The New Music From Nothing

‘A “new music” from nothing’:
György Ligeti’s Musica ricercata

Márton KERÉKFY
Ph.D. Student, Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest
Aschner tér 4., H-1044 Budapest, Hungary
Email: kerekfy@t-online.hu
(Received: March 2008; accepted: June 2008)
Abstract: The beginning of the 1950s marks a turning-point in György Ligeti’s early
career. By that time Ligeti had become disappointed regarding his rather marginal
position in Hungarian musical life, and he might well have felt some dissatisfaction
with his own artistic output, as well. He recognized that he should leave his former
style and build up his own expressive means and musical language from elementary
material. For this purpose, he set himself certain compositional tasks, and imposed
restrictions on pitch content, intervals, and rhythms ‘as if to build up a “new music”
from nothing’. Accordingly, Musica ricercata, which is the first fruit of his experi-
mental project, marks a renewal of Ligeti’s musical thinking primarily on terms of the
compositional technique. The present study examines the main problems of compos-
itional technique raised in Musica ricercata (primarily that of chromaticism and dense
polyphony) and points out significant influences shown in the work (such as those of
Bartók, Stravinsky, and Romanian folklore).
Keywords: György Ligeti, compositional technique, chromaticism, dense polyphony
The last two decades have witnessed a growing interest on the part of both
musicians and the public, as well as of musicologists, in György Ligeti’s works
composed prior to his emigration from Hungary in December 1956. While litera-
ture on Ligeti published up to the middle of the 1980s almost neglected the first
phase of his oeuvre as being of little significance for his later development, new
biographies tend to pay more and more attention to Ligeti’s early compositions.
Musica ricercata, a set of piano pieces written between 1951 and 1953, is widely
regarded by both pianists and analysts as one of the most important work from
this period.
Studia Musicologica 49/3–4, 2008, pp. 1–28
DOI: 10.1556/SMus.49.2008.3-4.1
1788-6244/$ 20.00 © 2008 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest
2 Márton Kerékfy
Musica ricercata has been thoroughly analysed by Wolfgang Burde and

Ferenc László, and careful analytical observations have also been made by Ulrich
Dibelius and Richard Steinitz.1 Although Friedemann Sallis’s book on Ligeti’s
early works does not include a detailed analysis of the set, Sallis succeeds in
revealing significant connections between Musica ricercata and other pre-1957
compositions by Ligeti, as well as some of its links to Béla Bartók’s and Girola-
mo Frescobaldi’s music and Sándor Weöres’s poetry.2 Analysts of Musica ricer-
cata often note that despite obvious stylistic differences, the work has a number
of features in common with many of Ligeti’s ‘mature’ compositions, which are in
a sense rooted in Musica ricercata.3
I think, too, that the fundamental aspects of Ligeti’s compositional interest,
his characteristic types of expression and even of his devices of composition
already made their appearance in his early music, especially from Musica ricer-
cata on. However, the unity of his oeuvre, as well as the web of connections be-
tween Musica ricercata and other works can only be shown if the compositional
problems raised in the works are thoroughly analysed and fitted into the context
of the composer’s artistic development. Hence, the present study has a dual goal:
It aims at examining the main compositional problems raised in Musica ricercata
while fitting it into the context of Ligeti’s early development. For this purpose re-
ference will frequently be made to the most important work of this period, String
Quartet no. 1 (Métamorphoses nocturnes) written in 1953–54, which is the most
complete summation of Ligeti’s achievements and development up to 1956.
1. Introduction
Ligeti began his studies at the Academy of Music in Budapest in Sándor Veress’s
composition class in the autumn of 1945. After Veress had left Hungary at the
time of the Zhdanovian musico-political change in early 1948, Ligeti was taken
on by his former professor in Kolozsvár (Cluj, Romania), Ferenc Farkas. During
his four years at the Academy, Ligeti composed quite a lot: the catalogue of his
early works compiled by Friedemann Sallis4 includes 36 finished compositions
1. Wolfgang Burde, György Ligeti: Eine Monographie (Zürich: Atlantis Musikbuch, 1993), 91–102; Ferenc
László, ‘Ligeti a hídon: A Musica ricercata és a Hat bagatell: az exodus zenéi’ [Ligeti on the Bridge: Musica
ricercata and Six Bagatelles: Music of the Exodus], Magyar Zene 42/4 (2003), 361–375; Ulrich Dibelius,
György Ligeti: Eine Monographie in Essays (Mainz: Schott, 1994), 48–49; Richard Steinitz, György Ligeti:
Music of the Imagination (London: Faber & Faber, 2003), 53–59.
2. Friedemann Sallis, An Introduction to the Early Works of György Ligeti (Köln: Studio, 1996), 100–121.
3. See, for example, Burde, Ligeti, 100–102, Constantin Floros, György Ligeti: Jenseits von Avantgarde
und Postmoderne (Wien: Lafite, 1996), 83, and Pierre Michel, ‘Die Sechs Bagatellen für Bläserquintett von
György Ligeti und ihre musikalische Substanz im Vergleich mit Musica ricercata und seinen Werken der fol-
genden Perioden’, in Zwischen Volks- und Kunstmusik: Aspekte der ungarischen Musik, hrsg. von Stefan Fricke,
Wolf Frobenius, Sigrid Konrad und Theo Schmitt (Saarbrücken: Pfau, 1999), 155–161.
4. See Sallis, Introduction, 262–291. Data on instrumentation, first publication, first performance, etc., of
compositions in question are, unless indicated otherwise, taken from this catalogue.
Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

György Ligeti’s Musica ricercata 3
written between October 1945 and May 1949 (rewritten and rearranged versions
of the same compositions are also counted). Half of them are vocal, half of them
are instrumental; in the former group, there are mostly works for choir, while in
the latter, piano pieces are in the greatest number. During these years, it was
indisputably Bartók’s oeuvre that most fascinated Ligeti:
I was completely awed by Bartók. He was the great, great model… it was simply
Bartók’s music. You know, the students at the Music Academy, they all knew
Bartók’s works.5
Ligeti mentions that Stravinsky, although to a much lesser extent than his idol,
also influenced him at that time.6 However, with regard to his numerous works
for choir, there is another composer that cannot be left unmentioned: Zoltán
Kodály. Between 1945 and 1949, Ligeti’s choral works, written in more or less
folk-like idiom, easily met the demands of the flourishing choir movement of the
period. Nevertheless, Ligeti’s more adventurous compositions, that are tonally
freer and more dissonant, are not his choral works but his songs and piano pieces
(Három Weöres-dal [Three Weöres Songs], 1946–47, Capriccio I and II, 1947,
Invenció [Invention], January 1948). These are also the compositions in which the
influence of Bartók and Stravinsky can best be detected. Capricci are influenced
also by Hindemith, whose music was quite well-known to the young Ligeti.7
However, this was exactly the kind of music that gradually fell out of favour
in Hungary after the musical resolution of the Central Committee of the Soviet
Communist Party had been published in Szabad nép [A Free People] on 17
February 1948.8 Afterwards, with the liquidation of the Hungarian Social Demo-
cratic Party and the foundation of the Hungarian Worker’s Party (Magyar Dolgo-
zók Pártja), dictatorship had become totalitarian, and a ‘battle against formalism’
was launched. The door was closed to the majority (or, at least, the more valuable
part) of twentieth-century music. Zhdanov’s directives prescribed what the new,
socialist realist music had to be like: it had to be rooted in folk music, easy to
understand, optimistic and uplifting.9 At first, these requirements were not alien
to Ligeti. Although he was not a member of the Communist Party,10 he had sym-
pathy with communist views and believed that music should have been addressed
to the whole of society:
5. ‘Ich war ganz von Bartók eingenommen. Der war das große, große Vorbild. Einfach, die Bartóksche
Musik, also dieser ganze Schülerkreis an der Musikhochschule, die kannten alle Bartóks Stücke.’ ‘“Ja, ich war ein
utopischer Sozialist”: György Ligeti im Gespräch mit Reinhard Oehlschlägel’, MusikTexte 28/29 (1989), 92.
6. ‘Interview with the composer’, in Paul Griffiths, György Ligeti (London: Robson Books, 1983), 18.
7. Steinitz, Ligeti, 45.
8. Danielle Fosler-Lussier, Music Divided: Bartók’s Legacy in Cold War Culture (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: Universitiy of California Press, 2007), 5.
9. György Kroó, A magyar zeneszerzés 30 éve [30 Years of Hungarian Composition] (Budapest: Zenemû-
kiadó, 1975), 138.
10. Oehlschlägel, Ja, ich war, 93.

