Contemporary Music Review

Vol. 31, Nos. 23, AprilJune 2012, pp. 149161

After the Opera (and the End of the

World), What Now?
Jane Piper Clendinning

Following the premiere of Le Grand Macabre in 1978, Gyorgy Ligeti faced a

compositional crisis: how to proceed? The opera had taken him far from his
compositional styles of the 1960s and early 1970s, but the way forward to the Piano
Concerto he wished to compose next was not clear. In the seven years between the opera
and the first book of Piano Etudes, Ligeti composed only three significant works: the Trio
for Violin, Horn, and Piano (1982) and two sets of songs for sixteen-part unaccompanied
chorusthe Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Holderlin (1982) and Magyar Etud}
ok
(1983), setting texts by Holderlin and Sandor We}ores. This essay will examine the place
of these songs, Ligetis first settings of poetic texts since the 1950s, in the context of his
works for voice, and consider their role in establishing his late style.
Keywords: Gyorgy Ligeti; Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Holderlin; Magyar Etud}
ok;
Late Style; Unaccompanied Choral Works; Sandor We}ores

Following the premiere of his opera Le Grand Macabre in 1978, Gyorgy Ligeti faced a
compositional crisis: how to proceed? The opera had taken him far from his
compositional styles of the 1960s and early 1970s, but the way forward to the piano
concerto he wished to compose next was not clear. Seven years would pass from the
opera to the first book of Piano Etudes, followed at last by the completion of the
concerto. In the interim, Ligeti composed only three significant works: the Trio for
Violin, Horn, and Piano (1982) and two sets of songs for sixteen-part
unaccompanied chorusthe Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Holderlin (Three
Phantasies after Friedrich Holderlin, 1982) and the Magyar Etudok (Hungarian
Studies, 1983). This article focuses on these choral works: Ligetis first settings of
poetic texts since the 1950s and his first unaccompanied choral compositions since
Lux aeterna (1966). Though they certainly are of interest to the music analyst,1 under
consideration here will be their place among Ligetis choral and vocal compositions
and especially their role at this juncture in Ligetis compositional career. After an
introduction to Ligetis choral and vocal compositions prior to the opera, we
ISSN 0749-4467 (print)/ISSN 1477-2256 (online) 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2012.717357

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J. P. Clendinning

consider these two sets of choral works and their role in opening the way to the
compositional road ahead of Ligeti in the early 1980s.
Works for voices, including accompanied and unaccompanied chorus as well as
solo voice and accompaniment, constituted a significant part of Ligetis compositional activities in his student days. This is in part because of the availability of
performances by soloists and by the abundance of choirs in post-war Hungary,
including informal student ensembles in which Ligeti himself sang.2 The repertoire of
these choirs ranged from Renaissance choral masterworks to Hungarian folk music to
recent choral compositions by local composersrepertoires that all were influential
in the development of Ligetis compositional style. Ligetis first published
composition was a song settingKineret (Galilee, 1941) for mezzo-soprano
composed when he was eighteen years old,3 and his student works list from his years
at the Budapest Academy features many choral or vocal pieces, including two-,
three-, and four-part unaccompanied choir, childrens choir, canons, duets, songs
for soloist and chamber ensemble, and three cantatas.
Among his student works are compositions based on Rumanian, Slovakian, and
Hungarian folk songs, some drawing both on the folk text and melody, and others
with a melody Ligeti composed setting a folk song text. One example of the latter is
Idegen foldon (Far from Home, 19451946) for unaccompanied three-part womens
chorus, where three of its four movements are based on Hungarian and Slovakian
folk song texts,4 but the folk-song-like settings are Ligetis own. There are also poetic
text settings from this same time, including Magany (Solitude) for unaccompanied
three-part mixed chorus and Harom Weores-dai (Three Weores songs) for soprano
with piano accompaniment, both composed in 19461947. These are Ligetis first
settings of poems by Sandor We}
ores, a Hungarian poet whom Ligeti met soon after
composing the set of songs, and whose imaginative, mystical, and often humorous
texts would continue to be an inspiration to Ligeti throughout his life.5
When Ligeti revisited these early vocal and choral works from his student days in
the 1990s as a part of projects with Sony and Schott to prepare recordings and to
publish the scores, he commented that: My musical idea was a Hungarian
modernity; my model was Bartok. The Three We}ores Songs from my first year of
studies (1946) mark the beginning of a compositional development which was to be
abruptly broken off two years later by the establishment of the Communist
dictatorship.6 This promising compositional direction was halted in mid-course in
1948, when, under the Communist regime, Ligeti began walking a tightrope between
engaging in compositional projects that would develop his skills as a composer and
the imposed artistic standards of Socialist Realism, which he notes was more like
Unrealism. That politically mandated style required non-chromatic and nondissonant music setting propagandistic texts, and there was always a chance of
running afoul of the ever-changing compositional rules imposed by the cultural
authorities. Ligeti observed: There were ways to avoid the obligatory progressive
texts: one was turning to folklore; another was taking refuge in the poems of the
classic Hungarian authors who had written their works before Lenin seized power.7

