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    Interview With György Ligeti: August 7, 1982: On The Morning of The Premiere of His

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    Emily McCulloch
    - György Ligeti was a Hungarian-Austrian composer interviewed about his life and career. He discussed growing up in Transylvania and becoming interested in music from a young age despite not having a musical background. He studied harmony and composition in Hungary but faced restrictions as a Jewish person. - He discussed important influences like Bartók and Stravinsky early on. His breakthrough works like Apparitions and Atmosphères in the 1960s explored texture and micropolyphony without traditional elements of music. - In the 1970s he was influenced by American minimalism and incorporated those elements while still using his own techniques. His opera Le Grand Macabre from the late 1970s required a more

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    Interview With György Ligeti: August 7, 1982: On The Morning of The Premiere of His

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    Emily McCulloch
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    - György Ligeti was a Hungarian-Austrian composer interviewed about his life and career. He discussed growing up in Transylvania and becoming interested in music from a young age despite not having a musical background. He studied harmony and composition in Hungary but faced restrictions as a Jewish person. - He discussed important influences like Bartók and Stravinsky early on. His breakthrough works like Apparitions and Atmosphères in the 1960s explored texture and micropolyphony without traditional elements of music. - In the 1970s he was influenced by American minimalism and incorporated those elements while still using his own techniques. His opera Le Grand Macabre from the late 1970s required a more

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    - György Ligeti was a Hungarian-Austrian composer interviewed about his life and career. He discussed growing up in Transylvania and becoming interested in music from a young age despite not having a musical background. He studied harmony and composition in Hungary but faced restrictions as a Jewish person. - He discussed important influences like Bartók and Stravinsky early on. His breakthrough works like Apparitions and Atmosphères in the 1960s explored texture and micropolyphony without traditional elements of music. - In the 1970s he was influenced by American minimalism and incorporated those elements while still using his own techniques. His opera Le Grand Macabre from the late 1970s required a more

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    112 views7 pages

    Interview With György Ligeti: August 7, 1982: On The Morning of The Premiere of His

    Uploaded by

    Emily McCulloch
    - György Ligeti was a Hungarian-Austrian composer interviewed about his life and career. He discussed growing up in Transylvania and becoming interested in music from a young age despite not having a musical background. He studied harmony and composition in Hungary but faced restrictions as a Jewish person. - He discussed important influences like Bartók and Stravinsky early on. His breakthrough works like Apparitions and Atmosphères in the 1960s explored texture and micropolyphony without traditional elements of music. - In the 1970s he was influenced by American minimalism and incorporated those elements while still using his own techniques. His opera Le Grand Macabre from the late 1970s required a more

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 7

    Interview with György Ligeti: August 7, 1982

    On the morning of the premiere of his Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano, we had the
    opportunity to sit down and talk with composer György Ligeti about his life and
    music.

    Firstly, I’d like to discuss your early life and what role music played in it.
    I spent my first six years in Dicsö szentmá rton, Transylvania, and after that moved to
    Kolozsvar, one of the centres of Transylvanian life, and went to school there (Ligeti,
    1983). My parents were from Budapest, and both loved music, but neither played a
    musical instrument (Floros, 2014).

    I started listening to music on the radio and had my first concert experience when I was
    8, and I remember seeing my first operas, which were Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and
    Verdi’s La Traviata (Floros, 2014). These had a great effect on me.

    We didn’t have any musical instruments at home, so even though I was interested in
    music I had no way of learning to play it. My father wanted me to be a scientist, and it
    wasn’t until I was fourteen that I was allowed to have piano lessons (Ligeti, 1983). That
    arose from a lucky coincidence, as a violin teacher discovered my younger brother had
    perfect pitch and convinced my father to let him take violin lessons (Floros, 2014). I was
    able to use that to convince him to let me take lessons too. I had to practice at my piano
    teacher’s house, as we didn’t have a piano at home, which wasn’t ideal (Floros, 2014).

    I started composing as soon as I started playing piano, even though I could barely play
    and had never studied harmony (Ligeti, 1983).

    Which composers did you admire at this stage?


    I deeply admired Bartó k, in particular the Divertimento, the Violin Concerto and the
    Second String Quartet (Floros, 2014). There was a period of time where I modelled
    myself on him closely, for example in terms of constructing pieces from only a few
    elements, which I used in the Musica ricercata for piano (Floros, 2014). Another
    important composer was Stravinsky. I also like anything soft, like Debussy or Schubert.
    When did your music first get published?
    GL: When I was eighteen, I wrote a song called “Kineret” which was a setting of the poem
    by Rachel Blochstein. It was at the time where Jewish laws had come into force, and Jews
    couldn’t take part in official concerts. However, a Hungarian-Jewish publishing firm
    called “Ararat” organised a song-writing competition, which I won. As part of the prize,
    the song was published (Ligeti, 1983).

