Tracing György Ligeti: Musica Ricercata

Mesto rigido e cerimoniale

The music on the video is played on a prepared piano. I listened to another record of the same work played at bayan.

György Ligeti composed Musica Ricercata in 1951 - 1953: a set of piano pieces often compared with Bartok's Mikrokosmos. But Ligeti's road took him far ahead: he is one of the great masters of contemporary polyphony.

Born in 1923 in Romania, in a region mixed ethnically (Transylvania). People in his birth town were speaking exclusively Hungarian. As a small kid, he was not aware about the existence of another language, so he was totally surprised hearing two cops speaking Romanian. It was only in the secondary school when he started to learn the official language of the country. He lived then in Hungary, and after the 1956 Revolution in Austria.

However, Romanian musical spirit had an immense impact on his work.

I am not considering only his Concert Romanesc (Romanian Concerto), with its echoes of bucium (alpenhorn) : it is a great musical work and it reminds me the Prelude at Unison of Enescu (and of course his Rhapsodies).

I am also not only considering his piano study, Coloana Infinita, a superb musical translation of Brancusi's masterpiece.

I found the Romanian matrix even in one of his most modern works, in Lontano!

Ligeti is the constructor of a new universe, the micropolyphony, and the spirit of Romanian music is one of its dimensions.

Well, some would ask how is it possible that a kid who was virtually ignorant of the Romanian language could absorb later so intensely the Romanian music?

I think it is about his musical acuity. He did not know Romanian, but he was seeing Romanian shepherds and was aware of the sounds of bucium and cimpoi (bagpipe). I would say that he did not invent the universe of micropolyphony; he discovered it in the Romanian musical structures. He would come for a short period in 1949 to Bucharest, at the Institute for Ethnography and Folklore, to listen carefully the recordings made by Brailoiu and other Romanian researchers. And later he would discover the micropolyphony in other popular cultures, in Africa: he would work all his life to find this universe, to understand and to organize it.

Till leaving Hungary in 1956 Ligeti followed the roads of Bartok and Kodaly. After that he met the works of some great modern composers, like Stockhausen (much later it would be the encounter with the player-piano studies of Nancarrow). It was the moment he realized what should be his own road.

Apparitions is the moment of breaking with the tonal music. It scandalized the attendance, as Hernani was a scandal in the first quarter of the nineteen century. It was a brutal manifesto: from now on the rule of three units was over in music too! Think at the gesture of Luther, breaking the Papal Bull....

The video that follows is a fragment from Apparitions: the author of the video is suggesting by his images a link to Un Chien Andalou of Bunuel and Dali: the moment of breaking with the old age of cinema!

After the moment of breaking with the old universe, Ligeti started to organize the new one. Atmosphères followed Apparitions. I did not find any video for Atmospheres: I am sad for this, as I wanted to share with you the strange beauty of that piece. There is neither melodic line there, nor rhythmic, only timbre and volume variations. If you don't like it, think at this: isn't it beautiful the rustle of leaves in the wood? The rustle of wind? The noise of a snowstorm?

Speaking about snowstorm, here is a fragment from his Lux Aeterna:

And the author of the video notes: A snowstorm broke suddenly while I was listening to Ligeti's music... a spooky atmosphere!

And this is what micropolyphony is about: the noise of snowstorm, the sudden flap of a spook, the rustle of wind through the leaves in summer, the sound of some African drums, the apparition of masked youngsters dancing strangely on New Year celebrations in some distant countryside in Transylvania, the sudden entrance of a cimpoi, the echo of bucium!


(Musica Nova)