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151

In communist Hungary between 1948 and the 1956 uprising, composing vocal or
choral works based on folk song texts or Hungarian poems on safe subjects was the
only secure path for Ligeti, who wanted to avoid political problems. He was Jewish,
had survived the Holocaust through a sequence of lucky breaks, and had managed to
evade a political trap at the end of his studies at the Academy by leaving Budapest to
study folk musics for a year in Transylvania.8 In the fall of 1950, thanks to the help of
Zoltan Kodaly, after many years of financial uncertainty he had secured a position
teaching music theory, counterpoint, and formal analysis at the Liszt Academy, which
he wanted to keep by staying out of trouble. Among the folk-song-based works from
his years at the Liszt Academy are Lakodalmas (Wedding Song, 1950), Papaine
(Widow Papai, 1953) for unaccompanied four-part mixed chorus (banned after its
first performance for being too dissonant), and Inaktelki notak (Songs from
Inaktelke, 1953) for two-part unaccompanied mixed chorus.9 Ligeti remarks in the
program notes for the recording that he wrote about fifty folksong arrangements
prior to 1956,10 however, not that many remain; understandably some were lost in
the many transitions of his life that followed. The second pathcomposing settings
of poetic textsproved even more risky. In 1952, Ligetis settings for soprano and
piano of five texts by Janos Arany, a widely respected nineteenth-century Hungarian
poet who should have been old enough (and dead enough) for the texts to be safe to
use, were considered too much like Stravinsky and Debussy, and were forbidden soon
after their first broadcast on radio.
While writing choral and vocal folk-style settings for public performance as a part
of his public style, he composed his Musica ricercata (eleven short pieces for piano,
19511953), Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet (1953), and First String Quartet (1953
1954)works that were too dissonant, Western, and avant-garde for public
performancefor his bottom desk drawer.11 These works were not to see a proper
public performance until 1969 and 1970. His return to texts by Sandor We}
ores in the
composition of Ejszaka/Reggel (Night and Morning, 1955), two pieces for three-part
mixed unaccompanied chorus with simple diatonic canons creating a polyphonic
texture, clearly point the way to his later choral styles, but these, too, ended up for
the bottom desk drawer and were not premiered until 1968.
After his departure from Hungary in 1956, Ligeti sharply changed direction:
though he continued to compose some choral and vocal works, he abandoned choral
settings of both Hungarian folk-song-based and poetic texts. Between 1956 and 1977,
Ligeti set phonetic nonsense syllables making an invented language in Aventures
(19621963) and Nouvelle Aventures (19621965) for soprano, alto, bass and seven
instrumentalists, traditional Latin sacred texts in the Requiem (19631965) for
soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, two mixed choruses and orchestra, and Lux
aeterna (1966) for unaccompanied sixteen-part mixed chorus, and phonetic text in
Clocks and Clouds (19721973) for twelve-part womens chorus and orchestra, but no
poetic texts. A further change is that only one of his compositions for vocal forces
from this time is unaccompanied (Lux aeterna); the others set voices with chamber
ensemble or orchestra. There are at least a half dozen good reasons for leaving behind