    As a Hungarian Jew, how did the political situation affect you, especially during
    the war?
    I wasn’t allowed to study mathematics and physics at university like my parents wanted
    me to, as Jews were denied university entrance (Floros, 2014). However, there were no
    such restrictions at the Kolozsvar Conservatorium, so my parents let me enrol to study
    music there as long as the situation continued and I could not attend university (Ligeti,
    1983). I studied harmony and counterpoint under Ferenc Farkas (Floros, 2014). I then
    moved to Budapest and studied at the Music Academy, firstly under Sandor Veress, and
    subsequently under Farkas again, to whom I owe a lot of my skill as a composer (Floros,
    2014).

    I taught harmony and analysis at the Music Academy in Budapest from 1950 to 1956,
    and continued composing during this time. I couldn’t bring myself to conform to the
    aesthetics of socialist realism, so many of my works were not performed (Floros, 2014).
    We were cut off from developments outside the Eastern Bloc, making it hard to listen to
    New Music. But I was able to listen to some of the night programs of the German radio
    stations (Floros, 2014).

    It wasn’t until after the suppression of the Budapest Uprising in 1956 that I left Hungary
    for Vienna. I couldn’t live under a dictatorship. I didn’t stay in Vienna for long, and went
    to WDR in Cologne (Floros, 2014).

    What were your experiences at the electronic music studio in Cologne like?
    I learned so much from Stockhausen, Eimert and Koenig, especially about electro-
    acoustics and phonetics, and while I was there I produced Glissandi and Artikulation
    (Floros, 2014). I was fascinated with the similarities between electronic sound materials
    and phonemes (Floros, 2014). I studied the music of composers such as Boulez, who I
    later met at Darmstadt, and started lecturing there. It was so liberating to be able to
    study, read and listen to the music of the West.
    Your breakthrough came with Apparitions in 1960 and Atmosphères in 1961.
    What changed in your life following this success?
    I began to receive commissions which helped, although I wasn’t able to make a living
    that way – that came when I began teaching. I became well-known, but that has never
    been important to me. I don’t feel particularly famous (Ligeti, 1983).

    What approach did you take in composing these pieces?


    My approach to composing these pieces involved the destruction of the traditional
    elements of music such as harmony, melody and rhythm so I could focus on the
    exploration of texture and timbre (Searby, 2001). They were heavily influenced by my
    experiences with electronic music, as well as serialism, but I wasn’t interested in rows. I
    worked with clusters instead of twelve-tone rows – the idea was to have such dense
    textures that the intervals functioned as intervallic masses rather than individual
    intervals (Floros, 2014). Additionally, I organised the rhythmic relations in a different
    way from the dynamic relations (Floros, 2014). I also organised the durations so that the
    shorter the element, the more frequently it occurs – typically in serialism, the durations
    occur with equal frequency (Floros, 2014).

    In Apparitions I had 2 elements, which reciprocally influenced each other – a quiet,


    background web of sound, and acoustic projectiles which pierce the web, thereby
    influencing its sound (Nordwall, 1969). The idea, which I also used in Atmosphères, was
    to develop a thick polyphonic web which I have coined as micropolyphony, because you
    cannot hear the individual voices (Floros, 2014).

    With Atmosphères, I explored the intertwining of sound in a way that overcomes a


    “structural” way of thinking (Floros, 2014). The background would change slowly, with
    the form arising from gradual changes in the frequency band, manner of playing, timbre
    combination, register and dynamics in the sections (Floros, 2014). Texture can be used
    as a driving force as much as pitch or rhythm in music.

    In the 70s, you generally began to distance yourself from micropolyphony and
    focus more on rhythm. What changed in your compositional approach?
    I was heavily influenced by my discovery of American minimalist music, which I became
    acquainted with in 1972 - in particular the music of Steve Reich and Terry Riley (Floros,
    2014). Although Continuum (1968) was written before I discovered minimalism, it has a
    similar aesthetic, particularly in the simple ostinato rhythms. In Clocks and Clouds
    (1973), and the second movement of Three Pieces for Two Pianos (1976) I deliberately
    worked with minimalist elements (Floros, 2014). In the latter, I combined the phase
    displacement and pattern repetition techniques developed by Reich and Riley with my
    own techniques of grid superimposition and the oversaturated canon, which resulted in
    complex polyrhythms (Floros, 2014). I credited their influence in the title of the second
    movement.

    Now I’d like to discuss your opera, Le Grand Macabre. How did it come about?
    I had wanted to write a piece for the Stockholm Opera for quite some time (Floros,
    2014). I was inspired by Michel de Ghelderode’s play La balade du grand macabre, which
    is a surreal account of the apocalypse (Searby, 2012). But I could not follow the text
    literally – rather, I had to adapt it so I could compose the text and music as a unity
    (Ligeti, 1978). Myself and Michael Meschke, who wrote the libretto, focused on extreme
    irony, grotesqueness, ludicrousness and bizarreness – the basic theme of the opera to
    me is the defeat of fear through caricature, or making fun of serious things (Floros,
    2014). Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect) was the driving principle, and I used this
    by parody and twisting well-known things out of shape, including twisting musical
    quotations and adding fake Latin and absurd rhymes (Floros, 2014).

    Can you give examples of this?