4 Márton Kerékfy
Anyway, I was a radical socialist, and there were many of us who wanted to
believe that Soviet communism was one way to create a socialist system. I had
a lot of sympathy with that, being so very left and having so many friends who
were, and they convinced me that I ought to write music that, you know, every-
body can understand. So I forced it a little bit. At the beginning I really wanted
to come away from this chromatic style and come more towards a sort of Hun-
garian folk style – not really Kodály, but somewhere between Bartók and Ko-
dály. […] in 1947–8, I wanted to write a very simple, diatonic music, because
I believed that music ought to be more popular.11
In this regard, titles alone such as Nyolc kis induló [Eight Little Marches],
Tánc [Dance], Menetdalok [Marching Songs], Katonatánc [Soldier’s Dance], Ré-
gi magyar társas táncok [Old Hungarian Ballroom Dances], and Népdalharmo-
nizálás [Folk Song Harmonization] are telling.12 The two largest-scale compos-
itions dating from his years at the Academy, Bölcsôtôl a sírig [From Cradle to
Grave], a 25-minute cycle of folk songs and dances (November 1948), and Kan-
táta az ifjúság ünnepére [Cantata for a Youth Festival] (1948–49),13 bear witness
to the same ambition, too. The latter, a three-movement cantata for soli, mixed
choir and orchestra intended to be his final graduation piece at the Academy, he
started in the middle of 1948:
It was in a very popular style, a sort of Kodály–Handel–Britten style. There

was a big fugue: I was very good at counterpoint. And it was absolutely what
I wanted: completely diatonic, though not tonal but modal. The text was against
imperialism and all those things, and I believed in it, at that moment.14
This belief, however, did not last for a long time. It seems that it was exactly
the Zhdanovian cultural policy that caused Ligeti’s disappointment in the com-
munist system. He became aware that this policy was very similar to that of the
Nazis.15 Ligeti, however, could not abandon composing the cantata on Péter Kucz-
ka’s ideological, pro-Soviet words, especially because he had been encouraged to
have it premiered at the International Youth Festival in Budapest in August 1949.
By this time Ligeti was apparently opposed to the political system16 but it did not
11. Griffiths, Ligeti, 18–19.

12. These works were composed between September 1948 and May 1949. With the exception of Régi mag-
yar társas táncok for string orchestra with flute and clarinet ad libitum, which was published by the Hungarian
music publisher Zenemûkiadó in 1950, all of them are considered to be lost.
13. Both works are unpublished, their manuscripts are kept in the György Ligeti Collection of the Paul
Sacher Foundation in Basel. Kantáta az ifjúság ünnepére is analysed by Sallis, Introduction, 82–99, and its full
text is translated on pages 221–222.
14. Griffiths, Ligeti, 20.
15. Oehlschlägel, Ja, ich war, 93; Griffiths, Ligeti, 19.
16. In early 1949, Ligeti resigned his post as president of the Academy’s student association, for political
reasons. See Burde, Ligeti, 45–46.

affect his composing yet. He continued trying to write music which ‘everybody
can understand’ – in this respect, his efforts met the official requirements:
I was still a believer in left-wing socialism, against Communism. However, I
believed that there could be a free zone despite this awful dictatorship and
I could try to write music which preserved the great ideals of liberty and just-
ice. It had to be a kind of music that (so far opportunistic) could yet be per-
formed.17
As a matter of fact, Ligeti did have some success producing music that ‘can
yet be performed’: five of the compositions mentioned above were played at con-
certs or on the radio soon after they had been finished. The most popular was
Régi magyar társas táncok, which alone was performed on 21 occasions in 1951.
Still, it can be seen as typical of the official attitude towards Ligeti that he, in
fact, won renown for an arrangement, not for an original work.18
After all, making arrangements, primarily those of folk melodies, became the
main activity of composers in these years. The sentence borrowed from Glinka
was frequently echoed: ‘Music is created by the people, we composers only ar-
range it.’19 Ligeti, too, took his share in this work: nearly half of his compositions
following the Cantata, and almost all of his choral works are arrangements of
folk songs. From 1949 onwards Ligeti appeared on the Hungarian musical scene
almost exclusively as a composer of folk song arrangements, and many of these
pieces could even be published. Still, not all of them were able to fulfil the severe
requirements of socialist realism – for example, Pápainé [Widow Pápai] for mixed
choir (1953) was not allowed a performance because it was found to be too dis-
sonant.20 Almost nothing of Ligeti’s original works (songs and choral compos-
itions, piano pieces, chamber music, and orchestral pieces) could be played in
public. Even innocent and folk-like compositions such as Concert Românesc
[Romanian Concerto] (1951) for orchestra, Haj, ifjúság! [Oh, Youth!] (1952) for
mixed choir on folk texts, and the Cello Sonata (1948/53) were banned. Per-
formance of Öt Arany-dal [Five Arany Songs] (1952), another folk-like cycle,
whose piano part was reminiscent of the accompaniment of Bartók’s folk song
arrangements, was also out of the question.21
Whereas the above works, in spite of their stylistic limitations, show the
young Ligeti as a skilled composer full of imagination, his compositions which
17. ‘Ich war doch ein gläubiger Linkssozialist, gegen den Kommunismus, aber mit dem Glauben, es gäbe
noch einen Freiraum trotz dieser schlimmen Diktatur, und ich versuche eine Musik, die die großen Ideale der
Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit bewahrt. Das muß eine Musik sein, die – also so weit noch opportunistisch – noch
aufgeführt werden kann.’ Oehlschlägel, Ja, ich war, 94.
18. Régi magyar társas táncok is entirely ‘based on melodies by Hungarian masters of the so-called
Verbunkos style.’ See Sallis, Introduction, 279.
19. Kroó, A magyar zeneszerzés, 53.
20. Ove Nordwall, György Ligeti: Eine Monographie (Mainz: Schott, 1971), 60.
21. Steinitz, Ligeti, 50, 52, 61–62; Griffiths, Ligeti, 21.

6 Márton Kerékfy
are further from folk-like idiom bear witness to one who is unsure of himself.
This is best exemplified by the other final graduation piece, Andante and Al-
legretto for string quartet (1950).22 With its romantic tone and traditional, almost
functional harmonization it is perhaps Ligeti’s most uncharacteristic compos-
ition. One can feel similarly embarrassed listening to, or reading the score of the
Sonatina for piano four hands written in the same year. Despite being a handsome
piece that even contains some interesting ideas, its compositional problems actu-
ally appear to be too simple compared to that of, say, Capricci written three years
before. When outside the realm of folklore, Ligeti seems to be unsure in which
style he should write. It may be seen as natural for a young composer having just
finished his studies to be unsure which way he should follow – especially in such
a politico-cultural situation that was in Hungary at the turn of the fifties.
For Ligeti, working with folk material gradually became a routine procedure
– a task which nevertheless requires compositional skills and some imagination,
but which he can at any time carry out. However, creating an original work is
quite different: there is no given task. In this case, the ‘task’ is the work of art
itself, therefore it is primarily the ‘task’ itself that has to be found. At the moment
Ligeti did not find it but he felt he had to find it to become a real composer.
2. Structure of Musica ricercata

and its connections with the Sonatina
About 1950 it became clear to me that developing the post-Bartókian style, in
which I had composed before, would not further me. I was twenty-seven years
old and lived in Budapest completely isolated from all the ideas, trends, and
techniques that had emerged in Western Europe after the war. In 1951 I began
to experiment with very simple structures of rhythms and sonorities as if to
build up a ‘new music’ from nothing. I regarded all the music I knew and loved
as being, for my purpose, irrelevant. I asked myself: what can I do with a single
note? With its octave? With an interval? With two intervals? With certain rhyth-
mic relationships? In this way, several small pieces resulted, mostly for piano.23
22. Ligeti writes about Andante and Allegretto: ‘They reflect my stylistic uncertainty in the early years of
the Communist dictatorship in Hungary.’ [Sie spiegeln meine stilistische Unsicherheit zu Beginn der kommu-
nistischen Diktatur in Ungarn wider.] CD booklet for the Sony recording SK 62306 (1996), also in György Li-
geti, Gesammelte Schriften, hrsg. von Monika Lichtenfeld (Mainz: Schott, 2007), Bd. II, 150.
23. ‘Um 1950 wurde mir klar, daß eine Weiterentwicklung des nachbartókschen Stils, in dem ich bis dahin
komponiert hatte, mich nicht vorwärtsbringen würde. Ich war siebenundzwanzig Jahre alt und lebte in Budapest
völlig isoliert von allen Ideen, Trends und Techniken der Komposition, die sich nach dem Krieg in Westeuropa
entwickelt hatten. 1951 begann ich, mit einfachen rhythmischen und klanglichen Strukturen zu experimentie-
ren, um eine “neue Musik” sozusagen aus dem Nichts aufzubauen. Alle Musik, die ich bis dahin kannte und
liebte, betrachtete ich als irrelevant für mich. Ich fragte mich, was kann ich mit einem einzelnen Ton, was mit
seiner Oktave tun, was mit einem Intervall, mit zwei Intervallen, mit bestimmten rhythmischen Verhältnissen.
Auf diese Weise entstanden mehrere kurze Stücke, vorwiegend für Klavier.’ Program notes for a performance
on 13 January 1978 in the concert series ‘Das neue Werk des Norddeutschen Rundfunks Hamburg’, also in