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J. P. Clendinning

the very type of settings that had gotten him through the dark years of the
Communist regime: they would not communicate with European audiences of
that time, translations were not readily available of Hungarian into Western
European languages, songs sung in Hungarian were politically problematic because
of the cold war, the folk-like compositions were a part of his past instead of his
future, they represented the repressive restrictions under which he worked
between 1948 and 1956 at a time he was reveling in his new-found freedom, and,
most importantly, there were many new and exciting compositional opportunities
to explore.
Some of the features of his choral works prior to 1956, including employment of
canons, are developed further in the choral settings from this time. These techniques
are especially notable in the Kyrie movement of the Requiem and in Lux aeterna,
both of which employ microcanon: a term I coined for a subcategory of Ligetis
broader category micropolyphony, where a melodic line is set against itself in many
voices with entrances at short time intervals to form the musical texture.12 The Kyrie
movement, for twenty-part chorus (four each of Sopranos, Mezzo-Sopranos, Altos,
Tenors, and Basses) has two canon melodiesa conjunct one for the Kyrie text and
a contrasting wedge-shaped one for the Christe textwhich are simultaneously set
into microcanons in voice-part groups, starting with Mezzo-Sopranos and Altos.
These two microcanonic melodies layered in waves shape the movement. Lux aeterna,
perhaps the best known of all of Ligetis choral works, has three main sections, each
featuring microcanonic construction: the first and last sections feature a single canon
melody, while the middle section has two. The microcanonic melodies and their
canonic setting span and shape each section.13 As expressive and beautiful as these
works are, the lack of a poetic or folk text and the manner in which the Latin texts are
setwhere the words are often unintelligiblemake the expression of ideas and
emotions more abstract and limit the works avenues of communication to the
musical realm, but also frees the composer from constraints of text or meaning in the
compositional process.
Then, there was the opera, Le Grand Macabre, which consumed most of Ligetis
efforts from 1974 to 1978, including the time spent revising it into Scenes and
Interludes and dealing with productions across Europe. By all biographical accounts,
the composition and subsequent production issues with the opera left Ligeti drained,
as did personal issues from that time, including the death of his mother, the
dissolution of a decade-long personal relationship outside his marriage, and
unspecified health problems.14 Ligeti had a secure teaching position at the
Hochschule fur Musik in Hamburg, where he taught composition and analysis from
1973 to 1989, and Hamburg had provided a convenient base from which to travel for
premieres and festivals, but by the end of the 1970s he had tired of it15perhaps
because that was the longest time in his adult life he had worked in one place. With
more than twenty years having passed since his departure from Hungary, he also
seems to have had a time of reflection on his past thereevidenced among other
things by the titles given his two little harpsichord pieces from 1978 (Hungarian Rock

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153

and Passacaglia ungherese)and enough distance to look back at elements of his

compositional life he left behind at that juncture.
By the late 1970s, Ligeti had achieved standing as one of the significant European
composers of the post-1945 era. His compositions were featured in a variety of
festivals and concert series, eventually including one in Hungary, yet he also must have
been deeply aware of opportunities that he had missed and directions he had not taken
because of his life circumstances, and also that the time stretching ahead of him was no
longer infinitehis choices now would determine what his legacy would be. All of
these are a normal part of reaching mid-lifewhere one can see more clearly than
before what has transpired, as if from a hilltop looking back down at the road one has
taken, but the path of descent and the valley ahead, where one must now go, is
shrouded in mist and uncertainty. This is a time in life that often requires a person to
choose a direction, and to find a way forward. Ligeti could have rested upon his laurels
and continued writing pieces like those that had brought him fame or he could have
stopped creating new compositions altogether, though that did not seem to be much
of a choice, or he could choose something new and reinvigoratingbut what?
The late 1970s were also a time of change and uncertainty in the compositional
world. The burst of energy of the European Darmstadt avant-garde, with which Ligeti
maintained a peripheral relationship, had fizzled out. Both serial and aleatoric
techniques had become passe. Ligeti attributes his lack of compositional production
between 1977 and 1982 to this generalized aesthetic crisis:
Aside from two small pieces for harpsichord, I did not complete any compositions
between 1977 and 1982. I was in fact working continuously, but I wrote hundreds
of sketches, only to abandon them. This was not some personal crisis, but part of
a general one: in the 70s, many composers of different generations were
questioning the primacy of the Darmstadt School. Of course, this primacy was
only an illusion of artists and journalists who belonged to the circle (as I did, albeit
casually and with a certain skepticism).16

