural and political life. Under the constraints of socialist realism, Ligeti embarked on a compositional career divided between acceptable works and more dissonant compositions “for the desk drawer.” During the 1956 Hungarian revolution Ligeti escaped to Vienna, and in 1957 worked at the electronic studio of West German radio in Cologne. His early Orchestral WorksApparitions (1958–1959) and Atmosphères (1961) cemented Ligeti’s reputation with the European avant-garde. Rejecting the dogmatism of the Darmstadt school, Ligeti embraced influences from early music, art, literature, science, and folk music, producing complex but often remarkably accessible works known for their eccentric humor and dark wit. In the 1970s Ligeti continued to refine and expand his style, producing everything from intimate solo works for harpsichord to the suitably grand opera Le Grand Macabre (1974–1977, revised in 1996). His music from the 1980s onward incorporated influences from African and other non-Western music, the canonic music of Conlon Nancarrow, and fractal geometry, but remained rooted in his native language and conservatory training. The championing of his music by leading performers, and numerous awards that followed his 70th birthday in 1993 contributed to the growing influence of Ligeti’s music in the last decades of the 20th century, by which time his students had established careers on several continents. Ligeti’s music is widely lauded for uniting intellectual sophistication with a respect for the sensual attributes of his materials, a perception supported by Interviews and theoretical writings that span his career. The publication of György Ligeti: Eine Monographie (Mainz, Germany: Schott, 1971) and Das musikalische Material und seine Behandlung in den Werken “Apparitions,” “Atmosphères” und “Requiem” von György Ligeti (Regensburg, Germany: G. Bosse, 1969) presaged an intense scholarly interest in Ligeti’s works which only intensified as his oeuvre expanded and he embraced new compositional challenges. Much of the scholarship on Ligeti thus revolves around the categories of musical technique and influences, not surprisingly given the composer’s focus in his own theoretical writings and lectures.