In 1951 Ligeti recognized that his task was to leave his former style and to
create his own expressive means and language from elementary musical material.
Prior to that he had to reconsider and re-examine his compositional technique. So
he set himself certain compositional tasks, and imposed restrictions on pitch con-
tent, intervals, and rhythms. ‘To build up a “new music” from nothing’ means that
Ligeti wanted, above all, to make a thorough examination of the very elements of
music, of musical material itself. Having just finished his studies he very con-
sciously began to educate himself in order to be able to fully master the musical
material, as well as to widen the compositional and expressive means of his
music. In so doing he strove to take decisive steps towards a more individual
musical language and style.24
He succeeded in the experiment. It resulted in Musica ricercata, a set of eleven
piano pieces composed between October 1951 and March 1953,25 which hap-
pened to be Ligeti’s earliest work to be included in the regular twentieth-century
concert repertoire.
Musica ricercata is a set of brief character pieces, of compositional studies.
(That Ligeti himself regarded these pieces as studies, is shown by the subtitle of
the series, 11 tanulmány [11 Studies], which is not included in the printed score,
only in the autograph.) The average duration of each piece is about two minutes;
according to the durata in the printed score, the shortest one (no. VI) lasts only
30 to 40 seconds, whereas the longest one (no. XI) lasts 3 minutes and 50 sec-
onds. As it is a result of Ligeti’s self-education, the most characteristic feature of
both the individual pieces of Musica ricercata and the cycle as a whole is that
they are very systematically constructed. All of the pieces are concentrated in
form (that is, all of them have their own respective characters and focus on a
clearly definable compositional problem) and their respective pitch contents
gradually increase pitch by pitch. The first piece is made up of two pitch classes
only (A and D), the second is made up of three, the third of four, and so on until
the last piece which contains all twelve pitches for the first time.26
It is not exactly known in which phase of the one-and-a-half-year long com-
positional process Ligeti decided to arrange the single pieces into a set built on
Ligeti, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. II, 154. For an earlier, 1967 version of this text see page 75 of the same vol-
ume. For English translation of this original version see LP notes for the Wergo recording 2549 011 (1967),
partly quoted also in Steinitz, Ligeti, 54.
24. Cf. Dibelius, Ligeti, 48.
25. On the title page of the autograph there are the following dates: ‘1951 X – 1953 III’. The exact date of
finishing the composition can be read at the end of the draft of the last piece: ‘FINIS 1953 márc 27’. Both
sources are kept in the György Ligeti Collection of the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel.
26. Regarding the pitch structure of the series, Ligeti speaks about an unconscious connection between the
compositional principles of Musica ricercata and serialism: ‘Certain features of these problems and their solutions
have something in common with the principles of serial composition. This is surprising, as I had approached
them from totally different premises and a totally different route. At that time, I hadn’t the faintest idea of the
developments which led up to serial music and which were then evolving in Western Europe.’ LP notes for the
Wergo recording 2549 011 (1967), quoted in Steinitz, Ligeti, 54.

8 Márton Kerékfy
the principle of gradual increase of pitch content. A letter from Ligeti to his friend
and first biographer, Ove Nordwall, provides some information on the chronology
of composition:
[…] I wrote the pieces one by one and finished each of them for its own sake.
Thus the first two or three pieces were composed in 1951, the last two in 1953
(the last one as an organ piece first), and the remaining middle ones in 1952.27
According to Ligeti, the pieces of Musica ricercata were written more or less
in the same order as they follow each other in the final score, but they were ori-
ginally conceived as individual compositional studies. However, it seems proba-
ble that the idea of the cycle emerged at the latest when, in late 1951, or in 1952,
Ligeti was working on the third one. This playful piece is a rewritten version of
the first movement of the Sonatina for four hands, finished on 30 December
1950. Whereas the original version is unambiguously in Bb major and contains
all twelve pitches, the new version is transposed into C and its pitch content is
reduced to four pitch classes only. It is hardly thinkable that without any idea of
a set built on the principle of pitch content Ligeti would have changed the music
to such an extent – especially after he had composed the first two pieces.
As not only the first but also the second movement of the Sonatina was rewrit-
ten to be included in this innovative set, we have to deal with these rearrangements
before making a general survey of Ligeti’s compositional technique as exempli-
fied in Musica ricercata. How did Ligeti reshape these two movements? Regard-
ing no. III of Musica ricercata, it is of course the radical reduction of pitch content
that is the most striking. The opening movement of the Sonatina is dominated by
the interval of a third: it is the third that controls both the thematic–motivic and
the harmonic aspects of the music and, moreover, it even seems to be more effect-
ive in ruling harmonic progressions than the conventions of functional tonality
(Ex. 1).
The prevalence of the interval of a third made it possible to transfer the mu-
sical material from the opening movement of the Sonatina to no. III of Musica ri-
cercata, whose pitch content offers an opportunity for tonal ambiguity (C major/
minor), as well as of contrasting two minor or major thirds, respectively (C–Eb
versus E–G, or C–E versus Eb–G). What is then the difference between the two
versions regarding pitch organisation? Although both of them are tonal, the char-
acter of the tonality is different. As already observed, harmonic progression in the
Sonatina does not follow the rules of functional tonality but is dominated by a
central interval – still, it contains traditional chords within clearly definable tonal
27. ‘[…] ich schrieb die Stücke einzeln, und beendete jedes für sich, wobei etwa die ersten 2–3 Stücke
1951 komponiert wurden, die beiden letzten 1953 (das letzte als Orgelstück zuerst), und die restliche [sic!]
Mittel-Stücke 1952.’ Letter from Ligeti to Ove Nordwall, 2 January 1975, quoted by Sallis, Introduction, 103.
The final piece of Musica ricercata was originally written for the organ (Omaggio a G. Frescobaldi, 1953).

EXAMPLE 1 Sonatina, movement I, bb. 1–5

© By kind permission of the music publisher
SCHOTT MUSIC GmbH & Co. KG, Mainz – Germany
areas.28 On the contrary, no. III of Musica ricercata is only built on two chords
(C major and minor), which, in turn, become gradually fused. Thus tonal tension
and resolution cease to exist: there evolves non-functional tonality and static har-
mony.
Having rejected an opportunity for harmonic variety and modulation, Ligeti
had to look for other compositional means if he wanted to preserve the interest
of the musical material and the dynamism of the form. It may be attributed to this
endeavour that the phrase structure of the new version became more exciting. The
five-barlong first phrase of the original version is elongated by one bar, which
arouses suspense (Ex. 2). Ligeti plays with the listener’s expectations, too, as he
starts the second subject unexpectedly on the fourth quaver of the bar (Musica
ricercata, no. III, bar 16) – in the Sonatina, it starts more ‘regularly’ on the second
quaver (movement I, bar 12). In the new version musical space (that is, registers)
is also better exploited, and begins to function as a means of form-building. This
can well be observed at the beginning of the movement where C minor and C
major sections are separated also by their respective registers (see Ex. 2). Simi-
larly, rhythm also becomes a means of form-building. In the rhythmically rather
mechanical piece, there is a point where quavers ‘run away’, which very well pre-
pares an effective recapitulation. In the Sonatina, on the other hand, this moment
is much less characteristic. Contrasts of dynamics and timbre are also better ex-
ploited in the rewritten version (ff–pp changes, unexpected sff-s, tre corde–una
corda contrasts). These compositional features of the new version, however, do
not simply ‘compensate’ for static harmony but they make it more individual,
more interesting, and even more eccentric than the original version.
28. The harmonic progression of the first five bars, for example, can be analysed in Bb major as degrees
I–vi–I–iii–I–bVII–ii–IV–I.