The radical experimentalism of the 1960s and early 1970s was giving way to
minimalism in the United States, and neo-tonal and neo-Romantic tendencies
seemed to be on the rise. Though Ligeti never was subsumed in any of these
compositional trends, including those of the Darmstadt School, his working methods
from the 1960s already seemed tapped-out by the works just prior to the opera. As we
know now, with awareness of the completed Piano Concerto and the first book of
Piano Etudes, one of the essential elements of Ligetis post-opera style is the influence
of Bartokhe had to return to his roots to move forward, which included reengaging some of the compositional directions he abandoned when he left Hungary.
He also would be invigorated by his renewed engagement with world musics, science,
and mathematicsinterests spanning in various ways back to his youthwhich
brought a renewed focus on rhythmic and metrical complexity.17
During his time of compositional crisis and stalemate after the opera, returning to
poets he had long admired and once again setting texts for unaccompanied mixed

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J. P. Clendinning

chorus may have seemed like a way to break the stasis and to move forward,
especially if the texts had special meaning and significance to him at that point in his
life. As one of my former composition teachers used to say, if you dont know where
to start when composing, begin with an inspiring poetic textit will give you ideas
about both form and content, and before you know it, you are writing music. . . 18
Ligeti had received commissions from both Swedish Radio and the Schola Cantorum
of Stuttgart for large choral works, and the texts he chose to set in these two choral
works certainly seem significant, coming at this point in his life. The three Holderlin
poemsHalfte des Lebens (Halfway through Life), Wenn aus die Ferne (If from
a distance), and Abendphantasie (Evening Reverie)are filled with images of the
abundance of mid-life (ripe yellow pears, wild roses, drunk with kisses, spring time,
nightingales song, golden world), but also look ahead to old age, represented with
images of winter (coldness, silence, rattling weather-vane, dusk, darkness, and
lonesomeness). The text from Halfte des Lebens is provided in Figure 1 as an
example. Text elements of each of these Holderlin poems speak to looking both back
on times past and ahead to an uncertain future. Ligetis settings of these texts are
filled with text-painting as well as drawing on the sonic and rhythmic characteristics
of the words. The shifting images and ambivalence of the texts could be reflective of
the composers state of mind, as he is feeling the effects of middle-age.
The Weores texts selected for the Magyar Etud}ok also seem significant. The title for
this work comes from the title of the textswhere each of the individual poems is
entitled Etude plus a number representing the placement of that poem in the
collection. Ligeti selected Etudes 9, 49, 40, and 90 for the three movements,
combining two poemsboth with references to frog soundsfor the second. Like
other of Weores poems that Ligeti set, these texts have a strong sense of playfulness
combined with direct references to sounds and images that evoke a sense of place and
time. The brief Weores poems he set twenty-eight years earlier in the choral works
Ejszaka and Reggel (Night and Morning) had night paired with the words silence
and beating of my heart, and morning evoked by the church tower tolling at dawn

Figure 1 Text for Halfte des Lebens (English translation by David Feurzeig).