    I parodied brass fanfares by writing for a fanfare of jarring car horns (Griffiths & Searby,
    2002). In terms of twisting quotations, in the third scene when Nekrotzar enters, the
    orchestra is playing a piece entitled “Collage” where the rhythm of the ground bass is
    taken from the finale of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, but I have changed the pitches
    (Griffiths & Searby, 2002).

    I also parodied Charles Ives in the music for the Galimatias section, in the way in which
    it builds up through adding self-contained and unrelated layers which included ragtime,
    flamenco and a distorted Greek orthodox hymn (Searby, 2001). Here I also directly
    quoted Schubert’s Grazer Galopp, as well as other tonal pastiches, which sound like
    quotations of Haydn or Mozart, but are really fake quotations (Searby, 2012).

    There are many other examples throughout the work.


    Le Grand Macabre signalled a change in approach to your compositional
    technique. What caused this change?
    Composing Le Grand Macabre allowed me to explore an entirely new musical landscape,
    and incorporate elements I had previously avoided, such as melody and tonal harmony
    (Searby, 2001). Writing a traditional opera required me to focus more on melody – a
    focus on micropolyphony and texture-driven music would have been unsuitable for a
    piece of dramatic theatre, which is driven by narrative, as it would have obscured the
    text (Griffiths & Searby, 2002). Most important to me was to bring the characters to life
    using the music – consistency in compositional approach was not important (Searby,
    2012). The comedy in the work required the eclectic approach I took, which included
    parody, pastiche, tonal harmony as well as the subversion of operatic conventions
    (Searby, 2012). However, some of these techniques were specific to the opera, and are
    not a part of my current approach to composition.

    This takes us to your new work which is premiering tonight, the Trio for Violin,
    Horn and Piano. This is your first major work since the opera – why the break?
    Firstly, I have had some health issues which have required prolonged hospital treatment
    (Floros, 2014). Secondly, I decided I needed a change in direction – I no longer felt a
    connection to the avant-garde, but wasn’t interested in pursuing post-modernism
    (Floros, 2014). I have received inspiration from several different avenues.

    Firstly, I became greatly interested in African music. I was introduced to the music of the
    Banda Linda, a tribe in the Central African Republic, by a former student of mine,
    Roberto Sierra (Taylor, 2003). I was particularly astounded by its complex polyrhythms
    and polyphony (Floros, 2014).

    I was also inspired by the concurrence of several tempo levels in Conlon Nancarrow’s
    music for mechanical pianos, and by my discovery of fractal geometry (Floros, 2014).

    Talk me through the musical style of this new piece.


    The Horn Trio marks a break with atonality – I am at the point where I have the courage
    to be “old-fashioned” and use non-atonal language (Searby, 2001). However, although I
    didn’t want to compose using avant-garde clichés, I didn’t want to slip back into the
    music of the past, so I had to try and find an original route to take (Floros, 2014). I
    wanted to develop my melodic lines further, in “a kind of non-diatonic diatonicism”
    Floros, 2014). I have used simple ternary form for the first and third movements, with
    some ostinato in the second movement and passacaglia in the finale (Floros, 2014). I
    also use some tonal harmony such as triads, but subvert them in ways such as adding a
    semitone, and avoiding traditional voice-leading and tonal functions (Searby, 2001).
    This creates a sense of overt melody and surface triadic harmony, which is both
    traditional and non-traditional (Searby, 2001).

    I look forward to hearing it! Thank you for talking with me and good luck with
    tonight’s premiere.
    Thank you.

    Word count: 2012


    Bibliography
    Floros, C. (2014). György ligeti: Beyond avant-garde and postmodernism (E. Bernhardt-
    Kabisch, Trans.). Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

    Griffiths, P., and Searby, M. (2002). Grand Macabre, Le. Grove Music Online. Retrieved
    from
    https://doi-org.ezproxy.canterbury.ac.nz/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.articl
    e.O002356

    Ligeti, Gyö rgy. (1978, October 23). Interview with Herman Sabbe (J. Ronsen, Trans.).
    Retrieved from http://ronsen.org/monkminkpinkpunk/9/gl3.html

    Ligeti, Gyö rgy. (1983, July 29). Interview with Istvan Szigeti (J. Ronsen, Trans.).
    Retrieved from http://ronsen.org/monkminkpinkpunk/9/gl4.html

    Nordwall, O. (1969). Gyö rgy Ligeti. Tempo, 88, 22-25. Retrieved from


    http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.canterbury.ac.nz/stable/943373

    Searby, M. (2001). Ligeti's 'Third Way': 'Non-atonal' elements in the horn


    trio. Tempo, 216, 17-22. Retrieved from
    http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.canterbury.ac.nz/stable/946727

    Searby, M. (2012). Ligeti’s 'Le Grand Macabre': How he solved the problem of writing a
    modernist opera. Tempo, 66(262), 29-38. Retrieved from
    http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.canterbury.ac.nz/stable/23362909

    Taylor, S. (2003). Ligeti, Africa and polyrhythm. The World of Music, 45(2), 83-94.


    Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.canterbury.ac.nz/stable/41700061

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