10 Márton Kerékfy
EXAMPLE 2 Musica ricercata, no. III, bb. 1–8

The same can be said when no. VII of Musica ricercata is compared to its
original version, the second movement of the Sonatina. In both of them, the music
consists of two layers: one of the melody and one of an ostinato. The difference
is that while in the Sonatina they are connected motivically, harmonically, and
rhythmically, in Musica ricercata these layers are not synchronized: in the latter,
the quasi-folk melody unfolds against the background ostinato of rapid pp sep-
tuplets (Ex. 3). The independence of the layers has two important consequences.
Firstly, the melody loses its stiffness and becomes rhythmically freer and declama-
tory, furthermore, it sounds also more evocative of a folk-like idiom. Secondly,
the ostinato stiffens as a murmuring, yet static background. Thus harmonic pro-
gression is substituted by a static sound, an F–G–Bb–C–Eb chord. This has an
effect also on the form of the piece. Whereas in the Sonatina, similarly to some
folk song arrangements, the melody accompanied by parallel chords is played
only once, in Musica ricercata it develops into a series of variations. For the first
time it is played monophonically, then a parallel lower voice is added, which
becomes imitative in the third variation, and finally a third voice is also added.
Meanwhile, the dynamic level is raised and the una corda pedal is also released.
In the coda-like last quarter of the piece, the sound becomes thicker again, and
finally only the murmuring ostinato background remains. No. VII of Musica ricer-
cata thus presents stillness, motionlessness, and (in the form of the rise and fall
of intensity) also dynamism at the same time. Compared to the original version,
the music has become more complex.
EXAMPLE 3 Musica ricercata, no. VII, bb. 1–12

Taken all in all, when recomposing the first two movements of the Sonatina,
Ligeti in fact reinforces a characteristic trait of the original material. The inter-
vallic structure of the first movement seems to provide the idea of reducing the
pitch content of no. III to two third intervals, while the ostinato of the second
movement serves as a starting-point towards an independent, static musical layer
in no. VII. Nonetheless, the recomposition of both movements results in some-
thing essentially new. Nos III and VII indisputably surpass the first two move-
ments of the Sonatina both in originality and quality.
3. Problems of pitch organisation

The central problem of Musica ricercata, as the structure of the cycle makes
obvious, is that of pitch organisation: the relationship of diatonicism and chro-
maticism, tonality and twelve-note composition. Theoretically, Ligeti’s starting-
point is the twelve-tone system – in practice, however, he takes the opposite
direction, because he builds this system note by note, reaching the complete chro-
matic space in the last piece only. This rather didactic method reveals an analyt-
ical, almost ‘scientific’ attitude. Ligeti makes experiments with single notes and
groups of notes. He examines how they react on each other, the cases where they
attract or repel each other, and how they form a system. It is this ‘scientific’
examination of the twelve-tone system, not the structural features or the sound of
his music, that relates Ligeti’s endeavours to the work of the dodecaphonists and
serialists in Western Europe.
12 Márton Kerékfy
Regarding the construction of the tone material of Musica ricercata, two dif-
ferent tendencies can be observed. In certain pieces, Ligeti uses the chromatic
scale, or a segment of it, whereas in other pieces his starting-point is the diatonic
tonal system to which some extra notes can be added. However, on the basis of
these criteria alone, not all of the pieces can be put into one of these groups, as
some of them show both tendencies. The unquestionably diatonic pieces are nos
I, VI, VII and VIII, whereas the last three are obviously chromatic. The pitch con-
tents of pieces II and IV can either be interpreted as chromatic or as sections of
a diatonic scale with an extra pitch added. In the former piece, one would tend to
interpret the minor second Fa–Ea as a Phrygian cadence – especially because of
the folksong-like ABAvB structure of the 4-bar long theme. In this case, note G,
which appears strongly accentuated in the second half of the piece, can be inter-
preted as an extra pitch. Note Ga, in a very similar way, unexpectedly enters in
the fourth piece. It does not eliminate the feeling of the melodic G minor mode,
but only colours it. (In the table below, these extra pitches that appear accentuated
are italicized.) Pieces III and V can be seen as being rather diatonic, although nei-
ther of them can be interpreted within a single tonality. The pitch content of no.
III is the superimposition of a C major and a C minor chord, while that of no. V
is the superimposition of the descending D–Ca–B trichord and its transposition
by a tritone (Ab–G–F). The pitch content of each piece of Musica ricercata is
summarized in Table 1.
Each piece of Musica ricercata has a definite tonality. (In Table 1 the tonal
centre or centres of the respective pieces are in bold face.) Within these chro-
matic, diatonic, or at the same time chromatic and diatonic pitch class sets, Ligeti
examines the relationships between pitches. In so doing, he strives for non-trad-
itional tonal systems different from the major/minor system. Thus for Ligeti, using
all twelve pitches is not equal to atonality. Instead of abandoning the hierarchy of
pitches, he rather tries to reconsider it, so to say, to recreate it ‘in his own likeness’.
It can be said in Musica ricercata Ligeti tries to reconcile the twelve-note sytem
and tonal thinking. However, this endeavour, as Ligeti well knew, was not a nov-
elty at all – Hindemith had already striven for the same in his Unterweisung im
Tonsatz.29 Still, for Ligeti, it was exemplified most importantly by Bartók’s music
again, which he saw as a synthesis of twelve-note composition and tonality:
Bartók’s chromatic technique […] illustrates that the twelve-tone tempered

system can also have other means of manipulation [than Schoenberg’s dodeca-
phony]. Whereas Schönberg comes to the twelve-tone system through the re-
quirements of atonality, Bartók starts from the twelve-note system – as from a
given tone system rather than from an atonal row – and he comes to an entirely
new formation of tonality. (The expression “tonality” is to be understood in a
29. Ligeti, being then a student in Kolozsvár, bought this book when he was once staying in Budapest, and
did all of its excercises. See Steinitz, Ligeti, 18.

TABLE 1 Pitch content of the pieces of Musica ricercata

(Tonal centre(s) of each piece are in bold face, and accentuated
added pitches are italicized.)
Piece no. Pitch content Interpretation

I AD
II Ea Fa G section of chromatic scale (section of Ea Phrygian + G
III C Eb E G C major and C minor triads
IV Fa G Ga A Bb section of chromatic scale (section of melodic G minor + Ga)
V F G Ab B Ca D two trichords in tritone transposition
VI E Fa G A B Ca D E Dorian
VII F G Ab A Bb C D Eb F Mixolydian + Ab
VIII B C Ca D E Fa G Ga A B Dorian + G and C
IX Ca D Da F Fa Ga A Aa B C chromatic scale without E and G
X D Da E F Fa G Ga A Aa B Ca chromatic scale without C
XI A Bb B C Db D Eb E F Fa G Ga complete chromatic scale
very wide sense, naturally the matter in question is not major/minor tonality but
rather a new system of relations within the twelve-tone system.) Thus Bartók
unites, in a higher synthesis, two contradictory systems: the overtone-principled,
functional system and the distance-principled, tempered twelve-tone system.30
Thus Ligeti’s endeavour to reconcile the twelve-tone system and tonality de-
rives from his idol. No wonder that again and again we run up against elements of
Bartók’s style when listening to this pioneering, style-searching composition. At
the same time, however, Ligeti openly admits its adherence to his idol by giving
the title ‘Béla Bartók in memoriam’ to no. IX of Musica ricercata. The dirge in
Ca recalls the memory of the late master by means of accentuated Lombardic
rhythms, melodic lines made up of minor thirds, and Bartókian ‘model scales’.31
30. ‘Bartók kromatikus technikája […] azt példázza, hogy a tizenkéthangú temperált rendszernek más [a
schoenbergi dodekafóniától eltérô] kezelési módjai is lehetnek. Míg Schönberg az atonalitás követelményébôl
jut el a tizenkéthangúsághoz, addig Bartók a tizenkéthangúságból indul ki – mint adott hangrendszerbôl és nem
mint atonális sorból – és eljut egy egészen új megfogalmazású tonális rendhez (a “tonális” kifejezést tágan
értve; természetesen nem dúr-moll tonalitásról van szó, hanem egy új vonatkozási rendszerrôl a tizenkéthangú-
ságon belül). Így egyesíti Bartók magasabb szintézisben a két ellentmondásos rendszert: a felhang-elvû funk-
cióst és a distancia-elvû temperált tizenkéthangút.’ György Ligeti, ‘Megjegyzések a bartóki kromatika kialaku-
lásának egyes feltételeirôl’ [Remarks on Several Conditions for the Development of Bartók’s Chromaticism],
Új Zenei Szemle (September 1955), 44. English translation in Sallis, Introduction, 256–261.
31. In 1948, in one of his first analytical essays, Ligeti wrote: ‘The role of the minor third in Bartók’s
melodies is already a familiar commonplace.’ [A kisterc szerepe Bartók melodikájában már közhelyként isme-
retes.] György Ligeti, ‘Bartók: Medvetánc (1908) – elemzés’ [Bartók’s Bear Dance (1908): An Analysis], Zenei
Szemle 5/1948, 254; English translation of the article in Sallis, Introduction, 228–233. Although the expression
‘model scale’ was first applied by Ernô Lendvai in his 1955 book on Bartók’s music – Bartók stílusa a ‘Szonáta
két zongorára és ütôhangszerekre’ és a ‘Zene húros-, ütôhangszerekre és celestára’ tükrében (Budapest: Zene-
mûkiadó, 1955), English translation: Bartók’s Style as Reflected in Sonata for two Pianos and Percussion and