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155

and a roosters cock-a-doodle-doo. The poems for the Hungarian Studies present
three different places and images: the text of the first movement represents icicles
melting and dripping Csipp, csepp (Drip, drop) and the water droplets knocking
at the door;20 the second movement is set in a meadow near a frog pond, with
sounds of flocks of birds, swarms buzzing, bells calling us to rest, and the calls of frogs
brekekex (the Hungarian version of ribit); while the third movement takes place at
a fair with street merchant cries advertising apples, sleds, clothing, mead, and a
circus.21
The Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Holderlin (1982) feature many of the
compositional techniques Ligeti developed in the 1960s and 1970s, but the
techniques are integrated and layered to a degree not evident in previous works,
motivated by the poetic phrasing, rhythm, and meaning of the Holderlin texts. In
this composition for sixteen-part unaccompanied mixed chorus, Ligeti once again
draws on microcanon and pattern-meccanico as structural featurestwo of his
favorite compositional techniques employed in works from the 1960s. In the 1960s,
he uses strict pitch canonic techniques in works, such as Lux aeterna (1966), but
the durations assigned to the pitches are not canonic; in the Drei Phantasien, both
the pitches and durations are canonic, though two different durational sequences
are sometimes applied to the canon melody, creating additional rhythmic and
metrical complexity as the melody is set in canon. Instead of the long canonic
melodies of Lux aeterna, which create entire large sections, the microcanons here
are shortersetting a single phrase of textand may be complete, or may break off
or wander off prior to completion of the canon. The canon entries may be at the
unison or octaves, as was typical in the microcanonic works from the 1960s, or may
be transposed, either by a consistent interval or by a series of different intervals.
The melodies here also differ from those of Lux aeterna because microtonal
inflections are employeda technique Ligeti explored in the Second String Quartet,
Clocks and Clouds (19721973), and other earlier works that do not exactly produce
quarter tones, but slight out-of-tuneness in regard to equal temperament, creating
a blurring of the pitches and intervals. This is a compositional idea he worked out
in more detail later, by combining modern valve and natural horns in his Hamburg
Concerto (1999).22
I use the term pattern-meccanico for pieces, such as Continuum (1967), where
Ligeti employs a type of compound melody created by the interaction of a few
musical lines, each representing several contrapuntal strands, where each line is
constructed from repeated small groups of pitches that I refer to as patterns.23 The
term pattern-meccanico derives from Ligetis term meccanico, meaning in a
mechanical or machine-like manner. In the Drei Phantasien, a variety of short
microcanons are combined with longer pattern-meccanico and pattern-meccanico/
microcanon segments juxtaposed with short contrasting chordal and non-canonic
contrapuntal passages to form the musical structure. Phrases and subphrases of the
texts are set individually, highlighting the components of the poems, and playing on
the sounds of the words as well as their meanings.

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J. P. Clendinning

The organization of the first movement, Halfte des Lebens, illustrates the
combination of techniques typical of these pieces. The movement divides into three
large sections: bars 117, bars 1828, and bars 2950, as illustrated in Figure 2. The
first section, setting the first stanza of the poem, begins with a microcanon at the
unison in the Soprano, Alto, and Tenor sections (twelve parts), with the canon pitches
set using two durational series, with entries at a quarter note displacement, as shown
in Figure 3. A second microcanon enters in the Basses, then the SAT microcanons
branch off by section. A fleeting transposed microcanon passes through the Alto and
Soprano parts in bars 1314, leading to the cadential figure in bars 1517.
Section 2, bars 1828, does not feature either microcanon or pattern-meccanico
techniques. Instead, there is a non-canonic, homorhythmic counterpoint in parallel
tritones and perfect fifths followed by a chordal passage. These choices again seem to
be motivated by setting the text (Alas, where shall I findwhen winter comesthe
flowers, and where the sunshine?). Section 3, bars 2950, combines microcanon with
pattern-meccanico in the Alto and Tenor parts. They are joined by the Sopranos,
while the Bass parts sustain notes with long durations. This microcanonic melody is
constructed with pattern changes like those of the pattern-meccanico texture,
effectively combining the two techniques. This section, and the movement, ends in a
homorhythmic chordal cadential pattern.
In the Magyar Etud}ok (1983), Ligeti returns to texts by Sandor We}
ores, but
explores new types of rhythmic features that would become characteristic of his late
style. While each movement of the Drei Phantasien is like a quilt of carefully

Figure 2 Ligeti, Halfte des Lebens, graph of the formal elements.

