Musica ricercata is a set of eleven pieces for piano by György Ligeti. The work was composed from 1951 to 1953. The work premiered on 18 November 1969 in Sundsvall, Sweden. Although the ricercata (or ricercar) is an established contrapuntal style (and the final movement of the work is in that form), Ligeti's title should probably be interpreted literally as researched music or sought music. This work captures the essence of Ligeti's search to construct his own compositional style ex nihilo, and as such presages many of the more radical directions Ligeti would take in the future (wiki).
I. Sostenuto -- Misurato -- Prestissimo II. Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale (2:35) III. Allegro con spirito (6:20) IV. Tempo di valse (poco vivace - « à l'orgue de Barbarie ») (7:22) V. Rubato. Lamentoso (9:15) VI. Allegro molto capriccioso (12:08) VII. Cantabile, molto legato (12:52) VIII. Vivace. Energico (16:33) IX. (Béla Bartók in Memoriam) Adagio. Mesto -- Allegro maestoso (17:37) X. Vivace. Capriccioso (19:52) XI. (Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi) Andante misurato e tranquillo (21:07)
Ligeti explored in this piece the paradox of the endless sound (like Jean-Cluade Risset, which leads to the endless stairs of Escher). Sounds puzzling?:) Forget all you think you know, just listen.
Watching Regen while thinking at Autumn in Varsovie. Listening Autumn in Varsovie while thinking at Regen... The movie of Ivens, the piano etude of Ligeti. It's 1929 and it is raining in Amsterdam, I'm thinking at an autumn in Warsaw. It's 1985 and it's autumn in Warsaw, I'm thinking at a rain in Amsterdam. I cannot dissociate them anymore.
Autumn in Warsaw! Its mutating chromatic chords and wild rhythms draw me inexorably into the vortex of the music, escalating to an exhilarating climax and concluding in a kind of controlled chaos (Joanna MacGregor performing).... not only does the pianist play in up to four different speeds at the same time, but an individual part of the texture can change speed over time from 3 to 4 to 5 to 7, speeding up gradually or slowing down. All these individual lines are played over an underlying gridwork of fast, regular pulsations; as one of the parts that changes speed criss-crosses this background of pulsating notes, fascinating patterns are created along the way (Ligeti and his influences)... titanic Autumn a Varsovie, where the lamento theme from the finale of the Horn Trio is simultaneously presented in multiple different rhythms. The music becomes darker and more complex until a fortissimo passage crashes down to the bottom note of the piano, ending the piece (Aimard performing).
Gilles Deleuze gives a wonderful reading of this film in which he argues that the film is no longer a representation of rain, but is attempting to give the viewer the feeling, or pure quality of rain, called a qualisign. The editing is not unlike Robert Bresson in the fragmentation and use of what Deleuze calls the any-space-whatever. In Rain the shots do not have a signed linear sequence, and have no forward movement in time (there is no character moving through the spaces, nothing to make one shot before or after another one in time). This means that all of the shots could have happened all at the exact same time, theoretically. This is one of the qualities of an any-space-whatever, a space in which the spatial and temporal potentials are deconnected (unlike a fiction or documentary film which has cohesive spatial and temporal dimensions) (Dick Whyte).
In 1932 Joris Ivens asked Lou Lichtveld (who also made the music for Philips Radio) to make a sound version of it, and in 1941 the film inspired Hanns Eisler to compose his Fourteen ways to describe rain in the context of a Film Music Project. I haven't yet had the chance to listen to the variations composed by Eisler, and I watched Regen with the music of Lichtveld.
I had read a lot about Regen - so when I watched it for the first time I was expecting a masterpiece. Something was not there - something was missing - or something was too much. I saw it for the second time. The images were fantastic - but something was impeding me to feel the masterpiece.
I thought that I was too tired - Regen was coming after two hours of watching other short movies, by Epstein, Eisenstein, Weinberg ... So I was definitely tired.
I took a break and went to the kitchen to eat something, then I came back. I saw it once more. I had an idea - I cut the sound - and I watched Regen again - and now I felt the masterpiece! It is a masterpiece. Only in its simplicity it has a grandeur, a greatness - and the music of Lou Lichtveld (which is fine) is not at the same level of greatness - of simplicity and greatness.
I saw it then several times - it is like a spell, it is binding you.
I sent her a comment regarding the score for Regen: someone should try also with some more modern music, like Autumn in Varsovie. Because Regen is very modern in his cinematic language. It's not only that. It's true that Regen is balanced and flows quietly while Autumn in Varsovie is wild. It's true that Regen has a Mozartian poetry, a noble and generous insight, while Autumn in Varsovie is provocative. However, there is the same any-space-whatever (see the explanation of Deleuze) in Regen as it is in Autumn in Varsovie. Any fragment comes unexpected.
Of course, Regen is around 12 minutes long, while Autumn in Varsovie is much shorter. So my suggestion is impossible.
And it is also something else. Regen is in its images music so pure that it does not need sound.
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!