14 Márton Kerékfy
Yet it does this in such a penetrating way that it results in a kind of music which
is almost more Bartókian than Bartók’s own – and it is precisely because of the
quotation-like character of the piece that Ligeti cannot be charged with plagiar-
ism. Still, it is obvious that ‘Béla Bartók in memoriam’ is not simply an imitation
of Bartók’s style but also the setting of a compositional problem in which Ligeti
was engaged at that time. This can be seen exactly from how Ligeti works with
the inherited minor thirds and model scales. The composition starts with minor
thirds in the distance of major third (model 3:1, bars 1–9). In the following sec-
tion (Allegro maestoso) the minor thirds are linked together more tightly (model
2:1), while in Più mosso, agitato they are intertwined in such a way that they
result in the complete chromatic scale (model 1:1) – excepting , naturally, the two
‘forbidden’ pitches of the movement, E and G (Ex. 4). In the course of the piece,
Ligeti arrives at the almost completely chromatic sound-field by using Bartókian
material (minor thirds) and Bartókian means (model scales) – on the other hand,
this sound-field in the closing section is coloured by mysterious, blurred trills
resembling already Apparitions and Atmosphères (see Ex. 14).32
Still, we should focus on problems of pitch relations, tonality, and twelve-tone
composition in Musica ricercata. The diatonic pieces of the set have, to some
extent, their starting-points in Bartókian tonality and modality, too. Ligeti, like
Bartók, had a predilection for different modes, which had much to do with his
studies of folk music – just as it did in Bartók’s case.33 However, the most char-
acteristically Bartókian means of reconciling modality and the twelve-tone system,
‘polymodal chromaticism’, is not clearly to be found in Musica ricercata.34 No. V
is the only piece of the series whose pitch content (two trichords a tritone apart)
shows some resemblance to this principle. Still, it might also have been inspired
by a characteristic of Romanian folk music observed by Ligeti, namely, that some
melodies have two tonal centres.35 The movement is based on a pseudo-folk song,
whose first part is in Ca, whereas the second part of it has its final cadence on
G. The tonal structure of the whole piece shows the same characteristics: there
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, transl. Paul Merrick and Judit Pokoly (Budapest: Akkord, 1999) –
Ligeti must have known Lendvai’s analyses as early as 1948 when they both attended Bence Szabolcsi’s Bartók
seminar at the Music Academy in Budapest. After Lendvai’s book had been published, Ligeti was the first to
review it and he defended Lendvai’s much debated views.
32. It is surely not by chance that Ligeti makes his reference to Bartók in a piece which in some respects
already moves beyond Bartók’s style by employing its constitutive elements very consciously. Pieces V and
VIII, for example, actually show a more naive absorption of Bartók’s style than ‘Béla Bartók in memoriam’.
33. After having finished his studies at the Academy and before being appointed professor there, that is
between October 1949 and August 1950, Ligeti studied folk music in Romania. He summarized his experience
in two articles: ‘Népzenekutatás Romániában’ [Folk Music Research in Romania], Új Zenei Szemle 3/1950,
18–22 and ‘Egy aradmegyei román együttes’ [A Romanian Folk Ensemble from the Arad District], in Emlék-
könyv Kodály Zoltán 70. születésnapjára: Zenetudományi tanulmányok I (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1953),
399–404. English translations of both articles in Sallis, Introduction, 239–252.
34. The term ‘polymodal chromaticism’ was used by Bartók in 1943, in his second Harvard lecture. See
Béla Bartók Essays, ed. Benjamin Suchoff (London: Faber & Faber, 1976), 361–375.
35. See Ligeti, Egy aradmegyei, 401; Sallis, Introduction, 248.

Example 4 Bartókian model scales in Musica ricercata, no. IX, bb. 1–17
are two tonal levels (Ca and G) although the music itself is not bitonal. The same
can be observed in the ‘fake folk song’ of the seventh piece. The first part circles
around C, whereas the final cadence is, as it is usual in South Slavic folklore, on
the second degree, G.36 (Nevertheless, the left hand ostinato makes it clear that
the tonality of the piece is F Mixolydian.)
That the composer Ligeti was fascinated and influenced by Romanian folk
music is not only reflected in his arrangements of folk songs or folk-like materi-
al37 but rather by certain harmonic and voice-leading phenomena of Musica
ricercata – a work in which Ligeti strives to find his own voice. When treating
the Bartókian aspects of this series, Ligeti’s relationship to folklore should not be
left unmentioned. Like Bartók in the 1910s, Ligeti in the 1950s was strongly
influenced by Romanian folk music which gave impetus to both composers in
developing their own respective styles and compositional techniques. At the end
of his study on A Romanian Folk Ensemble from the Arad District, Ligeti felt it
necessary to remark:
The research of folk harmonization is, nevertheless, not merely of folkloristic

interest, but is also useful for the composer.38
Ligeti seems to have been especially fascinated by the odd dissonances of this
kind of harmonization. He summarized his observations of the employment of
dissonances in the music performed by a folk band in Covæsinﬂ:
1. Clashes resulting from ostinati.

2. Clashes of the melody and the accompaniment as a consequence of
approximate harmonization and of the consolidation of some gestures.
3. Clashes resulting from the fact that the accompanying instruments do not
change the harmony at the same time in their improvised playing.
36. Cf. Burde, Ligeti, 100.

37. Such as Baladæøi joc [Ballad and Dance] for two violins (1950), later arranged for school orchestra,
and Concert Românesc.
38. Sallis, Introduction, 252. (‘A népi harmonizálás kutatása azonban nem csupán folklorisztikus érdekû,
hanem hasznos a komponista számára is.’ Ligeti, Egy aradmegyei, 404.)

16 Márton Kerékfy
EXAMPLE 5 Musica ricercata, no. VI, bb. 11–13

EXAMPLE 6 Musica ricercata, no. VIII, bb. 14–17

4. Clashes resulting from the simultaneous occurrence of differing

interpretations of harmonic content.
5. Clashes resulting from heterophony.39
One tends to suspect that the odd dissonances in the sixth piece show the in-
fluence of heterophony in folk music – as well as that of Stravinsky (Ex. 5).40 At
a later point in this piece, the two voices run parallel a second (ninth) apart for as
long as a whole bar – a technique which would later become a hallmark of Lige-
ti’s chromatic pieces such as the last two movements of Musica ricercata and the
First String Quartet. In no. VIII, sustained perfect fifths that accompany the folk-
style melody written in giusto syllabique rhythm openly refer to folk harmoniza-
tion, since they exactly coincide with the open strings of the cello and the violin
(C, G, d, a, e2, see Ex. 6).41 One of the examples in Ligeti’s study on Romanian
folk music shows a similar phenomenon: a dissonance results from the collision
39. Sallis, Introduction, 252. (‘1. Ostinato-ból eredô ütközések. 2. Dallam és kíséret ütközése a hozzáve-
tôleges harmonizálás és egyes fordulatok rögzôdése folytán. 3. Ütközések, melyek abból erednek, hogy a játék
improvizált lévén a kísérôhangszerek nem váltják egyidôben a harmóniát. 4. A dallam harmóniai tartalmának
egyidôben történô különbözô értelmezésébôl eredô ütközések. 5. Heterofóniából eredô ütközések.’ Ligeti, Egy
aradmegyei, 404.)
40. Ligeti had already used heterophony in 1947, in his third Weöres Song, ‘Gyümölcs-fürt’.
41. László, Ligeti a hídon, 369. The term giusto syllabique was first applied by Constantin Bræiloiu for a
metric characteristic of Romanian folk music.