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157

Figure 3 Ligeti, Halfte des Lebens, Opening Microcanon, bars 14, sopranos and altos.
1983 Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG, Mainz, Germany. Reproduced by permission. All
rights reserved.

combined small components composed with a variety of techniques, each of the three
Hungarian Studies is woven completely from a single pattern. These truly are etudes
(studies): each represents a concentrated working-out of one compositional idea that
is closely linked to images in the text. One aspect shared with the Drei Phantasien is
that the text of each movement features sound effectsdrops of water, evening
sounds, and market criesand is set onomatopoeically. Unlike those of the Holderlin
songs, these texts are light-hearted short poems, but both sets of texts evoke a sense of
place and time.
The first movement of the Hungarian Studies is created entirely from a melodically
and rhythmically strict mirror canon. The canon melody consists of eighth notes
separated by long spans of rests, to be sung Moderato meccanicomechanically, at
a moderate pace. Only twelve voice parts of the sixteen part chorus participate in this
setting, with the canon melody transposed to begin with each of the twelve pitch
classes. An expanding chromatic wedge is created by the shape of the canonic line,
and also the pitch level of entries. The canonic entries illustrate the textfeaturing
the sounds and description of an icicle dripping, and drops knocking at the door. As
with some of the microcanons in Drei Phantasien, two rhythmic patterns are assigned
to the canon melody. Here, though, the two rhythmic patterns are made from a single
durational sequence notated in two different meters: Choir II enters first in 2/2 meter
(rhythm 1) and Choir I in 6/4 meter (rhythm 2). Since the tempo is the same for
the beat units in both metersthe half note in 2/2 lasts as long as the dotted half in

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J. P. Clendinning

6/4the durational sequence consisting of eighth notes and rests is completed more
quickly in 6/4, with three quarter notes per beat in the same time span of two quarter
notes in 2/2. Perhaps this reflects icicles that are not melting at quite the same rate,
with one audibly dripping faster than the other at the beginning, before there are so
many drips at the same time it is not possible to distinguish the sound of individual
drops. Once the canon is set in motion, entries are proscribed by intricate mirroring
procedures controlling pitch level, both time and pitch intervals between entries, and
the alternation of the two meters. The finished composition results from these precompositional decisions. It is a tour de force of strict canonic writing, and quite
distinct from Ligetis other microcanons in its precise adherence to the pitch and
rhythm sequence.
The two texts of the second movement present several sound images, which are set
in a manner reminiscent of fourteenth-century sound-effect songs, such as the French
chace and the Italian cacciaboth forms of popular music in which scenes, such as a
hunt or a bustling marketplace, were set in a humorous manner using canonic
techniques combined with hocket, echoes, and other effects. The phrases of both texts
are set in pairs, with each pair from the first poem accompanied by an N or Z
sound effect. The bell sound bim-bam is separated from the rest of its phrase and
presented as a sound effect, and the second text, about the sound of the frogs, comes
in whenever frog sounds are mentioned in the first text.24 This type of effect is also
employed in the last movement of this set and in some parts of the Drei Phantasien.
The last movement of the Hungarian Studies is reminiscent of the market scene
(Who will buy?) in the musical Oliver! (words and music by Lionel Bart, 1960) and
also the opening market scene (Belle) in the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast
(words and music by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, 1991).25 All of these
market scenes have potential precedents in Renaissance pieces with similar types of
textures and multiple competing texts. In this movement of the Hungarian Studies,
five street vendor cries are set, each with its own melody that is independent in pitch,
rhythmic structure, meter, and tempo from the others. The melodies overlap and
interact to create a complex polyrhythmic texture.
The three choral works grouped in the Hungarian Studies share little in common
with each other as far as compositional techniques used, except that they all in one
way or another explore contrapuntal techniques associated with Renaissance music
repertoire Ligeti studied and sang in Budapest, taught at the Liszt Academy (where
one of his duties was as a teacher of counterpoint), and discussed with his
composition students at the Hochschule fur Musik in Hamburg. These pieces are
significant in that they represent a return to setting texts in Hungarian by one of
Ligetis favorite poets, and must have brought back memories of years long past
other places and times. They also represent an exploration of musical elements that
would be significant in other works of Ligetis late style, including metrical and
rhythmic complexities. Both these pieces and the Drei Phantasien lead toward the
new style by combining aspects of Ligetis pre- and post-1956 compositional
techniques.

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159

These two unaccompanied choral works were to be Ligetis last in this genre, but
there are two later works for voice and accompaniment setting poetic texts by one of
the poets of the 19821983 choral works: Der Sommer (The Summer, 1989), for
soprano and piano accompaniment, setting a text by Friedrich Holderlin, and Sppal,
dobbal, nadihegeduvel (With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles, 2000) for mezzo-soprano and
four percussionists (who play a large, diverse battery of percussion instruments),
setting texts by Sandor Weores. Ligetis only other vocal composition following the
sixteen-part choral works is the Nonsense Madrigals (19881989 and 1993) for six
singers (two altos, tenor, two baritones, and bass), which sets texts in English.26
In Le Grand Macabre, the end of the world does not signal the end of the opera
instead, the end of the world comes at the end of the third scene, with another scene
yet to come.27 At the age of fifty-five when the opera premiered, Ligeti was a wellestablished composer, and could have chosen to continue with the compositional
styles of the 1960s and 1970s that had brought him international success, or even
stopped composing altogether (which he essentially did by not completing any new
works for about five years). Instead, he looked backwards in order to move forward.
He chose to seek inspiration in the texts of poets he had admired for years, and to
return to choral composition. His return to his roots included re-embracing the
compositional materials and genres significant during both his student years and his
time at the Liszt Academy and re-establishing as a part of his compositional arsenal
the Bartok-influenced style emblematic of his Piano Concerto. Looking back
fortunately did not mean a retrogression to a compositional world long past and
abandonment of what he had learned in the meantime; instead it led to the
integration of his early stylistic elements with new compositional ideas from world
musics that intrigued him, along with aspects of his signature styles of the previous
two decades. This time of looking back may also have provided an impetus for his
efforts in the 1990s to revise and publish selected early works from the 1940s and
1950s and to record performances of them as a part of Sonys Ligeti Edition,28 a
project eventually completed by Teldec. The compositional crossroads Ligeti faced in
19781982 could have led in many directions, but it took him hereto these two
beautiful and intriguing choral works, and ultimately on to the Piano Concerto and
the Piano Etudes.

Notes
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]

[5]

For detailed analytical comments on the Drei Phantasien and Magyar Etudok, see
Clendinning (1989, Vol. 1, pp. 303335 and Vol. 2, pp. 176208, 219222).
Steinitz (2003, pp. 3940).
Ibid., p. 16.
In this work, Ligeti chose a text by Renaissance poet Balint Balassa for the first movement,
with the second and third movements based on Hungarian folk song texts, and the fourth
movement on a Slovakian folk song text.
For more on Ligetis employment of poems by Sandor We}
ores, see the recent article: MandiFazekas and Fazekas (2011).