EXAMPLE 7 Transcription of Romanian folk music (Învârtita)42
EXAMPLE 6 Musica ricercata, no. VIII, bb. 14–17

of two perfect fifths built on each other (Ex. 7). This kind of technique was to be
taken to extremes in a section of String Quartet no. 1 which is rhythmically iden-
tical with the eighth piece of Musica ricercata. Here four perfect fifths are built
on each other under a chromatic melody moving in parallel tritones and major
sevenths (Ex. 8).
A non-functional, or static harmonization43 already observed in pieces III and
VII are characteristic of some other movements of Musica ricercata as well.
42. Ligeti, Egy aradmegyei, 401; Sallis, Introduction, 249.

43. Ligeti could observe this kind of harmonization, too, in Romanian folk music, where ‘most connec-
tions among chords are non-functional’ and ‘the harmonization is static. Long sustained chords are frequent.
There are also pieces which are built entirely on static harmony.’ Sallis, Introduction, 247. (‘[…] a hangzatkö-
tések legtöbbje nem-funkciós. A harmonizálás sztatikus: gyakoriak a hosszantartott, álló hangzatok. Vannak
egyetlen álló harmóniára épült darabok is.’ Ligeti, Egy aradmegyei, 400.)

18 Márton Kerékfy
Most radically of the opening movement, of course, which contains only one single
pitch class (A), not counting the final note. Here Ligeti plays with the tradition,
more precisely, with our way of hearing defined by tradition: Do we hear the final
two notes as a cadence, as a dominant – tonic progression? Is it possible that
(from bar 19 onwards) we differentiate between the ‘tonal’ functions of the A
notes according to their respective octave ranges? It is also the harmonic and
melodic constancy, as well as the contrast between the illusion of progress and
the reality of a helpless turning around that characterizes (and also alienates) the
waltz in the fourth piece. The two harmonies of the accompaniment alternate
completely mechanically, independently of the melody, which also repeats some
stereotyped formulae.44 Thus the harmonies lose their tonal functions, and the
music becomes static (which is again a characteristically Stravinskian feature).
The only contrasting moment of the piece is the appearence of the note Ga.
From a technical point of view, the last two pieces of Musica ricercata are the
ones to show most clearly the direction which Ligeti was to take during the next
three years. It is as if Ligeti’s new style were taking shape gradually, as the pitch
content increases within the set, before our very eyes. Ligeti’s interest became
captivated by the problem of chromaticism. Neither twelve-tone composition in
general, nor Reihentechnik in particular is what concerns Ligeti. One could rather
say, the chromatic scale, or, more precisely, the chromatic sound-field (Klang-
feld) is becoming the ‘theme’ of his compositions. It is well illustrated by the
theme of the tenth piece of Musica ricercata which is constructed almost exclu-
sively of semitone steps (Ex. 9, see bars 1–17). The final movement of the series,
‘Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi’, shows the same tendency.45 Its twelve-note
fugue subject is constructed symmetrically, expanding from the first note into an
octave like a fan (Ex. 10).46 Although this subject could be regarded as a Reihe
(for all twelve pitches appear only once in it), it is in fact more a chromatic filling
out of an octave (a–a1). This interpretation is supported by the fact that the non-
thematic parts always move downwards chromatically – that is, the counter-subject
of the fugue is nothing else than the descending chromatic scale itself.
Similarly, all motivic and thematic materials of Ligeti’s most important work
following Musica ricercata, the First String Quartet (Métamorphoses nocturnes),
derive from the chromatic scale and chromatic sound-field, too. The subject of the
‘metamorphoses’, the twelve-note theme of the first violin, is not a Reihe either,
but, like the fugue subject of Musica ricercata, is a chromatic filling out of the
44. The waltz melody refers to the famous ‘Minute’ Waltz by Chopin (op. 64, no. 1). Two other possible
models for this piece are ‘Waltz’ from Stravinsky’s Three Easy Pieces for piano four hands (cf. Burde, Ligeti,
96) and Ravel’s La Valse.
45. The title of this large-scale fugue, originally written for the organ, refers to the fact that it was mod-
elled on the ‘Recercar cromaticho’ of Frescobaldi’s Messa delli Apostoli. See Burde, Ligeti, 94.
46. Ligeti used a chromatic, fan-shaped theme as early as 1948, in Invenció. One of the classical examples
of using such a theme as a fugue subject is the B minor fugue of the first volume of Bach’s Wohltemperiertes
Klavier.

EXAMPLE 9 Musica ricercata, no. X, bb. 1–21

EXAMPLE 10 Musica ricercata, no. XI, bb. 1–6

fa2–fa3 octave. In the background, like in ‘Omaggio’, one hears the chromatic
scale, this time moving upwards in parallel major seconds (Ex. 11). In a later pas-
sage, all four instruments play chromatic scales – and each of them at different
speeds (the adjacent notes of the first violin are in different octaves, Ex. 12).
During the ‘nocturnal metamorphoses’, the intervals of the first violin’s
theme are also changed: they are extended. Ligeti uses the Bartókian technique
of interval extension already in the tenth piece of Musica ricercata, where the
extended form of the theme serves as a contrasting second subject (Ex. 9, from
20 Márton Kerékfy
EXAMPLE 11 String Quartet no. 1, bb. 7–19

bar 18 on). In both compositions, semitone steps are transformed into a mechan-
ical alternation of major and minor thirds. (In the piano piece, this principle can-
not be followed with complete consistency because one pitch, C, is missing.)
Consequently, one hears simple major, minor, and seventh chords which are,
from a tonal, as well as a functional point of view, wholly neutral. We find our-
selves in a circular chain comprising major and minor thirds, which contains all
of the twelve notes and which one can enter or leave at any point: C–E–G–B–
D–Fa –A–Ca –E–Ga –B–Da –Fa –Bb –Db –F–Ab –C–Eb –G–Bb –D–F–A–(C).47
Typically, Ligeti, while borrowing the Bartókian technique of interval extension,
employs it in another way and gives it a totally different dramatic function from his
predecessor’s. In Bartók’s poetics, the compressed (chromatic) and the extended
(diatonic) forms of a theme are usually opposed as ‘distorted’ (unnatural) and
‘ideal’ (natural), the appearence of the latter at the end of the work being an ef-
fective means of resolution.48 In Ligeti’s music, the extended version gives the
impression of being just as little natural as the chromatic one – because of its
‘enlarged mechanicalness’ the former might seem even more rigid or grotesque
than the latter.
It is perhaps because chromatic music loses its most characteristic feature
(that is, its chromaticism) when extended, that these chains of thirds are doubled
in both compositions: they appear simultaneously in two voices moving parallel
strictly in minor seconds. Thus chromaticism is transferred from the horizontal
to the vertical dimension of music, which makes the relationships between notes
47. See String Quartet no. 1, bb. 239–365.

48. See, for example, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, or the last movement of the Sonata for
Solo Violin.


uncertain and drives the music further away from tonality (see bars 21–27 of Ex. 9).
In the First String Quartet, two or more voices rather frequently move in parallel
minor seconds. This is already the case in the Vivace, capriccioso and Presto sec-
tions (bars 69–209 and 239–367, respectively), but in the second half of the com-
position the cluster-sound becomes even more dominating.49 Clusters in the
String Quartet do not result merely from parallel minor seconds, but also from
the superimposition of diatonic voices that frequently cross each other. It was this
latter technique that Ligeti himself emphasized in an interview in 1979, stating
that it had served him as a point of departure for his micropolyphonic pieces after
1956. He also added that chromaticism built up from diatonic voices ‘is an idea
characteristic of Bartók’.50 The ‘madly’ repeated ten-note chromatic chord at the
end of the tenth piece of Musica ricercata also derives from two diatonic chords
(Ex. 13).
49. Ligeti used three-note clusters as early as 1947, in the second Capriccio.
50. ‘György Ligeti talking to Péter Várnai’, in Ligeti in Conversation (London: Eulenburg, 1983), 15.