160

[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]

[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]

[17]
[18]

[19]
[20]

[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
[28]

J. P. Clendinning
Ligeti (1996c, p. 9), Sony 62311.
Ibid., p. 10.
These details of Ligetis life during and immediately after World War II are documented by
Steinitz (2003, pp. 1921, 2830).
Though these works languished in obscurity for many years, their scores are now
available from Schott and they were recorded in the 1990s for the Sony Ligeti Edition,
Vol. 2.
Ligeti (1996b, p. 10), Sony 62305.
Ligeti (1996a, pp. 78), Sony 62306.
Initially presented in Clendinning (1989, Vol. 1, pp. 4748).
Both of these pieces are discussed in detail in Clendinning (1995). See also Bernard (1987,
1994).
Discussed in Steinitz (2003, pp. 253255).
Steinitz (2003, p. 212).
Ligeti (1998, pp. 1112), Sony 62309. Despite Ligetis assertion to the contrary, there are
good reasons to believe his compositional block for this extended span of time was both
professional and personal.
These interests are discussed by Stephen Taylor elsewhere in this issue.
This great advice to a young composition student was from Bob Burroughs, composer in
residence and composition faculty member at Samford University from 1971 to 1980. I am
sure it is not original to him, but it was advice he gave repeatedly and applied himself with
great success. (He has been a prolific composer of choral church music, with over 2000
compositions in print).
Holderlin (1996, p. 23), Sony 62305.
We}
ores (1996, p. 25), Sony 62305. Page 2 of the score only includes a German translation of
the poems, and the German text does not include the knocking at the door image, but
rather that the icicle drips water. The translation by Szalai is likely the better rendition of
the original image.
See the essay elsewhere in this issue by Amy Bauer for additional comments on these
texts.
The Hamburg Concerto is discussed elsewhere in this issue by Mike Searby.
Initially presented in Clendinning (1989, vol. 1, pp. 156158). The use of pattern-meccanico
techniques in Continuum is discussed in Clendinning (1993).
These texts are discussed in more detail by Amy Bauer elsewhere in this issue.
There is no particular reason to think that Menken and Ashman were aware of Ligetis choral
works, or vice versa.
These pieces are discussed by Wolfgang Marx elsewhere in this issue.
For a synopsis of the opera, see Steinitz (2003, pp. 224227).
For more details, see Steinitz (2003, pp. 343353).

References
Bernard, J. (1987). Inaudible structures, audible music: Ligetis problem, and his solution. Music
Analysis, 6(3), 207236.
Bernard, J. (1994). Voice leading as a spatial function in the music of Ligeti. Music Analysis, 13(2
3), 227253.
Clendinning, J. P. (1989). Contrapuntal techniques in the music of Gyorgy Ligeti. (Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, Yale University).
Clendinning, J. P. (1993). The pattern-meccanico compositions of Gyorgy Ligeti. Perspectives of
New Music, 31(1), 192234.

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Clendinning, J. P. (1995). Structural Factors in the microcanonic compositions of Gyorgy Ligeti. In

E. Marvin & Hermann, R. (Eds.), Concert music, rock, and jazz since 1945: Essays and
analytical studies (pp. 229256). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
Holderlin, F. (1996). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 2: A cappella choral works (D. Feuerzeig,
Trans., pp. 2325). Sony 62305.
Ligeti, G. (1996a). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 1: String quartets and duets (S. Spencer,
Trans., pp. 712). Sony 62306.
Ligeti, G. (1996b). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 2: A cappella choral works (A. McVoy & D.
Feuerzeig, Trans., pp. 914). Sony 62305.
Ligeti, G. (1996c). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 4: Vocal works (A. McVoy & D. Feuerzeig,
Trans., pp. 918). Sony 62311.
Ligeti, G. (1998). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 7: Chamber music (A. McVoy & D. Feuerzeig,
Trans., pp. 720). Sony 62309.
Mandi-Fazekas, I., & Fazekas, T. (2011). Magicians of soundSeeking Ligetis inspiration in the
poetry of Sandor We}
ores. In L. Duchesneau & W. Marx (Eds.), Gyorgy Ligeti: Of foreign lands
and strange sounds (pp. 5368). Suffolk: Boydell Press.
Steinitz, R. (2003). Gyorgy Ligeti: Music of the imagination. London: Faber and Faber.
We}
ores, S. (1996). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 2: A cappella choral works (A. M. Szalai,
Trans., pp. 2526). Sony 62305.

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