22 Márton Kerékfy
EXAMPLE 13 Musica ricercata, no. X, bb. 109–112

Finally, clusters can result from superimpositions of voices or sound-fields

that are chromatic themselves – a technique especially characteristic of the String
Quartet no. 1. In this case, chromaticism can be observed horizontally and ver-
tically at the same time. Ligeti already attempts to use chromatic sound-fields
polyphonically here and there in Musica ricercata (for example, in no. X, bars
94–100). Moreover, at the end of ‘Omaggio’ he even produces a densely layered
chromatic structure (see no. XI, bars 53–57).
4. Other aspects of the compositional technique

From a technical point of view, Ligeti undoubtedly took the most decisive and
radical steps in Musica ricercata in the field of pitch organisation. The work, how-
ever, bears witness to a considerable progress and renewal of many other features
of Ligeti’s music, such as rhythm, time, polyphony, as well as the use of dynamics,
timbre, and registers. The latter is, of course, connected with the former: restric-
tions on the pitch content direct the composer’s attention to other parameters of
music.
On the whole, Musica ricercata is characterized by still conventional metrical
patterns and periodic phrase structure. However, there are also to be found certain
compositional procedures, with the help of which Ligeti seems to attempt to dis-
solve metrical frames. One is that in piece no. VII the two hands play, as already
mentioned, in different tempi. Another way of dispensing with conceiving music
within the framework of time measurement can be seen at the end of ‘Béla
Bartók in memoriam’. Despite the d time signature, it is not the rhythmic figures
that are important here but the colours of trills accelerating and slowing down
(Ex. 14).
In the first two pieces, too, there are sections which, despite being notated in
bars, are independent of metrical relationship. From bar 18 on in the second piece,
a new pitch (G) appears and begins to be repeated faster and faster. The rhyth-
EXAMPLE 14 Musica ricercata, no. IX, bb. 22–27

mically independent repetition of this pitch continues until the end of the piece,
where it slows down and dies away, Senza tempo. Note density is a main means
of form-building in the first piece, too. The tremolo at the beginning of the com-
position represents the maximum density (bars 1–2). From bar 6 on, the sound
gradually becomes denser, firstly by leaving out the rests, then, from bar 22 on,
by accelerating and crescendo, and finally by shortening the phrases. The maximum
intensity is reached in bars 60–65 (Prestissimo). In bar 66, the extreme dynamism
suddenly changes into its opposite, almost complete motionlessness (one note in
every second bar), from which point the maximum density is reached again with-
in only 15 bars (seven notes per bar). The contrast of the two extremes turns out
to be illusory: if there are a lot of short notes in close proximity, after a while we
only hear a single, very long note (as is the case at the beginning of the piece).
At this point, Musica ricercata again raises a compositional problem in which
Ligeti would be engaged for quite a long time. Although the String Quartet no. 1
still clings to metrical frames, it continues dissolving the rhythm. The density of
its polyphonic texture and, especially in the closing Prestissimo section of the
work (bars 781–1030), the extremely fast tempo (eleven notes per second) make
the single notes almost imperceptible, thus rhythmic pulsation disappears. This
phenomenon, however, makes an extraordinary effect exactly because it emerges
from the context of characteristic rhythmic and metrical patterns.
24 Márton Kerékfy
Another technique concerning the problem of rhythm and metre is the ostina-
to, which is frequently applied in both Musica ricercata and the String Quartet.
In connection with the former, Ligeti speaks about the influence of Stravinsky,51
which is perhaps most apparent in the different ostinato passages. Ligeti, like
Stravinsky, has a predilection for ostinati in which the recurring section is shorter
or longer than one bar, or collides some other way with the non-ostinato layers.
The left-hand ostinato in the third piece comprising :-time sections is a good
example (bars 6–11, see Ex. 2). (Note that this ostinato is already present in the
early form of this piece, Sonatina.) Another typical case is that ostinato layers of
different lengths or speeds are superimposed (see Ex. 12) – a technique already
applied by Ligeti in his Polifon etûd [Polyphonic Study] for four hands (1943).
Rhythmic ostinati, i.e. a longer section built upon a single rhythmic pattern, are
also frequent. This is the case in both Musica ricercata and the String Quartet, in
their sections written in giusto syllabique rhythm. Ostinati often go with static
harmonization, as pieces IV and VIII of Musica ricercata show.
As observed in the recomposition of the first movement of the Sonatina,
musical space was becoming an important factor of form-building. The eighth
and eleventh pieces of Musica ricercata show especially clearly that Ligeti con-
sciously strives to exploit the compass of the piano. In both movements, the var-
iety of the music is mostly due to contrasts of different registers. In ‘Omaggio a
Girolamo Frescobaldi’, the employment of registers parallels the fan-shape of the
fugue subject: the compass gradually broadens out from a1 to A2 downwards and
a4 upwards. By the time the limits of the compass have been reached at the end
of the piece, every single pitch within this 7-octave range had already appeared
– similarly to the fugue subject that had filled out one octave chromatically. In
pieces in which only a few pitches are used (such as nos I and II) the systematic
exploitation of registers naturally plays an important role, too.
The same is true of contrasts of dynamics and timbre. The lamento melody of
the second piece consisting of only two pitch classes, for example, is played for
the first time in the c1–c2 octave, f, senza pedal, and then, for the second time, at
both ends of the keyboard, in four octaves, pp, una corda, con pedal. Such extra-
ordinary dynamic contrasts are typical of Musica ricercata, as well as for Ligeti’s
whole oeuvre. A special timbre-effect in the piano set is the employment of har-
monics (by pressing keys silently). Genuine sound-effects, however, are much
more characteristic of String Quartet no. 1 than of Musica ricercata. In the former,
percussion-like pizzicato-effects and the frequent use of sul ponticello, sul tasto
and con sordino sounds show the influence of Bartók’s writing for strings. A unique
dazzling effect of the Prestissimo section (bars 781–1030), already mentioned, is
partly due to the quick changes of these different special effects in pp, ppp. Espe-
cially impressive is the triple echo-effect at the end of the Presto section: Two
51. Griffiths, Ligeti, 18.


accented ff notes are echoed by muted p notes for the first time, then by muted pp,
sul pont. ones, and finally by ppp harmonics – this time in augmentation (Ex. 15).
Many of Ligeti’s compositions written during his years of study make it obvious
that polyphony had always played an important part in his musical thinking.52 How-
ever, Ligeti’s interest in contrapuntal techniques even increased during the fifties,
when he taught counterpoint at the Academy of Music. This is well exemplified
by Musica ricercata which not merely contains several pieces with imitational
structure (like nos III, V, and VII) but culminates in a large-scale fugue. One
could still ask: How could conventional imitation techniques play a part in Li-
geti’s renewal of his musical style? The curious thing is that Ligeti dispenses with
traditional counterpoint precisely in a ricercar which demonstrates almost all
possible contrapuntal procedures in a rather pedantic manner.53 It is in ‘Omaggio
a Girolamo Frescobaldi’ that he starts to recognize a compositional problem in
which he would be engaged throughout his whole life: that of complex, densely
woven polyphony (see bb. 53–57).
My counterpoint studies under Veress and Farkas certainly played an important

role in working out impenetrable textures of sound, as did studying Jeppesen,
which Kodály made de rigueur for would-be composers. My keen interest in the
Flemish composers, in Ockeghem in particular, was also a contributing factor.
To this day, I am more interested in Ockeghem than in Palestrina, because his
52. See, for example, no. 1 of Two Canons (’Ha folyóvíz volnék’, 1947), or Invenció (1948).
53. The ironical character of the piece, which is, as Ligeti says, a ‘caricature of fugue’, is due to this
pedantry. Cf. Burde, Ligeti, 96.

26 Márton Kerékfy
music does not tend towards culminating points. Just as one voice approaches
a climax another voice comes to counteract it, like 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.54
The way to ‘impenetrable textures of sound’, that is to the micropolyphony of

Apparitions and Atmosphères goes from Musica ricercata via String Quartet no.
1 and the two choral pieces Éjszaka [Night] and Reggel [Morning] (1955). In the
Quartet, there are often very dense imitations. Sometimes the polyphonic web is
so dense that it cannot be perceived as a superimposition of different lines but as
a single, impenetrable sound-field. In most cases not only the imitational texture
is dense but the compass of the music, as well. Thus voices merge into one also
because they move in the same register and rhythm. In this way dense polyphony
(since it is not perceived as polyphony any longer) dissolves.
5. Musica ricercata in Ligeti’s early career

When the strong oppression, the Zhdanovian – Stalinist oppression began, that
is, in 1948 and 1949, one tried at first to find a free zone in it. About 1950,
there was the worst phase of the dictatorship, in 1950 and 1951, when people
disappeared and tens of thousands of people were deported from Budapest,
then began this: We have no free zone, we must work quite clearly against [the
system].55
Ligeti’s words (to ‘work quite clearly against’ the system) seem to describe
properly the context of Musica ricercata. Between the years 1948 and 1950/51,
Ligeti was eager to meet at least some of the requirements of the official musical
circles by composing pieces ‘that could yet be performed’. However, several of
his compositions fell short of these requirements: Even Kantáta az ifjúság ün-
nepére was criticized for the ‘clerical reactionism’ of its Handelian fugue.56 As
already mentioned, from 1949 onwards Ligeti could appear on the Hungarian
musical scene almost exclusively as a composer of folk song arrangements – not
an ideal situation for an extraordinarily gifted young composer having just fin-
ished his studies. Besides being disappointed regarding his rather marginal pos-
ition in public musical life, he might well have felt dissatisfaction with his own
artistic output, as well. His new works might well have seemed weak to him com-
54. Ligeti to Péter Várnai, in Ligeti in Conversation, 26.

55. ‘Als die große Unterdrückung, die Schdanow-Stalinsche Unterdrückung angefangen hat, also 1948,
1949, versuchte man erst einen Freiraum darin zu finden. Ungefähr 1950, das war die schlimmste Diktatur-Zeit,
1950, 1951, in der die Leute verschwanden und Zehntausende aus Budapest deportiert wurden, da fing es an:
Wir haben keinen Freiraum, wir müssen ganz deutlich dagegen arbeiten.’ Oehlschlägel, Ja, ich war, 94.
56. Burde, Ligeti, 40; Steinitz, Ligeti, 47.

pared to those written during his first years at the Academy, for example the Weö-
res Songs and Capricci. All these, together with his disappointment regarding the
political situation, could easily have brought the response that he ‘must have
worked against the system’. Having composed Musica ricercata Ligeti decided
to take part in official musical life with only a limited number of compositions
(mainly with folk song arrangements) while reserving his ‘real’, more adventurous
works ‘for the desk drawer’.57 In a sense, Ligeti chose an ‘internal emigration’,
which made himself and his workshop free of any external control and stylistic
dictates. About Musica ricercata Ligeti wrote in a letter to Nordwall in 1975: ‘it
was an attempt amidst the worst dicatorship to reach a musical clarity for my-
self’.58 Giving up composing for the public, Ligeti made a boundary, within which
he could be free. Free to experiment upon his musical material and even to play
with it.59
A later remark of the composer allows us to conclude that Ligeti’s opposition
to the political system and socialist realism exerted a decisive influence on the
musical character of the results of these experiments:
In communist Hungary, dissonances were forbidden and minor seconds were

not allowed because they were anti-socialist. I knew very little Schönberg, Berg
or Webern and practically nothing of Cowell and Ives, but I had heard about
clusters. They were forbidden, of course, as was 12-tone music. As a reaction
to this I very naively decided to write music which was built on the forbidden
minor seconds. I was an anti-harmonist because harmony, tonal harmony was
permitted in communist Hungary and chose dissonances and clusters because
these were forbidden.60
Thus the importance of the ‘madly’ hammering sfff clusters at the end of piece
X (Ex. 13), as well as the twelve-note structure of ‘Omaggio’ can hardly be over-
estimated. They can be seen as acts of defiance and provocation, and even as the
means of Ligeti’s self-liberation.
At this point we have to deal with the rather meaningful title of the series. On
the one hand it refers to the genre ricercar in general and to Frescobaldi’s ‘Recer-
car cromaticho’ in particular, as well as to the final piece of Musica ricercata,
which is a ricercar. (In this latter case, the term is used for a severe, archaic kind
57. ‘Writing for the desk drawer’ does not have to be taken literally. The official list of Ligeti’s works
(1942–56) at the Association of Hungarian Musicians (Magyar Zenemûvszek Szövetsége) included his ‘secret’
compositions as well, among them Musica ricercata and String Quartet no. 1. See Sallis, Introduction, 21–22.
58. […] ‘es war ein Versuch, in der Zeit der schlimmsten Diktatur, musikalisch eine Klarheit – für mich
selbst – zu erreichen’. Letter from Ligeti to Nordwall, dated 2 January 1975, quoted in Sallis, Introduction, 104.
59. Sallis draws a telling parallel between the ‘light-hearted, flippant tone’ of Musica ricercata and Ligeti’s
first writings published in 1948. This tone disappears from Ligeti’s writings in 1949 as well as from his major
compositions. Thus the re-establishment of this character in Musica ricercata may be a reason why ‘he ascribed
an almost therapeutic value to the composition’ of the series. Sallis, Introduction, 103–104.
60. György Ligeti, ‘Interview. György Ligeti in conversation with Toru Takemitsu’, Ligeti Letter, Ligeti
Collection Paul Sacher Foundation, 1 (1991), 8, quoted in Sallis, Introduction, 104.

28 Márton Kerékfy
of fugue.) On the other hand, as Sallis demonstrates, the concept of ricercar, in a

broader sense, can be applied to the whole series. A parallel can be drawn be-
tween Ligeti’s limiting of his compositional means (especially that of the pitch
content) and the con obbligo writing of seventeenth-century composition, which
was practised also by Frescobaldi. A chosen obbligo – for example, canon – by
limiting the composer’s possibilities, stimulated him to discover new compos-
itional possibilities – just like Ligeti’s own self-imposed obligation did for the
whole series.61 But the title of Musica ricercata, besides its historical connota-
tions, also refers to the act of searching. In these pieces Ligeti is searching his
own compositional means and musical language – that is, to put it in another way,
searching himself as a composer. In an era when ‘music is created by the people’,
when no personal style can be accepted and only a common musical style, then
this is actually an act of resistance in itself.
Now we can see clearer what Ligeti could have meant when writing about
Musica ricercata: ‘to build up a “new music” from nothing’. Rejection of every-
thing that is given, ready-made, or stereotyped – in order to be free.62 It does not
mean, of course, that Ligeti’s music would not have any stylistical connections
any more – Musica ricercata undoubtedly shows the influences of Bartók, Stra-
vinsky, and Romanian folk music, to mention only a few. It is rather the freedom
to choose – in other words, artistic responsibility.
61. Sallis, Introduction, 108–109.

62. Cf. Ligeti in Conversation, 13, and László, Ligeti a hídon, 374.

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‘A “new music” from nothing’:

György Ligeti’s Musica ricercata

(Received: March 2008; accepted: June 2008)

Keywords: György Ligeti, compositional technique, chromaticism, dense polyphony

Musica ricercata has been thoroughly analysed by Wolfgang Burde and

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

It was in a very popular style, a sort of Kodály–Handel–Britten style. There

11. Griffiths, Ligeti, 18–19.

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

2. Structure of Musica ricercata

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Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

EXAMPLE 1 Sonatina, movement I, bb. 1–5

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

EXAMPLE 2 Musica ricercata, no. III, bb. 1–8

EXAMPLE 3 Musica ricercata, no. VII, bb. 1–12

3. Problems of pitch organisation

Bartók’s chromatic technique […] illustrates that the twelve-tone tempered

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

TABLE 1 Pitch content of the pieces of Musica ricercata

Piece no. Pitch content Interpretation

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Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

The research of folk harmonization is, nevertheless, not merely of folkloristic

1. Clashes resulting from ostinati.

36. Cf. Burde, Ligeti, 100.

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

EXAMPLE 5 Musica ricercata, no. VI, bb. 11–13

EXAMPLE 6 Musica ricercata, no. VIII, bb. 14–17

4. Clashes resulting from the simultaneous occurrence of differing

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

EXAMPLE 7 Transcription of Romanian folk music (Învârtita)42

EXAMPLE 6 Musica ricercata, no. VIII, bb. 14–17

42. Ligeti, Egy aradmegyei, 401; Sallis, Introduction, 249.

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

EXAMPLE 9 Musica ricercata, no. X, bb. 1–21

EXAMPLE 10 Musica ricercata, no. XI, bb. 1–6

EXAMPLE 11 String Quartet no. 1, bb. 7–19

47. See String Quartet no. 1, bb. 239–365.

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EXAMPLE 12 String Quartet no. 1, bb. 711–716

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EXAMPLE 13 Musica ricercata, no. X, bb. 109–112

Finally, clusters can result from superimpositions of voices or sound-fields

4. Other aspects of the compositional technique

EXAMPLE 14 Musica ricercata, no. IX, bb. 22–27

51. Griffiths, Ligeti, 18.

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

EXAMPLE 15 String Quartet no. 1, bb. 505–511

My counterpoint studies under Veress and Farkas certainly played an important

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008

The way to ‘impenetrable textures of sound’, that is to the micropolyphony of

5. Musica ricercata in Ligeti’s early career

54. Ligeti to Péter Várnai, in Ligeti in Conversation, 26.

Studia Musicologica 49, 2008